A concise but comprehensive overview of the fundamentals of brainstorming a novel.
Needham presents her novel-brainstorming workshop in book form.
The author, a novelist who has written more than a dozen books (including several USA Today bestsellers), offers the text version of a brainstorming workshop she has run at many in-person writing conferences over the course of her career. Breaking the process of developing the elements of a novel down into six key parts, Needham explains—using examples from her own work and that of several anonymous volunteers—how to go from a vague idea to a fleshed-out concept that is ready to be written and shared with editors and readers. Each of the steps (idea, meaning, theme words, premise, characters, and elevator pitch) is covered in a separate chapter. The book demonstrates how following Needham’s process allows the writer to build on each previous step’s work, developing and refining the novel’s central concept to understand not only what the story will be about, but why it matters and how it will be conveyed to the eventual reader. The author is very clear about the importance of starting out with “an idea, not a story” and provides a concrete path for getting from the former to the latter.
The book has its origins in a workshop Needham offered at genre-specific writing conferences, and the readers who will find it most useful are those looking to write traditional (not experimental) fiction. The author gives solid explanations of the crucial elements of a novel, particularly theme, which she coherently outlines both in terms of its expression throughout the novel and its value to the writer (“Theme ought to run deeply through your story, and can be a great help in staying on track, and making sure that characters remain true to themselves and thereby to your story”). The premise, by contrast, is “the promise you make to your readers that your characters and their struggles along their journey will have meaning in the end,” and Needham shows how to turn a premise into a fully developed plot, with clear characters and conflicts, that can be easily summarized in both a one-sentence logline and a paragraphlong elevator pitch, allowing the writer to have well-defined expectations of where the story will go before beginning to write it. The book is aimed at novice writers, laying out the basic concepts of plot, conflict, and character, and the “volunteer brainstormer” examples that appear in each chapter effectively illustrate the concepts put to use in similar ways despite the substantive differences between the story ideas presented. However, these examples are used excessively—after including them in each of the chapters explaining the six steps, Needham then repeats each of the examples, in full, after the conclusion of the main narrative, adding 30 pages to the book’s main text without providing additional material. For readers who find the preceding pages useful, however, the book is a solid and well-written introduction to the building blocks of novel writing that offers a clear path to follow. A concise but comprehensive overview of the fundamentals of brainstorming a novel.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2023
ISBN: 9781940904146
Page Count: 154
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Breathtakingly magical.
A powerful homage to the natural world, from England by way of Canada.
Combining poetic words (somewhat reminiscent of Mary Oliver’s poetry in their passion for the natural world) with truly stunning illustrations, this unusually beautiful book brings to readers the magic and wonder of nature. This is not a book about ecology or habitat; this is a book that encourages readers to revel in, and connect with, the natural world. Focusing on a particular subject, whether it be animal, insect, or plant, each poem (rendered in a variety of forms) delivers a “spell” that can be playful, poignant, or entreating. They are most effective when read aloud (as readers are encouraged to do in the introduction). Gorgeous illustrations accompany the words, both as stand-alone double-page spreads and as spot and full-page illustrations. Each remarkable image exhibits a perfect mastery of design, lively line, and watercolor technique while the sophisticated palette of warms and cools both soothes and surprises. This intense interweaving of words and pictures creates a sense of immersion and interaction—and a sense that the natural world is part of us. A glossary encourages readers to find each named species in the illustrations throughout the book––and to go one step further and bring the book outside, to find the actual subjects in nature. Very much in the spirit of the duo’s magisterial The Lost Words (2018), this companion is significantly smaller than its sprawling companion; at just 6.5 by 4.5 inches when closed, it will easily fit into a backpack or generously sized pocket. “Wonder is needed now more than ever,” Macfarlane writes in the introduction, and this book delivers it.
Breathtakingly magical. (Poetry. 6-adult)Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4870-0779-9
Page Count: 120
Publisher: House of Anansi Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 23, 2020
A shrewd and comprehensive study of the importance of reality construction in human life.
A writer offers a wide-ranging exploration of the nature and role of storytelling in human society and psychology.
In his book, Schrank takes a broad look at the many pivotal roles stories play in what he refers to as “Normalworld.” Tales, he contends, are the tools people use in their ongoing “Reality Construction Project.” They use stories to construct their shared reality and then explain it to themselves. This project is fundamental to human nature, the author argues: “This seemingly effortless ability to wing it, to make up a story on the fly, is part of our survival toolkit. We experience confabulations as reality, not as stories.” Schrank conceives of this faculty as a defining aspect of humans, who at all times make up and tell tales by instinct about everything (“We are all confabulists,” he writes). He maintains that when these stories diverge from actual reality, humans very often prefer to go on believing the tales instead. In the course of his book, he explores several of these stories and examines their reality versus their various confabulations. Delving into perception studies and visual cognition, he examines subjects ranging from popular political positions to widespread disinformation campaigns, always striving to differentiate between perception and storytelling. For example, he dissects what may be the most dramatic example of confabulation: the prevalence of conspiracy theories, where humans take what they know and use it to tell stories that explain what they don’t know. “Our perception,” he writes, “is a game of fill-in-the-blanks.”
Throughout the work, Schrank is a calm, methodical guide to subjects that often tend to raise readers’ hackles (his section on the nature of immigration in the United States, for instance, methodically differentiates between what Americans believe, what they’d like to believe, and what is actually true). His ruling contention is that humans “seek connections and patterns to use as building blocks in our story creation,” and he’s cleareyed about both the positives and the negatives of the phenomenon. One of the foremost negatives connected to serial confabulation is what’s called the Dunning-Kruger effect, in which people’s ignorance about a subject (based on the stories they tell themselves) has an inverse relationship to their confidence about that same topic. As Schrank puts it, “Incompetence masks the ability to recognize the incompetence.” The omnivorous nature of his curiosities is the book’s most consistently surprising and enjoyable element; he can move with ease from investigating the nature of acoustics (and audio illusions) to the human tendency to invest all kinds of inanimate objects and processes with personalities. These and other subjects (whether or not plants feel pain, for instance) take on new elements of interest when examined through the lens of storytelling. And throughout the volume, the author is mindful of the perils inherent in this habit of spinning yarns. “The more an answer feels right to you, the more certain you are of its correctness,” he writes in one of his many reflections on the insidious process of confirmation bias. “We use this feeling of rightness as evidence of accuracy.” Storytellers of all kinds will be captivated by every page.
A shrewd and comprehensive study of the importance of reality construction in human life.Pub Date: March 13, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64237-934-1
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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