Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere)

Following on the heels of Lisa Cron's breakout first book, Wired for Story, this writing guide reveals how to use cognitive storytelling strategies to build a scene-by-scene blueprint for a riveting story.

It’s every novelist’s greatest fear: pouring their blood, sweat, and tears into writing hundreds of pages only to realize that their story has no sense of urgency, no internal logic, and so is a page one rewrite. 

The prevailing wisdom in the writing community is that there are just two ways around this problem: pantsing (winging it) and plotting (focusing on the external plot). Story coach Lisa Cron has spent her career discovering why these methods don’t work and coming up with a powerful alternative, based on the science behind what our brains are wired to crave in every story we read (and it’s not what you think). 

In Story Genius Cron takes you, step-by-step, through the creation of a novel from the first glimmer of an idea, to a complete multilayered blueprint—including fully realized scenes—that evolves into a first draft with the authority, richness, and command of a riveting sixth or seventh draft.

LISA CRON is the author of Wired for Story and Story Genius. Her TEDx talk, Wired for Story opened Furman University's 2014 TEDx Conference, Stories: The CommonThread of Our Humanity. Lisa has worked in publishing at W.W. Norton, as an agent at the Angela Rinaldi Literary Agency, as a producer on showsfor Showtime and Court TV, and as a story analyst for Warner Brothersand the William Morris Agency. Since 2006 she has been an instructor inthe UCLA Extension Writers' Program, and she is on the faculty of theSchool of Visual Arts MFA Program in Visual Narrative in New York City.She is a frequent presenter at writers conferences, universities andschools nationwide, and in her work as a story coach Lisa helpsnovelists, screenwriters and journalists wrangle the story they want totell onto the page.