Customer Reviews

Break Into Fiction: 11 Steps to Building a Story that Sells

5 star:		(18)
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3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
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The premise and some of the ideas in the book are intriguing. Some of the templates are interesting and helpful, and give food for thought. However, the book seem "unfinished" to me, in many ways, and was ultimately frustrating to use for that reason. One example of this is a Glossary at the beginning of the book, which includes several terms that don't appear anywhere in the actual body of the book, or are only referenced very slightly (example: "Twist Points", described as "key areas of your story", are referenced in only one question in any of the templates, and don't stand out as being that important).

The book also seemed "unfinished" because the parts never seem to add up to a whole.There are a bunch of "template" writing books on the market, and some of them are very well thought out and quite complete as far as character building, plot building and so forth. This is not one of them.

I was also very much distracted by the grammatical errors that sprinkle every chapter and, to my mind, are especially damning in a book on writing technique. They had me shaking my head in disbelief at times. Example: "The character has refused to take action while they weighed the risks, even briefly, and most likely have been persuaded to act either due to strong motivation or a mentor." I feel it shouldn't be so difficult just to read a book that intends to help you write.

It is also very odd that while films are analysed as to how they fit the authors' theories, no books at all are used. If I had known it would not give examples of any books, I would not have bought it.

Working through the templates provided in Break into Fiction is painful. The questions make you think. Harder, and then harder. Fresh ideas pop into your head, and-- voila--your characters come to life as real people with deep-seated issues, and your plot thickens. Where was this book when I needed it nine drafts ago? I highly recommend it for anyone who is serious about writing a book that will sell.

Once you have grasped goal, motivation, and conflict, once you have done Story, if you have struggled through Techniques of the Selling Writer, then read this book because it will all become clear, at least it did for me.
Plotters will love this technique, the worksheets take you all the way through the story and help you nail the plots and subplots. The worksheets on the character will help you sift through all the facts about your characters and distill the important parts.
Pantsers will love this after the first draft. The not so comfortable parts in your first draft will become clearer and help tie the story together. It will help you find the missing puzzle pieces.
This book won't write the story for you, but it will help take some of the frustration out of the process and what more could you want?
Oh yeah, a winning lottery ticket.

The book has some interesting parts that are helpful such as the templates on character creation; however, the portion on plot creation can be confusing and can turn a good idea into a bad idea. I took a story idea and worked it through the plotting templates and it turned what I thought was a good story into something completely predictable which I then hated.

One thing that really bugged me was the constant references to movies instead of novels or short stories. It would have been more effective if novels were used as plotting examples rather than movies, but I guess today the aim for a writer is to write a movie script in the form of a novel. Okay, I get that.

Last, but not least, it would be great if you could get the templates in a WORD document or PDF where you could easy print out, fill in, or just key in on your computer.

You could do worse.

Generally, I have a love/hate relationship with writing books. I buy them, start reading them, only to stop reading them for...whatever reason. Not that I don't like them. Not that they aren't teaching me something. I really don't know why. It's just a bad habit.

Break Into Fiction, though, is nothing short of amazing and I read it from beginning to end.

Break Into Fiction: 11 Steps to Building a Story that Sells, by Mary Buckham (fellow Pacific NW writer!) and Dianna Love, is the byproduct of a workshop they've been giving around the country for quite a while now. A friend had taken it and swears that workshop is the reason she finally snagged an agent. I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was the case. It's that good.

Their secret? Plotting through Character. The best stories (popular fiction anyway) are the best because of the characters. We pick up commercial fiction books because we love connecting with the characters and seeing/reading about their growth through the course of a book. Break into Fiction guides writers through plotting through getting to know their characters.

There are templates to fill out (NOT character sketches), each getting to know your character more and more, and as you do so, discovering where your book needs to go in order to fulfill the character arc you have planned out.

I really have to recommend this book! I'm loving what I've discovered. Check it out!

Sometimes I'm moved by bad reviews and other times I'll take a chance. This time I took a chance and am glad I did. In this case the one bad review sounded pretty persuasive, but after reading the others decided to ignore it. There are plenty of books like this out there but this one was more useful to me than the others. What this one does is define the turning points of the story and so aided me in gaining a deeper understanding of what they are and at what point of the story they could possibly be. I consider myself an intuitive writer, so there's a lot of restructuring once I'm done. Now maybe my initial draft will be more structured. It also aided me in gaining a deeper understanding of the character and premise. There are a lot of good and excellent books on writing and this is one of them I will look to for inspiration.

I see a lot of people complaining about the use of movies to teach plotting techniques, but that was the main reason I loved it. The authors do a good job of picking different genres to show the different ways your characters can/will/might behave. This book is fantastic, and it literally saved my WIP. I'd finished the first draft, put the thing down for a month or so, then picked it up and realized my MS is riddled with plot holes, characters not in character, and basically a whole lot of crap.

This book helped me decide what needed to stay, what needed to go, and where I could add little details to really make my characters - and story - pop. Thanks Mary and Dianna!

Break Into Fiction by Dianna Love and Mary Buckham is an absolute must-have craft book for any writer who wants to improve their storytelling abilities and write better books. Includes easy-to-use templates for forcing writers to think through plot points, character motivations, scene inclusion, and other critical components of a solidly written novel. With the foundation laid by the templates, the craft of writing can then be the focus since all the nuts and bolts are in place. An excellent and unique resource for any writer at any stage of their career.

Break into Fiction is a an excellent resource for aspiring writers(which I am). It is easy to read and more importantly it is easy to understand. Using the templates in Break into Fiction I have been able to spot problems with my WIP. I would recommend this book to any aspiring writer.

Mary Buckman and Dianna Love know their craft!! The templates walk you through the essential steps to help you write more effectively. This is the best learning tool since Donald Maas' book, The Breakout Novel.