Customer Reviews

Theme and Strategy: How to Build a Strong, Narrative Structure to Help Your Fiction Stand Tall, Run Fast, Hit Hard, and Soar to Success (Elements of Fiction Writing)

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This book is subtitled how to build a strong narrative structure. In fact, the book is not about structure at all. It is about pattern-a different thing. And even the discussion of pattern is a mishmash: "Pattern in Strategy, Pattern of Audience, Pattern in Structure, Pattern in Plot, Pattern in Action, Pattern in Character, Pattern in Thought, Pattern in Place, Patterns in Style." (This is the table of contents.) The statements in each chapter are equally vague: "Strategy is both map and journey." You understand that? Perhaps as inspiration or as communication by osmosis this book might be useful. But what results will you obtain? There's the risk.
The discussion of theme follows--if you'll forgive the expression--the same pattern. "Theme is...the central concern around which a story is structured." (p. 97) It is your "inertial guidance system." It is a "viable, working pattern." There are exactly five types of theme (no more and no less): theme as plot, theme as emotion effect, theme as style, theme as character, theme as idea. Got it? Good. This book is for you. But if you're saying, "Huh? Say what?", then you'd better find some book that knows what it's talking about well enough to say it clearly.

This book is ok.
It talks from a top-down viewpoint instead of getting into the nitty-gritty of plotting.
A very large portion of the book is in Tobias sharing pieces of literature as examples to support his ideas/story analysis. This was good and bad. Good because it seemed to give credibility to what he was saying but Bad because if you remove the examples he could have presented all his points on two or three pages.

He touches briefly (even with an appendix in the back) on the 36 different plot types. Interesting thing is fours years later he writes a more detailed book entitled, 20 Master Plots. What happened to the other 16? His second book is better in my opinion when it comes to planning what type of story you want to write from a theme/strategy point of view.

I would recommend the Marshall Plan of Novel Writing or The Weekend Novelist if you want a very structured, detailed approach to plotting. Use the Tobias books for overall concept but don't think you can use it to help you create a major plot piece. This is a great book for beginners, but I'd check your local library before dishing out the bucks for this hardback.

This book is written for the writer who has solid writing skills (description, dialog, tone, etc.) and a solid idea or set of ideas but can't decide how to convey those ideas. In other words, you have a solid feel for the characters, and you know at least your major plot turns, but you have specific, underlying ideas you want to convey, and you're not sure how to effectively express them. Essentially, it's for the author who's trying to write more than a basic thriller or other escapist novel (and he gives some solid recommendations for writers working on those types of stories, as well).
Tobias consistently reminds us that everything in a story should support the theme, and 'everything' covers a lot of ground, so he looks at theme as it affects a wide variety of story elements. He clearly states that some types of stories emphasize certain elements and other types emphsize others. In essence, he is giving guidelines for writers to plan their writing and organize a story based on the elements most common to a particular theme.
One reviewer was upset that Tobias states there are only five major themes. Actually, Tobias says the pattern of a story will usually take one of five forms, based on the theme of the story. In another book (20 Master Plots), he points out that Aristotle believed there were only two plots, forza and forda, while Tobias describes twenty (I highly recommend that book, as well). Tobias isn't trying to stick every writer in a box, he's trying to help them take the shortest possible path toward writing the story they want to write.

This isn't the book to go to when you're learning how to write. Try Damon Knight's Creating Short Fiction or Rust Hills' Writing In General and the Shoft Story In Particular. This is the book you go to when you have something to say, when you finally find a story and characters that are important to you, and you want to make sure you do them justice.

I got this book in a local library. It has the basic ideas for beginner writers, who have absolutely no idea of how to do it. It talks about strategies of writing and what you should do before and while writing your book. The explanations are very long, and sometimes it seems that Ronald Tobias was just trying to write more pages. Although the book is divided into many parts, I rarely saw any difference between any of them. They seem to say few ideas over and over in different words with different examples. In other words, if you want some light reading, 100% guarantee that you'll get what he's saying, you're a beginner, and you have enough free time, read this book. Otherwise, don't. I'm sure I can write everything he wrote in 20 pages.

This book wanders all over the place in explaining theme and strategy in writing a novel. Some of the information about making yourself a schedule seems condescending. The rest of the chapters select examples from novels and films to illustrate certain things about plot, action, and character, but the examples don't really clarify. The same author wrote "Twenty Master Plots and How to Build Them," which is much clearer and much more useful.