Stealing Fire from the Gods: A Dynamic New Story Model for Writers and Filmmakers (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Stealing Fire will take readers beyond classical story structure to an extraordinary new story model that can demonstrate how to create contemporary stories, novelsd, and films that are significanly more powerful, successful and real.

James Bonnet reveals the link between great stories and link between great stories and a treasury of wisdom hidden deep within our creative unconscious selves - a wisdom so potent it can unlock the secrets of the mind.

Great stories are created by powerful and mysterious inner processes. The stories are designed to guide us to our full potential and are as necessary to our well-being as fresh air. Understanding great stories means understanding these inner processes can lead to a profound understanding of ourselves and the world.

This book introduces two important new models:

* The Golden Paradigm - discovery of a new psychological model brought to light by the intriguing patterns hidden within great stories.
* The Storywheel - a cosmological view of story that brings all of the different types of story together into one grand design.

James Bonnet, founder of Astoria Filmwrights, is a successful Hollywood screen and television writer. He has acted in or written more than 40 television shows and features including Kojak, Barney Miller, and two cult film classics, The Blob, and The Cross and the Switchblade.

KEY FEATURES:
* A unique exporation of the art of story writing
* Introduces two important new story models

About the Author

Bonnet, founder of Astoria Filmwright.

Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: Michael Wiese Productions; illustrated edition edition (October 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0941188655
• ISBN-13: 978-0941188654
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #703,794 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars And then, .....Wow!, October 16, 2000

By	Robert Kall "Rob Kall of Opednews.com" (Newtown, PA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As a writer with work published in numerous national venues, such as OMNI, Success, Writer's Digest, Reader's Digest and more, it is a great pleasure to find, after 20 years of writing, such a great collection of stimulating, visionary, inspiring, yet at the same time immediately useful and practical ideas.

I thought I was buying a book on writing, on story structure concepts. Little did I know that I was going to discover, in addition to an extraordinary book on writing, a profound treatise on understanding being human. James Bonnet has written a book every psychologist should read.

Having already read and immensely enjoyed Robert McKee's Story Structure, Christopher Vogler's Writer's Journey and other books on writing, I was amazed by how much new and different material, really transcendent, creative, mind stretching, James Bonnet offers in his book.

When a story works, it produces magic-- taking you on a ride, pulling your heart strings, making you connect with and feel the emotions, adventures and thoughts of the main characters. This book gives you amazingly precise, insightful strategies for building stories that work, that go to the reader's heart and soul. The book uses an understanding of mythology and more important, of the creative unconscious-- of both the writer, reader or viewer. He takes the ideas of Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung and weaves them into what he calls a Golden Paradigm, which uses visual charts which make it much easier to begin to understand the multiple levels his concepts apply to.

I put off writing a review to this book. After all, how do you describe the substance you've stolen from the Gods? But I am grateful to him for the new energy and excitement I've discovered in my own writing. I can't wait till James Bonnet offers one of his storymaking workshops on the east coast, as well as the ones he's been doing in California.

An update: Since writing this review, I've read and perused numerous other books on story creation. This one still stands high on the list of must reads. I've put together a website about the Story conference I have organized-- StoryCon; The Art Science and Application of Story, at storyscience.com, where you can find a lot more information on who I think are the top experts in story creation. Most have written books you can find here on Amazon and some even have links directly to their books.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is the greatest gift any writer can give themself, August 29, 2001

By	Brian G Ging (Bay Area, CA) - See all my reviews

I am an independent filmmaker and writer in the Bay Area, and I just recently finished Stealing Fire From the Gods.
Bonnet's work is absolute genius. I have always had this burning conviction inside myself as a writer to tell the TRUTH. To pull realism from the aspects I see in life and craft my characters to be real and true and human. I knew I had an even more important goal to achieve as a storyteller, but I couldn't put my finger on it. When watching films that had it, I of course could point it's quality out, but I did not know
how those film's invisibly touched me. Unlike most films, I related to these few somehow and "got" what the filmmaker's were trying to say in such a way that they moved me.
I read the first ten pages of Stealing Fire in a bookstore, and my jaw dropped..... This was it!!!! This is what I've been working toward in all my stories. This is the REAL truth. I've read the book now, and am so enlightened. No kidding, I would
pay thousands of dollars for the wisdom it's awakened inside me now. Bonnet has shown me how I always wanted to tell stories and gave me the easy ways to break them down into the blocks necessary to build them. The secrets to those movies I'd see that touched me, are no longer invisible and I understand them now.
I cannot thank him enough for how he has changed my writing, and my current script (which was missing something) just started to click for me, because I know where I am going now. I am no longer caught up in the glitsy sugar-coating-but-no-substance phase common in today's films, and am on the path to sharing my wisdom with my audience.
This book has taught me that to be a Great Writer, I need to teach my audience the ancient lessons I have learned in my life, and enlighten them as I would a friend. The Great Stories are how we've always shared this wisdom and how we evolve as humanity. Fascinating!!!!
If you read this, Thank you James Bonnet.

26 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good concept, poor execution, February 28, 2001

By	Megan L. Wiseman "formerly known as wolfkiller" (Raleigh, NC) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

When I first started reading James Bonnet's book, I was excited. I had already read other works about the "Hero's Journey" approach to novel and screenplay writing. Bonnet was telling me that the hero's journey is only one small piece of something he called "The Golden Paradigm."

I kept expecting to find a closer explanation of the paradigm, for example how the hero's journey theme contrasted with other types of plots. So far I haven't seen anything like that.

For being a book for writers, this book is very poorly written (or poorly edited, I can't tell which). It reads like something that was self-published. The so-called explanations just ended up confusing me more than the original description did.

That said, I think Bonnet does manage to show that there are many different types of heroes, and their journeys may be very different. He also shows that some of the archetypes set out in the "Hero's Journey" approach can have positive and negative aspects, and most of them can be either male or female. I also like that he included quite a bit of information about the "anti-hero", or what Bonnet calls the "holdfast."

If you are willing to wade through voluminous and rambling prose to get at the main ideas, then I recommend this book. Otherwise, I suggest you get a synopsis from someone else. The ideas are good--the *book* is not.