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James Scott Bell

Plot & Structure: Techniques and Exercises for Crafting a Plot That Grips Readers from Start to Finish Paperback – October 6, 2004

by James Scott Bell (Author)

1,069 ratings

Part of: Write Great Fiction (5 books)

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Craft an Engaging Plot

How does plot influence story structure? What's the difference between plotting for commercial and literary fiction? How do you revise a plot or structure that's gone off course?

With Write Great Fiction: Plot & Structure, you'll discover the answers to these questions and more. Award-winning author James Scott Bell offers clear, concise information that will help you create a believable and memorable plot, including:

   • Techniques for crafting strong beginnings, middles, and ends
   • Easy-to-understand plotting diagrams and charts
   • Brainstorming techniques for original plot ideas
   • Thought-provoking exercises at the end of each chapter
   • Story structure models and methods for all genres
   • Tips and tools for correcting common plot problems

Filled with plot examples from popular novels, comprehensive checklists, and practical hands-on guidance, Write Great Fiction: Plot & Structure gives you the skills you need to approach plot and structure like an experienced pro.

Print length

240 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Writer's Digest Books
Publication date

October 6, 2004
Dimensions

6.03 x 0.64 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

158297294X
ISBN-13

978-1582972947
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

A former trial lawyer, James Scott Bell is the award-winning author of numerous thrillers, including the Ty Buchanan series (Try Dying, Try Darkness, Try Fear). He is also the author of two other popular writing books: Revision & Self-Editing, and The Art of War for Writers. A frequent teacher and keynoter at writing conferences, he resides in Los Angeles.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Writer's Digest Books; Fifth edition (October 6, 2004)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 158297294X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1582972947
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.9 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.03 x 0.64 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #74,959 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #23 in Mystery Writing Reference
- #92 in Authorship Reference
- #274 in Fiction Writing Reference (Books)

Customer Reviews:
1,069 ratings

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For notifications and deals about JSB's new releases, sign up for his occasional update at www.jamesscottbell.com and look for the FREE BOOK page. Your mail box will never be overstuffed nor will your address be shared with anyone else.

JAMES SCOTT BELL is a winner of the International Thriller Writers Award and the author of many bestselling thrillers. He is a popular writing instructor and conference speaker, and formerly served as the fiction columnist for Writer's Digest magazine. Jim attended the University of California, Santa Barbara where he studied writing with Raymond Carver, and graduated with honors from the University of Southern California Law School. He lives and writes in L.A. and blogs weekly at Kill Zone -- www.killzoneblog.com

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5

1,069 global ratings

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4 star		14%
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Bernard Hamilton

Short, to the point and very useful

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 25, 2023

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As a new writer, this book has given me the tools I need to finish with style. I highly recommend and definitely will be reading again.

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Brook Allen

Excellent advice, excellent reference!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 10, 2022

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This was the finest book on craft that I have read. First off, it's not a daunting read, but offers easy-to-understand advice and exercises that make sense and lend authors true knowledge.

James Scott Bell has obviously traversed the frustrations, difficulties, and roadblocks of novel-writing. I applaud his willingness to share some of the useful skills necessary for writer growth.

I'm keeping this one at my desk for reference! BRAVO!

One person found this helpful

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Season

Nice copy, as described

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 9, 2022

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Shipped quickly. I was surprised to find this copy was autographed by the author. It's an extremely useful read for studying up on plot and I'm keeping this one handy. Already a favorite!

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Birdfeeder

One of the best books about writing!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 1, 2011

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Each chapter offered valuable information. I can't praise it enough. It's simply one of the best books that I have read about writing. I have learned plenty, and I will apply it to my new novel that I'm working on right now!
Buy it! Read it! It works wonders! It's invaluable to my collection. If you're building your collection, make sure this book finds a place in your home. I have outlined so much. I have taken so many notes. I memorized elements of the structure. The author didn't take any break. He didn't stop surprising me toward the end.
Great work!

OVERVIEW

The author talks about the LOCK system for your novel.
L --You need to have a gripping Lead with whom readers can identify with. You need sympathy, likability, and inner conflict. You need to build an arc of your character breaking into his layers, so the lead changes by the end of the novel. You need to show it through action and show the moment of change.
O-- Objective, a goal your lead wants to achieve. You need to create a strong opposition, and put that opposition close to the lead. It might be a physical location, moral duty, professional obligation, life or death situation, obsession, etc.
C--Confrontation or simply said conflict that grows; stakes are raised higher leading to the climax of the story.
K--Knockout--final fight against opposition

You need three ACT structure:
Beginning (Act 1) , Middle(Act 2), Ending (Act 3)
Beginnings- You need to reveal the lead; hook the reader; create sympathy through those things that I have mentioned earlier. You need to create disturbance in his life that will move the Lead to Act 2 which is the middle, no return.
Middles- Raise the stakes; scenes are more tense; create more conflict and have a death hanging over your Lead (emotional death, physical, or professional, etc.) The customer is nearing the black moment. The Lead enters another door of no return.
Endings-Battle--tie those lose endings (some might contain sacrifice) 1. A final choice or 2. A final battle
Add a twist if possible.

If you follow the above and create a back cover blurb, you can go ahead and write your novel knowing it will not fail. Create an arc of the character that concentrates on the internal part of the character.
I like to create also two charts. One is for the Lead showing how the character is changing internally.
Another one, characters who play the parts in your novel divided into following categories:

Character, Description, Objective, Role, Secret, and Emotion Evoked.
You can add as much as you want in your never ending list.

Scenes- HIP- Hook, Keep it Intense, Prompt to another scene
Stretch tension! You need show instead of tell.
ARM- Action, Reaction, and More Action

Soap Opera-- don't resolve anything until the end, and you might want to end the scene with a secret revealed or a cliff hanging moment.

Complex Plots--Play with symbols or motifs; create subplots and integrate them into the main plot, or use parallel plots used so much in romance novels.
Or divide into sections; each section to contain the LOCK system and three act structure.

Some other things that I found valuable:
Flashbacks -- keep them short; create scenes out of them; use one HAD.

If your middle doesn't play well, do something unexpected like throwing a guy with a gun.

Unanticipate-- avoid cliches, create unpredictiable scenes, endings

If you present something in the story, make sure you use it later in your novel. If you mention the riffle on the wall, make sure it will play out in the future scene. You need to work backwards. You need to plant things, so the future scenes will make sense.

The author talked about SHUTDOWN. I have experienced it myself just after the conference. It happens when the writer is overwhelmed and can't produce. It's a phase that passes. I did have it for two weeks. I was just simply exhausted and overwhelmed. I took a break, and the passion came back.

4 people found this helpful

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C.J.

Pretty Good... Not amazing.... But pretty good.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 26, 2010

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Before taking a stab at my first real story I have decided to read two books on the art of writing fiction; "Techniques of the Selling Writer" by Dwight Swain, and the book I am reviewing now, "Plot and Structure" by James Bell. While Swain's book was more of an all inclusive manual on writing interesting fiction, Bell's book is focused strictly on, as the name suggests, plot and structure.

What this book is not... This is not a 'how to write a novel' book; if you are going to just read one book on writing a fiction novel then "Techniques of the Selling Writer" may be the more appropriate choice. If you are looking for a book that deals with anything outside of plot and structure, this book will be of no help there either. This book is designed to be supplemental to an already moderately educated reader. If you read Swain's book first, then you will instantly recognize the principles of this book.

What this book is... This is a great book on, you guessed it, Plot and Structure. It's actually a fairly concentrated look into the subject.

The chapters...

Ch 1: What's a plot, anyway?
Ch 2: Structure: What holds your plot together.
Ch 3: How to explode with plot ideas.
Ch 4: Beginning strong.
Ch 5: Middles.
Ch 6: Endings.
Ch 7: Scenes.
Ch 8: Complex Plots.
Ch 9: The character arc in plot.
Ch 10: Plotting Systems.
Ch 11: Revising your plot.
Ch 12: Plot Patterns.
Ch 13: Common plot problems and cures.
Ch 14: Tips and Tools for plot and structure.

I found the specificity of this book very helpful with each principle being illustrated by a paragraph or so of a known author's work. Bell handpicks excerpts from authors varying from Dean Koontz to Herman Melville, brilliantly pulling text from these masters and showing us how they went about the relevant technique. This easy to read nature and well outlined subject matter means I will be using several of its chapters as a personal reference guide in the future. I'm certain it will keep me from making many of the mistakes beginning writers make and possibly save me weeks in rewrites.

I will say this though... "Techniques of the Selling Writer" is a better book and covers plot quite well too; so if you are only going to read one book on writing, that is a damn good place to start. If you want to supplement that reading further, "Plot and Structure" comes highly recommended.

[...]

10 people found this helpful

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Jabel Erica Bercasio

Very Helpful!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 17, 2022

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I like how handy and organized it is! It does not just focus on various plots but also on solutions on what to do when there are some problems. The examples and exercises kept me engaged. :) I want to buy more books from this series.

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Top reviews from other countries

Keith Crawford

Well done, but more of the same.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 14, 2019

Verified Purchase

My first response to this was “Bof.” Here we go again. Another writer has read someone who has read Artistotle’s Poetics, and read someone else who has read Joseph Campbell, and now will come up with their own jargon/acronyms/rubbish diagrams to describe something that has been described in a thousand other writing books: the three act structure and designing characters around objective/obstacle/resolution.
Which is all true. Particularly the bit about the diagrams. They really are just shapes with words tagged on. Bad, bad diagrams.
BUT, and it’s a big but which is why I put in capitals, this book is well done. It makes no pretences to be talking about literary fiction, but it does make connections to where the commercial meets the literary, and that’s a rather exciting step in a world that tends to consider good writing an unnecessary element of, erm, good writing. And it does an excellent job of laying out the key elements of how to write a story that people will read.
It really comes into its own in the latter chapters, particularly the one in which he sets out several different systematic methods by which you can put together your plot depending on your writing style. This is great. If you’re a first timer, you could do a hell of a lot worse than work through the system presented here (I know I did – the first books on writing I read were utter rubbish compared to this).
So, if you’re a first timer looking for a book to help you get started, this is an excellent choice. It’s down to earth and full of good advice. If you’re an experienced writer and need a little help getting going, this is a good choice as well. His repeated emphasis on having “no going back” points in the story helped me with a book I’m drafting, so that was worth the cover price at all. Sometimes we all need a fresh look at the basics.

15 people found this helpful

Kourosh Taheri-golvarzi

The very first book every aspiring writer should read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 29, 2016

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I absolutely very strongly recommend this book to any and all aspiring writers. Mr. Bell has a way of explaining initially-seemingly abstract concepts in a way that anybody can understand. Right from the beginning, he assumes that you have the story inside you, and have no idea how to get it out, and over the course of the book, gives you very real, practical techniques you can use to get ideas on paper right now. The chapters on how to organize parallel plots and on how to organize individual scenes (on their own and within chapters) are already worth the cost of the book itself. He also manages to keep the book fun and lighthearted, which I would never have expected from a book on how to construct a story. I would actually recommend pairing this together with the book "Make a Scene" by Jordan Rosenfeld, and if you put in the personal effort, all in all, you should be able to get your book, at the very least, drafted almost entirely from those two titles. Highly recommended!!

14 people found this helpful

Filipe P.

Highly recommended.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 6, 2018

Verified Purchase

James Scott Bell does a remarkable job making the book very entertaining, very accessible and with concepts, tricks and lists you can implement right away. While I believed Plot to be a very intrinsic thing that I understood fairly well, his deep know-how opens your mind so much. Highly recommended.

4 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

A strikingly easy book to follow

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 24, 2019

Verified Purchase

This book is incredibly concise and easy to read along. There is no verbosity in any of the explanations and I've found it a useful reference tool for writing. When I publish my first novel I'll make sure to re-evaluate this review as sees fit.

2 people found this helpful

ERH

Super helpful and easy to read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 2, 2019

Verified Purchase

Loved this book. Super helpful and gave me a lot to think about in relation to my own novels. I'll be recommending it to clients and fellow authors.

2 people found this helpful

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