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Movie Review – Enchantment

Movie Review for Writers:

I'm beginning to watch movies from the perspective of learning more about writing; specifically about how to add information into the background of scenes and also about plotting.

I watched Enchantment, starring David Niven and Teresa Wright and a few others looked familiar.

QUICK SYNOPSIS: The story opens focusing on an estate house that seems almost haunted, like the walls have lots of stories to tell. The movies moves from present time, World War II London with a grand-niece Grizel Dane needs to stay with her grand-uncle, Rollo Dane, who is old, heartsick and not interested.

The story moves from modern day and goes back in time and tells the story of Nolo's family, his widowed father, his older sister Selina who was the only lady of the house, and a ward who the father brings home to live with them. The ward's name is Lark and the story goes back and forth touching on childhood scenes, back into present time, back into when Rollo was just enlisted in the service, and you see he falls in love with Lark. So does the other brother, Pelham, and another Italian guy from the neighborhood.

What is interesting is to watch how the house itself becomes the vehicle that is used to go from one time frame into another. The script takes you into every scene so you can tell which time frame you are in and what is going on in the scene, so there is never any confusion. I got a lot out of watching this, the blending in and out of the scenes.

The modern day story is about this grand niece, who has a simiar story where she falls in love but wants to be practical about things and thinks she shouldn't marry. Uncle Rollo gets his strength back to warn her not to let love get away like he did.

ELEMENTS OF INTEREST TO WRITERS:

The movie moved from time frames (Pre WWII and into WWII) seamlessly by using the house and each of the rooms as the backdrops.
The actors grew up by using events of their lives to indicate childhood, friendship, the courting years, and falling in love
The movie was very good is showing various scenes of "meanness" in developing the wicked step-sister who winds up ruining everyone's lives.
The set is a beautiful Victorian home (at least I think it's Victorian) and if you wanted to describe a room from that era, this movie would give you some really great ideas for describing rooms and backdrops.

Don't read any further if you don't want to spoil the ending.

The audience finds out that Rollo never married Lark, even though he loved her dearly, he was never able to love again, and his career that he chose did not comfort him or make up for this lost love.

The young niece decides to chase after her Italian soldier after telling him she doesn't think they should get married.

Even in the end, it films the final love scene against the bombs dropping all over London which uses scenes from World War II as the backdrop. You can learn a lot about how they weave references to the war and being enlisted.

WRITERS TOOLS OF INTEREST:

I have found a Glossary of Architectural Terms helpful if you need to describe something in detail.
Victorian Fashion Terms from A to N and Victorian Fashion Terms from M to Z.

THE ENCHANTMENT MOVIE WORD FIND:

To Print the WordFind, click here or above and download from Google Drive.

Scrivener – Setting Up the Project Settings-Options – 2

scrivener-new-project-empty Scrivener comes with certain default settings. Most of them are fine, as is, but you may want to change the font of certain items and things to make working in the project more comfortable.

For example, I prefer Times New Roman size 16 or 18 px. I find when writing, this causes much less eye strain. When the project gets closer to finished, I can go back and change the “compile” settings to Times New Roman 12px for actual upload to KDP.Amazon.com or for upload to a paperback template.

SETTING UP THE PROJECT SETTINGS/OPTIONS:

scrivener-meta-data-project-properties-db

The graphic above is where you need to be in order to change the Project Properties. How to get there? Click on Document => Meta-Data Settings => Project Properties Tab. This will bring up the screen above.

Project Title will be one you fill in as well as Project Abbreviated Title. For example: The first book in my series is called Groomed for Marriage. So I would fill in Groomed for Marriage in the top box and then for abbreviated, I would fill in Groomed. You can also fill in your full author name, and then the last two boxes are to put in the first and last names separately. This information is where the project will pull the Book Name and Author Name from.

I ignore the labels section and I don’t work with draft vs. final copy, I just work in a draft until I’m ready to compile. So if you are a newbie, just leave those settings as is.

We will be addressing the Custom Meta-Data, but it will be more understandable later in the instructions.

COMPILE OPTIONS AND SETUP:

scrivener-compile-first-screen

Click on File => Compile to get the dialog box pictured above. This box allows you to make lots of changes. I will start with a list of them and a brief discussion of what they change.

CONTENT: This tells the Project what to include in your project and whether to follow other formatting instructions or upload/print as is. So as a newbie, you won’t have much that shows up in this box until you start actually creating new files, so you can leave them as seen in the graphic above. These settings will serve you well as a new scrivener user.

SEPARATORS: This allows you to add a pound sign or you can add a few pound signs. My advice for newbies is to remove this as it can get very tricky as you are working to have separators being automatically put in because you will be making many, many changes to your book and you don’t want to worry about having to remember to take these out or add them. So until you get ready to upload to KDP.amazon.com or deliver to a publisher, do yourself a favor and forget the separators.

FORMATING: This formatting can get very tricky. I’ll try to explain this in the simplest terms. This area tells Scrivener where it will be pulling it’s files from. Just make sure “text” is selected in the second and third lines”. You won’t need to know anything else for right now, but if you want a better explanation, the scrivener user in this video makes it very understandable:

TRANSFORMATIONS: – Ignore this
REPLACEMENTS: – Ignore this for now
FOOT NOTES/COMMENTS: – If you will be adding footnotes and/or comments, you will need to fill out these options.
PAGE SETTINGS: These have to do with your headers and things, so you can work with the defaults, but this is also covered in the video below.

Next we will cover changing the “Tool Options”.

Scrivener – Opening a New Project 1

So now you have downloaded Scrivener , it’s time to talk about how to create a project. Whether you are using Scrivener to write an eBook, a novel or keeping track of your blog posts, everything begins as a new project.

Once you double-click on the Scrivener icon, it will open up the program in a neutral state if you have not created a project yet, or it may, by default, open your last project. I would suggest leaving this setting as is, because you will tend to work on one project for awhile and it makes things easier when it open to where you left off.

scrivener-new-project-pane

I suggest you open a Blank project rather than opening one of the templates. and let me explain why. As a newbie, I selected the fiction book and wound up having to fight against everything that was put into the folders. It made things all the more confusing.

It had a folder called “front matters” that I never heard of before. I know what front matters is today, but I still prefer to set things up my own way. So to keep it simple, just open a Blank project. That selection is in the left-hand column.

In order to get the dialog box above, click on File => New Project. This dialog box opens, and then you select Blank.

Once it opens, it will look like the graphic below.

scrivener-new-project-empty

HOW SCRIVENER FILES YOUR WORK:

For each new project you create, Scrivener creates a Folder with the name of your project. The actual scrivener file is inside.

HOW TO USE SCRIVENER:

Below is a snapshot from the novel I’m presently writing. I will identify the sections to give you an overview of how I set things up.

Scrivener-sections-one-to-four

On the left hand side, each new document is a single scene. I arrange them into Parts 1 to 4. I follow the 4 part story structure. In the early stages of writing, I name the scenes with a few words that will let me know what is happening. For example: Interview with Husband.
The middle section is where the actual writing of the novel draft takes place. Each scene begins with an outline that records the Point of View (POV), the time, location and purpose and clues dropped.
Once the scene is completely drafted, I put a summary in the Synopsis section on the upper right hand side. This allows me to know what happened in the scene in as few words as possible.
The last section, on the lower right hand side is the Notes section. Before I begin writing the draft, I copy and paste my scene outline into the Notes box so I have it in case I need to trace the roots of anything. I usually don’t need it, but I’m leery of deleting things.

HOW TO CREATE NEW SCENE FILES:

You can either click on the green plus sign on the upper menu and choose “new file” or you can click control N and it will put in a new file under the one you are presenting in.

HOW THE SCENE EVOLVE:

Once I finish the first draft, I begin my 8 layers of writing and proofreading. Around Layer 7 or 8, it’s time to change the names of the scenes to actual Chapter names. I combine scenes into chapters and when I’m done, the book is now in Chapters with multiple scenes.

There’s a lot that goes on between the first draft and compiling into Microsoft Word, which is where I handle the formatting of the books. I think as newbies, it helps to know how things evolve.

HOW TO SAVE YOUR PROJECT:

Click on File => Save As and this will throw up a dialogue box and you can choose where you want to save your project. If you have created a Book1 Folder, then save your first Scrivener project into that folder.

NEWBIE TIP: Be sure to choose File => Save as and not File => Save because the program will save your project to a file inside your scrivener folder or somewhere else that you may have to hunt down.

Now you have a new Scrivener Project started, named, and saved to a place where you will be able to find it! Next we will talk about the options or properties of the project.

If you would like to see more blog posts on Writing in Scrivener, click here.

I also have a few Scrivener videos on YouTube you may like:

If you would like to download Scrivener, I would appreciate it if you used my affiliate link. Every little bit helps me keep doing blog posts and videos.

Scrivener – Downloading the Software

HOW TO DOWNLOAD SCRIVENER SOFTWARE:

You can download a free trial of scrivener software or make your purchase here: https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview

I am not sure how the actual free trial works as I knew I wanted to use Scrivener and I purchased mine from the beginning. But I'm sure it's like any free trial where you sign up, get to take it for a test run, and then it becomes void after the free trial period.

AFFILIATE PRODUCT:

Scrivener offers an affiliate program, so if you want to sign up for it, you need to create a product for it at this website: https://developer.paddle.com/getting-started/create-a-one-time-product. I chose not to do this, but if you are interested, this is at least a point in the right direction.

OPENING SCRIVENER FOR THE FIRST TIME:

Open Scrivener up by double-clicking the icon after installation. You will come to this screen where you can choose a format. I would recommend blank because when I chose fiction, it added front matters and a lot of other things that only got me all confused.

The three icons on the right hand side are exactly as they appear. One is an interactive tutorial that will help you get started on your first project. The second icon is a copy of the scrivener manual that you can search for keywords for things you want to learn about. The third icon you will recognize as a YouTube channel where they offer you training videos on how to use scrivener.

When you open a blank project, it's just that, blank. We will set up a project in our next blog post!

Using Scrivener to Write a Novel

WHY SCRIVENER AND NOT JUST MICROSOFT WORD?

I have published a couple of craft books through the years as publishing on Amazon KDP is pretty easy. Craft books are mostly pictures with instructions and you really don't "need" Scrivener to write a craft book.

The only organizing you need to do in a craft book is to make sure you cover all of the instructions in chronological order, have a list of supplies and take high resolution pictures and file them where you can find them during the writing of the book.

I wrote three of these books in Microsoft Word and it worked very well. But what about fiction?

Fiction is a whole different animal. There is no chronology in fiction. Even in true crime, you have to decide how you will lay out the chronology of the crime attempting to create the most mystery and suspense as you can. So this requires a high level of organization.

SCRIVENER FEATURES THAT HELP NEWBIE WRITERS:

After seeing my first YouTube video on the software called Scrivener, I knew this was what I needed in order to even think about writing fiction. Looking at the layout above, on the left side, you can name your scenes first and this gives you a birds-eye view of the chronology of your story, where the story beats are, where you are in Act 1, Act 2 and Act 3.

The center pane is where you write the actual manuscript draft.

The upper section of the right-hand side is where I put my Scene Summaries using this format:

Scene 1 - POV - Character Name
TIME/LOCATION: 9am - In Character's Office/Home, etc.
PURPOSE/CLUES DROPPED:
1. List clues dropped
2. List what happens in the particular scene
3. Write down the purpose of the scene.

Custom Meta Data - Scrivener allows you to set your own Custom Meta Data entries and I use the following:
~ Notes: This one is automatic in Scrivener so I use this area for any notes I need to write to myself.

~ Story Element: is where I put things like opening hook, or inciting incident, or first pinch point, or any other dramatic or mystery notation that is crucial to follow the story.

~ Emotions: I added this one so that after the manuscript gets large enough, you can lose track of where the reader is emotionally, so I like to put things like mystery, or main clue, any words that will let me know that this is a sort of marker in the story.

~ Character arc: Before beginning, I usually know where the characters will be going in their emotional or personal growth and I keep track of this arc throughout the scenes by referencing it in this section.

~ Relationship interplay: This section I use to add the names of the characters an who is relating to who. This way, towards the end of the first draft, I can look at the entire novel in outline format and see how often each of the characters are in the story. This prevents you from overdoing it on some characters and making sure you don't leave anyone out. It gives a great birds-eye-view of the story when you are finishing the first draft.

~ Research needed: This section is where I make notes to myself about research I need to do in order to check facts or find out the legalities of something, anything I need to check. Again, I can see everything I need to do or look up by putting the story in outline format.

Pre-Publication Book Marketing – BookFunnel

I have published ebooks on Amazon KDP in previous years, but they are doll sculpting books and jewlery craft books. Now as I enter pre-retirement, I have decided to write fiction. I love both books and movies with a church, Vatican or other christian backdrop as it adds a level of the sacred to mystery and/or romance. So I am a complete novice at writing and publishing fiction. I decided to write these blog posts to bring any other new writers along with me, so I can share my hours of research and hopefully save you lots of research time.

WHY BOOKFUNNEL FOR PRE-PUBLICATION?

My first reason to focus so much on pre-publication is because you really need a minimum of five reviews on Amazon in order to qualify for some advanced marketing, and having some reviews helps with sales.

How do I know this? I follow other writers, one of whom is Derek Murphy. I'm sure most of you newbies know who Derek is. If not, you can see his many, many helpful videos on YouTube on everything from writing to publishing to creating your own bookcovers.

BOOKFUNNEL MEMBERSHIPS - THREE LEVELS:

BOOKFUNNEL allows you to join at three different levels of membership and it is very affordable. The least expensive is $20.00 and for this you can give away your books for free. I chose to give my book away for free just starting out because I am a new novelist and if anyone's book should be free, it should be a new novelist.

They have three subscription levels: $20, $100 and $150. I chose the $150 membership because I wanted to have people who signed up added automatically to a MailChimp account that I have already set up.

My book is the first in a series of four novels and so if and when I get to a stage where I want to charge at least something for the books, I can also use BookFunnel to link to my paypal account as well. I think $150 a year for that level of technology is more than reasonable. But if you are working on a shoestring, you can still use BookFunnel for giveaways only.

BOOKFUNNEL HAS LOTS OF GIVEAWAY PROMOTIONS:

Another reason I chose BookFunnel is because they have lots and lots of promotions and each author is expected to post a link to the promotion on their social media. So on top of the BookFunnel audience, the promotion that your book is in will also be on other people's social media. That's more coverage than you could get on your own.

Here's one of my promotions:

INSTRUCTIONS FOR USING BOOKFUNNEL:

You will need a finished book and it will need to be in mobi, epub, and pdf format. For more info about how to get these formats before listing on Amazon KDP, click here.
You will also need a book cover for BookFunnel. Recommended size: 2560 x 1600 px. Minimum image size is 1,000 x 625px . Needs to be 300 dpi (print size) For more details on what is required in the cover for Amazon KDP, click here.
You will need to have the book formatted properly. This is a whole chapter unto itself but the two things you need to know are:
1. You need to format all Chapters using Heading1 to ensure that KindleCreate and/or KDP will recognize your chapters in order to make a Table of Contents for the eBook.
2. Be careful with chapter endings if you will be using asterisks and/or any image. You must use the widow and orphan and keep with previous and keep with next formatting within Word. This can even be finicky using Word and/or KindleCreate.
3. For the least stressful formatting tip: Don't use any final asterisks or chapter ending graphics and it will require less tedious checking of your formatting when done.

HOW TO GET YOUR ADVANCE COPIES FOR PRE-PUBLICATION MARKETING:

The last thing you will need to know as a newbie is how to get a mobi and epub copy of your manuscript. After looking into this I found the following procedure to getting the proper formats for each of your books.

Once your book is finished, proofread, formatted in Microsoft Word, checked in KindleCreate (that can be downloaded at Amazon), it's time to upload to KDP. You will be uploading as a draft, so to speak, so you will not go live with your book at this point.

Once you upload the book, in the preview section you will be able to download the mobi file and an html file. You can create a pdf from your word document and the Chrome App Store has a PDF to epub converter app that you can add to your Chrome browser.

How to Submit Novel to CatholicReads.com

WHY SUBMIT YOUR BOOK TO CATHOLICREADS.COM

If you are writing novels with a Catholic or Christian theme or backdrop, you may want to consider submitting the book to CatholicReads.com for review. They have a list of over 600 people who are signed up as already interested in Catholic books and Christian books. This is a niche market and one that may be a good fit for your novel.

SUBMISSION RULES:

Book is priced at 50% off or less
Must be on a combination: ebook & paperback or Paperback and Hardcover
Sale period is minimum of 24 hours and maximum of 2 weeks
It can be on any online store or on your own website
Books don’t have to be religious, but they need to be Christian and Catholic friendly.
You can submit more than one book at a time.
If it is part of a series, you need to request that they review the first book.
If they don’t agree to review your book on the first submission, they are not likely to review any other books by the author. (Pretty harsh???)

WHAT DOES CATHOLICREADS.COM DO FOR THE AUTHOR?

Once they review and accept your book, they will send the book in one fo their emails that they send to the list of over 600 Catholic and Christian-friendly book readers. This will lead to book sales, and/or author recognition.

Submission is easy, although it can be a little time consuming and it is best to know the rules and steps of submission which I am going over here for your review and convenience.

HOW TO ACTUALLY SUBMIT THE BOOK:

1. You need to go to their reviewers page (the about page on the website) and pick the person you think would most enjoy your book and jot down their name(s). In other words, if you have a romance novel, you probably wouldn’t want a science fiction fan to be the one to read and review your book.

2. Email readcatholic@gmail.com with the submission line: “Submission: Book Title”.

3. DO NOT ATTACH YOUR BOOK TO THE EMAIL. They will ask for it later in the process.

WHAT TO INCLUDE IN THE EMAIL:

1. Name of Book
2. Book Blurb (You may want to choose your longer book blurb to give the reviewer a little more information that would convince them that your book would be a good read and a good fit for their reader base.)
3. Why you think it would be a good fit for the Catholic Reads audience.
4. List of the themes explored in your book. (Confession, sin, annulment, abortion, etc.)
5. If you think this book would be particularly fit for a specific reviewer on
our team, let us know. (Choose a person you think is a good fit for your book. The reviewers are on the About Page of the website.)
6. If your novel is part of a series, you need to mention that as well.

WHAT HAPPENS AFTER SUBMISSION?

They will contact you with a request for the book once the submission has reached the top of their list. You can email and ask what number your submission is on the list.

Once your book passes that process, then you will be contacted about submitting the copy of the book, AFTER the vetting process.

WHERE IN THE MARKETING PROCESS IS CATHOLICREADS.COM?

Because you will be offering the book for a reduced amount, it should be before you join Kindle Unlimited and you may decide to run this the minute you get it back from the proofreader and it is ready for final publication. This could be the first thing after the Proofreader is finished, as you are making the changes to the book as there is a waiting period.

A Simple Mystery Plot

TEMPLATE – SIMPLE MYSTERY PLOT

I spent a lot of time in researching novel templates and wound up getting more confused than organized. I may have a mental block on this, or if you are a beginner, you may find the same difficulties in getting your plot or story line to fit exactly over a template outline.

Below is a general and loose outline that I put together after writing my first draft and reverse engineering my two favorite books. I hope this will help you get organized in writing your first novel.

ACT ONE

PRESENT THE CRIME – HOOK

You will need something to happen or raise a question or mysterious circumstance in the initial first chapter to grab the reader’s attention and make they want to find out what you are talking about. This is called a “hook”. This is different from the “inciting incident”.

INTRODUCE THE SLEUTH:
Introduce the sleuth and mention his/her weakness that will be overcome while solving the crime. Introduce what inner conflict is bothering him/her, and what he wants in life or his profession. Keep in mind this character’s arc (where he starts out, how he changes, and where he ends up).
Introduce the sluth’s helper, sidekick or mentor. You can also introduce the romantic interest in this first section of the book if it fits. How he or she wanders into the story.

INTRODUCE OBVIOUS SUSPECTS (minimum 2)
INTRODUCE CRIME COMPLICATIONS

INTRODUCE PRIVATE LIFE/SUBPLOT:
Introduce Hero’s home conflicts, work conflicts or or inner conflicts.
Introduce the Sleuth’s romantic interest, which in a mystery romance is the subplot.

In the beginning, something happens that will call the Hero into action. This is called the “inciting incident”. This interrupts “normal life” and presents a situation that the hero doesn’t want to bother with or think she can handle it simply and quickly. He/She is expecting this will not disrupt life as he/she knows it. (In a mystery romance, it’s usually the first dead body!)

ACT TWO

Act two is the longest act and this is where all of the mystery investigation will take place. The sleuth will begin to collect evidence, question witnesses, suspect some people and think others are innocent.

This will include the initial police investigations and early forensics (medical examiner, bullistics reports, etc.)

Working from your Reverse Engineering Worksheet, decide how you will drop the clues into the various scenes. You will want a minimum of two suspects that both look guilty. Depending upon your plot line, you can have any number of people who could be a suspect. All of your scenes will revolve around the investigator finding clues and following them to the next clue, and you dropping them for the reader.

There could be another murder, the disappearance of a suspect, and any number of tension-building things that can happen. You always want to keep the drama moving, especially in this middle section where books tend to lag.

Raise the stakes: If they don’t find this killer soon, what will happen? If the killer gets away, what will happen or not happen? Make sure you write in the stakes, the risk and why the sleuth needs to find the murderer.

WEAVING THE ROMANCE – During the first and second acts, you will also be weaving the romantic beats of the story throughout the action. Before writing the romantic parts, have in mind the “development of the romance”. You need to know where it begins, where it goes and how it ends up. For example: They couple starts out as trying to be professionals on the case and hiding their attraction, maybe having a conflict on how they see the case, and then the heat or being together makes one of them make a move, they both admit they are attracted to each out, and in the end, they both find true love. In today’s world, you can find something a little more enticing that this flat example, but you get my point; you need to know where they are starting, how they will both change with romance, and where they end up.

DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL/ALL IS LOST:

At the end of Act 2, the investigation of the crime is not working out or things seem to be going against the sleuth and any of his helpers. He/she or they reach their darkest moment, they feel like they should give up, their “Dark Night of the Soul”.

ACT THREE

SLEUTH RISES LIKE THE PHOENIX, REGAINS HIS/HER ENERGY AND MOVES FORWARD.

In this section, the sleuth regains his energy and his will and he/she decides that he/she is all in, is going to fight to the death to prove this case no matter what. He goes back to the beginning, reviews his clues, re-evaluates things, and finds something that was overlooked in Act 1 that suddenly has greater significance. This will be the new avenue of approach and this will lead to the ultimate solving of the crime and hopefully to justice.

CONFRONTATION OF THE PERPETRATOR:

At the end of the mystery, as it is solved, you may well have a confrontation of the perpetrator by the sleuth or there will be a scene where the cops run in and take him down, depending upon who your sleuth is.

RESOLUTION OF THE SUBPLOT/RETURN TO NORMAL:

Once the crime is solved, the sleuth will be a better person, he/she will have grown through their character arc, an they will be at a better place, more sure of who they are. If it is a mystery romance, this will also contain a scene or two of how romance has now changed his/her life for the better.

You may also have a scene where your sleuth is explaining the whole plot to someone who still doesn’t understand. Most books no longer have this, but I like it when the author “ties it up” in the end. I think it makes the book more satisfying to go over the plot and see and hear it summarized. I maybe old school, but I just think this adds to the experience of the story. I don’t have to tell you how much I dislike these movies and stories where the readers decides what the book means? I feel like throwing the book at the wall, so I like to have a summation, so to speak.

I hope this helps you if you too are just beginning to write stories.

Reverse Engineering Books

REVERSE ENGINEERING BOOKS AS A SELF-LEARNING METHOD:

The one area on YouTube that I never found any ‘work flow’ videos on was the method of reverse engineering story in order to learn the craft. I reread two or three of my favorite novels and reversed engineered them myself. I wanted to see what this method would teach me in terms of how these favorite stories fell into these novel format templates I was finding.

I had trouble, and still have trouble understanding what a first plot point is compared to a second plot point, or the mid-story point. If your story is about someone setting off on an actual journey or adventure, I think it is easy to fit this plot line onto these templates, but if you story is a slice of life backdrop with a mystery and romance, it was harder for me to see how this all fit into these templates.

This dilemma is what led me to reverse engineer a few of my favorite books.

WHY WOULD YOU REVERSE ENGINEER A STORY?

My purpose in reverse engineering the stories was to find out how these stories fit into these template structures. I wanted more clarity in identifying various plot points and pinch points and how that was different from the mid-point. That was my only purpose when I took on this task.

HOW DID YOU DO THE REVERSE ENGINEERING?

I re-read the book, and during and after each chapter, I wrote down what happened and where I thought this fit in the template. I also tried to identify the conflicts and obstacles, and anything else I thought was relevant to the story.

Having done this a few times now, I believe it is easier to do the reverse engineering with a book you have already read so you can read for structural understanding instead of trying to understand the story. It is also easier if you choose a book you enjoyed. You will enjoy it even more as you begin to see how the author structured the books and laid out the clues, etc.

WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM REVERSE ENGINEERING A BOOK?

What I learned from the process was different from what I thought I would learn. First of all, I found the stories I liked didn’t really fit into these “journey format templates” either. I could identify the resistance to the call to action, the call to action itself, and the setbacks. I still couldn’t tell you which was was a plot point or a pinch point, even to this day and I’ve been at it now for three years, which is not that long, but I want to be honest. The clarity I got from this process was not what I had set out for.

What I did end up learning was that I picked up so much more from the story than I did the first time I read the story. The act of recording a summary after each chapter added a layer of understanding that allowed me to enjoy the books even more.

I also learned that “conflict” didn’t have to be a huge hostility between characters, it could be a sore spot, or a difference of opinion, conflict can be of the subtle kind. This freed me to understand that small deep inner conflicts were enough to write into the story. This was important because I don’t enjoy stories with these abrasive and brash personalities at play. I don’t like these people in real life and I don’t like them any more in print. So that was a big eye opener.

The other thing I learned was that as a newbie, I had to operate on the premise that I was only able to identify the inciting incident, call to action, refusal of the call to action, the circumstances that changed the call to action from a choice to almost a moral obligation. This would have to do until I got more experience under my belt.

But I noticed in my reverse engineering that in the long mid-act of the book, it is important to never led the book lag. So in lieu of operating with the pinch points and plot points, I focused on making each chapter have a purpose, drop some clues, and have some level of character development going on. This way, I figured the story was always moving and going forward. Only time will tell if this is enough.

WHAT IS THE REVERSE ENGINEERING OF A BOOK PROCESS?

For those of you who want a real how-to, I opened the books from Amazon.com on my computer and I had a notepad document opened and I put the summary for each chapter under the Chapter heading, so that after it was done, I could see this outline on the one document. Then I printed it and tried to figure out the plot points, pinch points, etc. Again, like I said earlier, the plot points and pinch points still evade me, but I was able to learn how the author laid out the clues and kept the story moving. I may have a blind spot regarding this plot point vs. pinch point because I am new to this, or it hasn't sunk in yet. If you have any tricks or tips you want to share about recognizing these in writing, please let me know and I can feature you in a blog post coming up!

FOR THE CURIOUS:

The books I reverse engineered were The Gold Coast by Nelson DeMille and An Inconvenient Woman by Dominick Dunne I would recommend both of these writers and both of these books! They are linked with my associate links to the left or above.

Studying Writing v. Reverse Engineering

KNOW WHERE YOU ARE STARTING FROM:

I am a new writer myself and by no means do I hold myself out to be any type of an expert. But I am still very close to the "very beginner status" and still understand some of the obstacles only a brand new writer is faced with.

The experts can't remember having "two left hands" anymore, but I sure can. My purpose is to blog as I move through the learning process, so I can share my experience and research and save other newbies research time as there is so much to learn!

Some new authors will already have studied writing or may be young enough to decide to study writing in a college or a formal learning environment. Hopefully, the institute or teacher you have will have circularized the information you need to know and you will be taking it all in in some organized way.

Others may be writing as a hobby or a second career, or like myself, preparing for a busy retirement. Either way, it’s important to know where you are beginning and what you even know about writing. Having gone to parochial schools, I had English classes until I was just about drown in them. So that is one of my strong points. However, I never took a creative writing lesson in my life and so writing a novel, specifically, I had no clue when I started out.

I worked as a court reporter and legal assistant for many years and although I am not a lawyer, I sat in more trials than many real lawyers, know what the court office of a Judge looks and feels like, what a busy lawyers office looks and feels like, and many more “mini-careers” like this. So I bring a broad spectrum of experience and a bit of legal understanding to my writing. I consider that a strong point too.

KNOW WHAT TYPE OF BOOKS YOU WANT TO WRITE:

I have always loved shows that use the church or the Vatican or some other religious theme as a background. Unfortunately, hollywood and the publishing world in general are very disrespectful to religious symbols and this always took away from the enjoyment of the stories. I knew I wanted to use a church backdrop of some kind, but leave out all the blasphemy and spittle.

I also knew that I loved to read mystery, suspense and they usually have at least a splash of romance in them. So this too would be where I would concentrate.

KNOW WHERE YOU WANT TO GO:

So the first task was to figure out how to go from wanting to write a mystery romance with a church/Christian backdrop to actually writing a novel of this kind. My legal skills or grammar skills were not going to get me there, so what is a person to do? I went to YouTube an began watching videos, and there are thousands of them, written by successful authors as well as young college-educated editors. I got a mix of people sharing about creative writing, story beats, plots points, etc., to successful authors who, like me, started with one book and self-published their books on their own.

KNOW WHAT SKILLS YOU HAVE AND WHAT SKILLS YOU NEED:

I needed to learn what a mystery romance novel needed, story structure, how to break up the story, how to pace the story, plot points, story beats, pretty much everything. So for about a year and a half, I dedicated myself to simply learning about writing to see if it was something I could do, as I did learn very early on that one simple phrase of “I want to write a book” encompasses so many skills that must be acquired or paid for, that it can be an overwhelming process.

My first area of focus was structuring a story. How to organize the story seemed to be the first over-whelming obstacle for me so I began reading books on structuring a story.

Story Engineering by Larry Brooks was my favorite as he was, I believe, an engineer by trade before becoming an author and he has a very organized mind and he laid out planning a novel with an overview that I found most helpful as a newbie. I have an associates link below to the book.

I would recommend this book because I needed an overview of the process, like a birds-eye view, in order to even have the files to hold the information I was taking in watching various YouTube videos. You can learn anything on YouTube, but you need to learn to circularize your own course. You need to figure out how to take in the information so it all makes sense.