Blockbuster Plots: Pure & Simple
by Martha Alderson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Martha AldersonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-01-01
ISBN: 1877809195
Number of pages: 200
Publisher: Illusion Press
Book Reviews of Blockbuster Plots: Pure & Simple
Book Review: Practical Go-To Resource for Writers
Summary: 5 Stars
Since I discovered Martha Alderson, the Plot Whisperer last week, I've worked through her free videos on plot, and have read her book, Blockbuster Plots Pure and Simple.
Alderson has spent years analyzing plot and breaking it down to its bare essentials. She is a consultant for novelists, memoirists, and screenwriters, and shares what she's learned in Blockbuster Plots. If you watch her growing collection of online videos, you'll see why she's earned the name, The Plot Whisperer.
Blockbuster plots is broken down into two parts. The first half takes you step-by-step through Alderson's Scene Tracker, which helps writers analyze their written scenes for seven essential elements. The Scene Tracker can also be used to plan scenes so that they have the biggest possible impact on the reader.
By scanning the Scene Tracker, writers can quickly identify scenes that don't live up to their potential. These scenes can be cut, or pumped up with action, conflict, or thematic details.
The second half of the book teaches writers to use the Plot Planner, a detailed map of your novel, showing where to place the most intense scenes. Alderson has devised a way for writers to indicate at a glance who is in control in a specific scene--the protagonist or the opposition.
Alderson has figured out the perfect timing for the crisis and climax of your story, as well as "the end of the beginning", the pivotal scene that ends Act 1 and propels your character into Act 2 with all it's complications. Once you know the framework of great novels, it's not so hard to flesh out the skeleton with the scenes Alderson helps you craft.
Maybe plotting doesn't ever baffle you, but I believe every writer can benefit from some time focused on the intricacies of plot. If you're at a point where you're stuck, or just burned out, a book like this may be all you need to get going again. It sure helped me.
Debbie Maxwell Allen
Free Resources for Writers
[...]
Summary of Blockbuster Plots: Pure & Simple
Blockbuster Plots Pure and Simple (BBP) shows plot rather than talking about it. Using two unique step-by-step visual tools for developing and deepening scenes and plot, BBP shows how the pros layer three distinct yet overlapping plotlines ? Character Emotional Development, Dramatic Action, and Thematic Plot. When the dramatic action changes the character at depth over time, the story becomes thematically significant.BBP uses the Scene Tracker as a visual tool to track the seven essential elements of scene, side-by-side from the beginning to the end of any project. BBP uses the Plot Planner as a visual place to plot out the action, character and thematic plotlines. Both parts are intended as a step-by-step interactive guide for writers interested in maximizing their scenes and providing depth to their stories.
BBP is unique because of its hands-on, down-to-earth multi-sensory approach to learning. BBP provides specific activities linked directly to each writer?s individual project. The book is divided between explanation and activity forms.
By analyzing scenes and plots from classic and contemporary writers such as Twain, London, and McCarthy, writers learn how to add a dynamic, effective twist to their work.
BBP provides writers with the tools and resources to get from where they are ? stuck and unable to begin or stuck and unable to finish ? to where they want to be ? holding a finished project. BBP effectively demonstrates the relationship between scene and plot and explains the principles involved in the art and craft of developing sizzling scenes and compelling plots and story design. BBP offers techniques to help writers maintain faith and enjoy the process of creation.
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