The Anatomy of Story

This is a classic storytelling manual, and it certainly adds something unique to the storytelling world, but I had a lot of trouble telling what that was. If you are the sort of writer who devours writing books and collects advice, able to weigh it against everything else you've read, then this is a good book. Based on my reading of it, however, it is not a panacea. Not that it has to be, but I would advise against having expectations as high as the jacket copy suggests.My complaints follow.It's always bad when a book you've highly anticipated opens with a series of statements that run completely counter to your own experience. Or in the case of this book, just don't make sense. Truby starts in with the approach of many advice books, by saying what's wrong with most sources of advice and how his will be different. In contrast to many other authors making statements like this, his assessment of things is just plain wrong. For example, he says “Terms like ‘rising action,' ‘climax,' ‘progressive complication,' and ‘denouement' ...are so broad as to be almost meaningless.” Except that I know exactly what those words mean and I find them extremely helpful in structuring a story.He goes on to say that three act structure is meaningless, useless, and amateur, and that it results in rigid, unoriginal storytelling. But his replacement for three act structure is a 22 step story progression that requires rigidity, not to the extent that [b:Save the Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need 49464 Save the Cat The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need Blake Snyder https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1411952887s/49464.jpg 48383] might, but it still appears constricting and unnecessarily complex. Similar to Blake Snyder, Truby points out that writers should be able to say what their story is about before they start writing, but his primary method of getting there is unclear. The “designing principle” is, I would say, Truby's really original contribution, something I haven't read about before, but he can't say what it is. He can never get to whether this is a method storytelling, a master plot, a narrative focus, or what. He puts a lot of importance on it, and says it will lead to “original and organic” storytelling, but can't say what it is. If I said I had something of enormous value, you'd probably want to know what it is, and get annoyed with me if I just told you over and over that it was really important.A few more pet peeves made me think this book wasn't really worth spending more time on, but you can judge for yourself. First, this is clearly a screenwriting book, written by a screenwriter, for screenwriters. But Truby promises his method can apply equally well to novels, short stories, plays and so on. As with other screenwriters and screenwriting coaches who make this claim, Truby doesn't really seem to understand these other forms very well at all. If you want this book for screenwriting purposes, then it should be fine, but I wouldn't write a novel based on its advice.My final pet peeve is when he talks about Westerns: “The vision of the Western is to conquer the land, kill or transform ‘lower' ‘barbarian' races, spread Christianity and civilization, turn nature into Wealth, and create the American nation.” This really pisses me off. I don't know where people get bizarre ideas like this, but it's not from watching Western movies. These factors play absolutely no role in great Westerns like Destry Rides Again, Gunfight at the OK Corral, or The Magnificent Seven (either the original or the reboot) and certainly are nowhere to be found in Sergio Leone's Westerns. They are peripheral in the revisionist Westerns of Kevin Costner and Clint Eastwood, far from the major concerns of the characters. Westerns are often about classic themes like revenge (Destry, Once Upon a Time in the West) and good versus evil (Magnificent Seven), or more existential themes like man's place in nature and society (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly). Yes, my opinion is colored by the more modern Westerns I grew up on, but it looks like Truby's analysis is clouded by political or ideological preferences (i.e. this idea that Westerns are all about white men taking over the prairie from the natives). There are specific stories with the vision that he mentions, but it's far from all of them, or even a majority. High Noon and Rio Bravo are not about Christianity. When in 3:10 to Yuma do we see anybody dominating or killing Native Americans? I'm scratching my head trying to think of how these stories are not just about men fighting for good over evil in a particular setting. Yes, I agree with Truby that they incorporate specific symbols (the six-gun, the sheriff's badge) and that the characters fulfill particular symbolic roles which have an effect on the viewer. But I disagree that any of that adds up to an overall racist thesis.All of these things added up meant that I didn't spend too much time with this book, as good of a reputation as it has. Again, if you're eager to read every writing book out there, this is worth a look, but it's not worth more than a few hours.