Story Engineering

I'm working on a novel right now and found myself at a place where I felt stuck. I went to the library and came home armed with books on writing, but the first I picked up--one which was immensely helpful--was Story Engineering: Mastering the 6 Core Competencies of Successful Writing by Larry Brooks.

As someone who writes organically and appreciates the virtues of beautiful prose, I'll admit this book was frustrating to read at times as Brooks advocates for writers to outline and he places higher value on plot than prose. He also gives many examples throughout the book, but tends to use the high drama plots of blockbuster thrillers when I was hungry to hear how that would translate more subtly in a literary novel. Because the thing he did express was that even character driven novels (which I love to both read and write) still need to be engineered, which I did not truly believe until after reading this book. I did walk away from this book loaded with great information about how better to construct a plot and tell a story, so I would recommend it to anyone looking to write novels or screenplays.