The Shape of Stories: Creating Unforgettable Plots and Characters for Novels and Movies Paperback – December 28, 2020

Neal Soloponte’s The Shape of Stories (2020) 135pp. Review by Joseph Savage, Senior MFA student in popular fiction.Shapes reads as smooth as a freshly-paved road, but unlike most writing books, instead of dropping you off at the shopping mall a half-mile away, Shapes takes you all the way to the Palace of Silver Treasures. I like the work of James Scott Bell. His books on writing are solid on the basics and so easy-to-read that a ninth-grader can use them. Neal Soloponte gives as much as you can get in any two of Bell’s works, and then adds another level. But the ride is so smooth that you’ll hardly notice. So, if you want to learn to plot-character integration to the level of a senior MFA student without consigning to thousands of dollars of student loans while trying to decipher Jungian literary theory at 2:57am like one hapless soul I know (insert cough)...then buy The Shape of Stories. If only he had published this two years earlier...

I always envied those who just sit at the computer and come up with a novel in an instinctive way. I can't do that. I am a rational person, and for me creating a story is more like architecture, or chess: setting the foundations, placing the elements, luring the reader, and then shocking them with a clever twist.This books confirmed my theory, but also did two other things for me: it showed me a plot from the side that counts (the side of the villain!) and it showed me, step-by-step, HOW to create that plan.I highly recommend "The Shape of Stories" not only to writers, but to whoever enjoys movies, as well, since its examples come from The Matrix, Star Wars, and Harry Potter. This book reads like a letter from a friend, and it's both entertaining and incredibly revealing.

I liked the depth regarding certain fundamentals of story characters as well as seeing them in examples of famously successful movies.