Weekend Writer: The 5 Sentence Method: How to Write Your D*mn Book, Already by Rebecca Thorne
Hey all, Sam here.
We’ve made it back to Friday again already, and since we’re in a new month, I guess I’m talking about another writing craft book. If you missed last month’s book, Stop Worrying; Start Writing: How to Overcome Fear, Self-Doubt and Procrastination by Sarah Painter, you can go back anytime and check out my previous Weekend Writer posts.
I think March is a fun month because of how the Friday’s landed–there’s 5 of them. Obviously last Friday was the March Creativity Prompts, and the final Friday of the month will be sharing writing based on those prompts…which leaves me with three weekends in-between. Today I’m doing basically a review on this book, and then next week I’ll be sharing my attempts at using The 5 Sentence Method. But I’m not sure what to do for the last open Friday.
What do you guys think? Do you want me to share quotes from this book like I did with last month’s book? Do you want a general writing discussion post about a related topic? What sounds fun to you? Let me know in the comments.
All right, I guess it’s time to get started…
My Thoughts
Experience TikTok’s viral 5 Sentence plotting method, written by bestselling author Rebecca Thorne!
Discover the game-changing 5 Sentence Method in this straight-talking, no-BS guide to crafting fantastic fiction. In just 5 SENTENCES, you’ll nail your plot points and tie them to specific word count goals, ensuring your story has the pace and rhythm to keep readers hooked.Even better, this bite-sized book explores a 4 round editing strategy that will make your revisions a breeze. Expect comprehensive examples, a few curse words, and a ton of valuable insight! Whether you’re a newbie or a seasoned author, this guide will transform the way you write, edit, and think about storytelling.
It’s time to make your book shine!
—-Feedback for The 5 Sentence
“I had so many ah-ha moments reading it.” – Chris B.
“Incredibly helpful and immensely valuable.” – Sara M.
“So many eureka moments here!” – Amy N.
Rating: 4.5 stars
I honestly feel like this plotting method might be one to actually work for me…but I won’t know until I try it, which I will be doing very soon (as in, I’ve already tried it and will be sharing my thoughts in another Weekend Writer this month). This book was a quick read, easy to follow, and very approachable. I liked all of the examples from movies and books, and the list of extra resources on writing craft.
I actually did a full read of this book the first time through, and then wanted to mark off sections and passages that I liked, so I did a second read that was just a skim read…but I used a whole packet of tabs to mark parts of the book, which means there’s a lot that I wanted to take note of.
One of the most important sentences that Rebecca Thorne emphasizes at the beginning of the book (and then reiterates a few more times in the rest of the pages) is that publishing is a business. Wait, I should do this the way she did it: PUBLISHING IS A BUSINESS. Okay, there. It has been shared with the proper emphasis.
Thorne also says that this 5 Sentence Method is one that will work best for the plantsers…as in the people who aren’t quite plotters but they aren’t quite full pantsers either. They’re this third thing, where you maybe want to plot but don’t know how to get started with that, or you don’t want the plotting to take away all the surprises in the story but you want to make the editing process a little easier.
I consider myself a percolator….things will brew in my mind for days, weeks, months before they find their way to the page, but I can also be considered a plantser. I try to write a super vague bullet point outline to give me some semblance of structure and then discover the rest of the story as I go…so when I started reading The 5 Sentence Method: How to Write Your D*mn Book, Already, it certainly seemed like this could be something that works for me.
Thorne says there are some vital questions you need to ask yourself before writing, and here they are:
How are you going to publish?What’s your hook?What is your book’s genre?Why that main character?Who is your villain?What’s your theme?Why are you the best author for this story?That is all covered in chapter two, so if you want more information for each question, you’ll have to get your own copy of this book.
Then, after those chapters, we finally start getting into The 5 Sentence Method, beginning with the inspiration, which was part Three Act Structure, part Snowflake Method, part My Story Can Beat Up Your Story by Jeff Schechter, and then adding percentage points to form the complete 5 Sentence Method. Tada!
Here’s what the 5 sentences should be based on. Ready?
Inciting Incident (5%)Leaving Home (25%)Midpoint Reversal (50%)Beginning of the End (75%)Conclusion (95%)Basically the Inciting Incident happens in early Act 1, Leaving Home is what starts Act 2, Midpoint Reversal is the middle of the book, Beginning of the End starts Act 3, and Conclusion is right before the book’s end. Thorne does spend time breaking down each of these 5 sentences and what they should encompass in your book, but if I put all of that information here then this review/overview will be very long. For more details on this method, you can read this book or Thorne has several TikToks up where she talks about her plotting method and you can get the information there.
Also, those percentages don’t have to be exact, but they should be fairly close.
Now, after all of that, you’d think that this book is done right? Wrong. We are only about 35% of the way through the book.
After that, Thorne takes you through how to tie word counts to those percentages, and the word count estimates will be dependent on what genre you write in, so those before you write questions are coming into play here. This leads to talking about overwriting and underwriting, and how to utilize that knowledge to figure out what your initial first draft word count should be versus your edited story word count.
As if you needed more information, Thorne then goes into a chapter talking about Trilogies and how to tie the 5 Sentence Method into planning those. Of course, and here’s another one of those important notes for the book: Keep your first books standalone…”with series potential.” At least, if you’re heading the trad pub route, and possibly if going indie pub route. Seriously, Thorne breaks both options down, so you get a wealth of information in this book (and she already said that she would have a full book on routes to publication as another craft book ready in probably Dec 2024).
Even after all of this, we’re still not done. Thorne then gives us a chapter talking about making a great beginning of your story, and then jumps into a chapter about editing, which is another section I used multiple tabs for. We are given information on structural edits, character edits, scene edits, and sentence edits/copywriting.
Finally, the book also has a chapter on writing diversity well, before ending with a nice list of other resources for writing craft.
Seeing how long this post is should give you an idea of how useful this book could be. I think it is extremely useful, and reading it gave me a little jolt of excitement and motivation to work on and think about my writing process a little more. I’m excited to explore The 5 Sentence Method a little more and see if this is actually a plotting arrangement that works with my process, because I’ve been using a passable ramshackle plantsing method for several years now, and I’d like to have something a little more solid and useable.
Anyway, that was a lot of words. That is all from me for today. I’m going to try to get a little bit of writing done before I go to work. I might even scribble down a paragraph or two (or more) at work, although I try to focus more on reading at work because it’s easier to slip in and out of that. When I get interrupted while trying to write it’s a little more frustrating.
Thank you so much for stopping by, and I’ll be back soon with more geeky content.
