Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere)

by Lisa Cron

By establishing the moments in your protagonist’s past that are relevant to the story you’re telling, you’ll have the material from which to build a solid blueprint. The scenes you’ll write will capture moments that have not only actively driven your protagonist’s life in the past but are still behind the wheel. In fact, many of these scenes will appear in snippets and as flashbacks in the novel itself. That’s why it’s crucial to nail them now, and why, even though we haven’t actually started developing your plot, this isn’t “prewriting,” but writing itself. The other added benefit of this exercise is that your ability to write compelling scenes will also begin to soar. Because by focusing on how what’s happening is affecting your protagonist internally—what she’s thinking, how she makes sense of it, and what then spurs her action—you’re mastering one of the most elusive, least-taught facets of storytelling. Ironically, it’s also the most important facet—the one that will actually capture your reader’s brain. Literally. What your reader’s brain craves is to synchronize with your protagonist’s brain as she struggles with a difficult decision, one that will have a clear-cut consequence—that is, a consequence that we can envision and so anticipate.