Samuel D R

Some gems in here

Revisado: 01-20-25

This is essentially 100% about individual sentence crafting. You’ll find no advice on plot, character or structure here.

A portion of the advice boils down to “wing it” and “follow your heart” and “avoid everything your schoolteacher told you”. Some of it I agreed with, some I didn’t.

But what’s here is good. You’ll find some nuggets of wisdom worth writing down.

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A great book from a real writer.

Revisado: 12-17-24

The author has written a lot, and you can tell. The advice is given in a way which teaches in part by being well written itself. The humor and realness of the author is perhaps more inspiration than the advice itself, which is mostly quite general.

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Dan’s always great

Revisado: 12-10-24

My only criticism is Dan uses his more official narrator voice the whole time rather than his much more conversational and listenable podcaster voice. If you listen to Hardcore History you’ll know what I mean

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The beginners guide

Revisado: 11-16-24

If you are caught up trying to understand Show don’t Tell, this will clear it up for you.

If you feel like you have a grasp on Show don’t Tell, then this book will not provide you anything new

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Military Musings

Revisado: 11-16-24

If you are expecting a lot of Bug on Human massacres like the movie, you will probably be disappointed.

The book instead focuses on a citizen being brutally crafted into a soldier, taking place mainly in bootcamp and military school.

While there are several action scenes, the story is mostly a look into the way one’s mindset has to break down in order to be an effective war fighter, and the pros and cons of warlike society.

I’ve seen suggestions that the book and film are antithetical, but that wasn’t totally my experience. I’m not quick to call it a pro-war story. More of a story critiquing the typical young person’s anti-war sentiments, particularly those that stuck around after Vietnam.

So is it an anti-communist book? Probably.

The bugs themselves seem to be representation of the results of a long-term communist utopia. As the book describes it, the planet does not suffer the same radiation ours does, so life on the planet was not able to mutate. Evolution therefore became a long act of equalization, rather than innovation. The planet lacked new competition, it lacked conflict, it lacked war. And it became a highly specialized biological dead-end where no one owns anything and no one is particularly happy or sad.

Which seems to be the culminating idea of the book. Conflict is the necessary force that turns beast into man. It’s hell, but it’s here to stay, and through militarization, a select few can bear the brunt of that hell for society’s sake. Whether that’s moral or not is left for the reader to debate.

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Short and beautiful

Revisado: 02-12-24

This is not a long book. It’s also not a complicated or twisty book, lacking McCarthy’s usual abstractions and vagueness which bait years upon years of interpretation and debate amongst readers.

Those stories are great, but this one is too, in its own way.

The story is a study of two characters. But what’s peculiar is that neither character’s nature is a mystery for longer than the first few pages. A father loves his son, and the son loves him back.

It is a story about undoubtedly good people. What moral quandaries they face are natural and believable and not contrived by the author to destroy their “goodness” and therefore “fix” them by the end to be just as evil as the most of us.

And yet it stays interesting.

That is this story’s triumph. It’s proof that good characters can be just as interesting as bad or morally gray ones. And goodness is not in perfection but within a heart that knows it is flawed.

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Incredible narrator reads great prose

Revisado: 02-09-24

Wincott really breathes life into the story, getting you attached to the main character and his boyhood world. The plot can be both trope-ish and confusing, with familiar fantasy elements but many people and places to keep track of. Despite that, Simon's quest, the excitement of the first big surprise, as well as the beautiful writing, is enough to keep you listening.

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Not a lot learned. Here's a summary.

Revisado: 01-28-24

Guyot's main thesis of the entire book is that you should not listen to ANY advice to anyone not CURRENTLY working in the industry. Not even retired screenwriters or other movie-makers. He reiterates this throughout the entire book and seems to be the entire reason he wrote it: that he is mad that non-current-professional writers are making a living giving writing advice, and he thinks its hurting the industry.

He brings up a few examples of bad advice he's heard, like the advice of "don't include copyrighted music in the script". He explains this is foolish advice because if your script is liked by a producer, they will simply change the song or buy the rights. No one would turn down a good script because of some music.

Another example is "don't make your script any longer than X pages". As no one would turn down a killer script for being a page too long.

All the examples I can remember are of this nature. Asinine advice I've never heard of quickly debunked. Nothing learned.

What he doesn't debunk is his book's namesake. Save the Cat. He does snidely mention, several times in passing, phrases like "Inciting Incident" and "Midpoint Turn", in a way implying that these concepts are ridiculous. He however never takes the time to explain why he dislikes these concepts or how they are "wrong" or "harmful".

Do his stories not have events which incite the main conflict? Do his stories not have exciting midpoints? What is the alternative, to make sure I instead DON'T have important and interesting story events at every quarter mark of my story?

What is so bad about Save the Cat to Guyot that he wrote a whole book against it?

After reading, I still don't know. His critique is vague. I think his main problem with it is that it was written by a not very successful nor very current screenwriter.

I'm not a huge defendant of Save the Cat either. It only talks about plot, never the actual writing. But I think it's dishonest to say that it is full of terrible advice that will hurt writer's minds to read. It's a proposed format for plotting your book that is just vague enough to fit relatively any story and just detailed enough to give a new writer some ideas. Many successful stories fit the mold. There are many that don't.

Guyot explains these models are descriptive, not prescriptive. I agree. But how is the insight learned from studying good stories inherently toxic? What is so bad about a writer who wishes to pace his story out in a rhythm that is familiar? Isn't the writing quality what truly matters?

I agree with Guyot that plotting at it's core is only Beginning, Middle, End. Acts 1,2,3. And anything else is superfluous. However within that story telling structure there will naturally be an opening hook of some kind, a midpoint, and a climax at the end which resolves the conflict. And between those events, there would, in good stories, be interesting events to keep the audience's interest and keep changing the current emotional tones of the story. To say that Save the Cat goes against these fundamentals is just plain wrong, and his avoidance of explaining how says it all.

If anyone is curious, the rest of the book is mostly his own experience struggling in the industry, like being bullied by writer's rooms, or being harassed by TV producers who wanted him to include idiotic things in his scripts.

While I appreciate the little debunking he did, he didn't really get at the heart of his issues with plotting methods that I think would have been far more insightful.

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Could have used an outline

Revisado: 07-26-23

Deceitfully begins with an in depth dive on the beginning of a novel and what should go there. very helpful. the book then quickly veers off into talking about why outlines are important and some things certain authors have to say about them… for the rest of the book. No talk of actual structure, except for the most basic advice of what should be in each quarter of your book. No deep dives on key plot points like the midpoint, 2nd plot point, climax. Just general writing tips from other authors, and why you should try outlining about 40 times.

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Some nuggets found inside

Revisado: 05-05-23

If I were Larry Brooks I would have strangled my publisher for hiring Chris Sorensen to narrate this. It is only barely tolerable at 1.7x speed, and makes the author sound like the biggest dweeb.

The book itself lays out storytelling basics quite well, albeit way overwritten with too many metaphors and about 100 rants about plotting vs pantsing per chapter. I’d recommend you look up summaries and worksheets from this one instead.

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