Quantum Storytelling

How do you measure yourself against the competition? Do you strive to write better prose than the most popular author in your genre? Or are you working towards publishing as many stories as someone you admire? You can study the competition in many ways. One of them is to dissect their stories. Can you take apart the competition’s story, and put it back together again even better?

This last one fascinates me, and I’ll tell you why soon.

Who are your story competitors? And how do you choose to compete?

I love studying structure because…

Structures of which we are unaware hold us prisoner. Conversely, learning to see the structures within which we operate begins a process of freeing ourselves from previously unseen forces and ultimately mastering the ability to work with them and change them.

-The Fifth Discipline by Peter M. Senge

I found this in an organization/management book, but this universally applies to everything, including storytelling.

From Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight V. Swain;

“A hook is a device for catching, holding, sustaining, or pulling anything — in this case, a reader.”

Every story needs a high concept hook. Every sequence, every scene, and every sentence needs a hook.