By John Truby
The main conceit of Mr. Truby's teaching is that three-act structure has had its day. Firstly it's not flexible enough for modern storytelling and secondly, knowing you should have three acts - essentially a beginning a middle and an end - falls way short of understanding the elements necessary to write those three acts, the upshot of which is that too many writers end up with 100 pages of script and only 50 pages of story which is why they get lost in act two problems and all the other things that daily plague most writers. So what that nice Mr. Truby has done is come up with 22 steps - building blocks, if you will - and he claims that by getting each if these steps right you will have written a much more solid story with a sound structure.
So, confession time now because I've been on Truby's 3-day class in London that covers genre and his 22-step story structure and thought it was terrific stuff, still got my notes, so I knew what to expect of this going in and having read it, it now serves as the perfect set of notes and combined reference manual for that course as well as some other, deeper work, that really rounds out the whole writing process.
The book begins with some information about story types, linear stories, meandering stories, spiral stories and so on and then breaks down the elements that make up a good story; premise, the seven key structure steps, character, theme, story world, symbol web, plot, scene weave and scene construction and symphonic dialogue with an explanation of each so that you get an idea of what's to come. Each of these stages gets it's own chapter where it's torn down and put back together so that you have a real understanding of what is meant and why it is important, and of course throughout the book every concept is illustrated with examples to underscore what has been taught and a bunch of work to do to bring your own script up to standard before moving on.
The biggest chapter, of course, is plot and this is where Truby's own 22-step story structure is explained in detail. Like he says, the seven key structure steps are explained but they come at the beginning and at the end of the story and what he does with his 22-steps is fill in the blanks throughout the middle section, where most of the trouble is generally encountered. I won't outline them here, partly because out-of-context they won't mean anything and partly because you should really buy the book!
I've got a couple of complaints, one is that the writing is quite dry and academic and this book is dense, there's not an ounce of filler on any page, all of which means you've really got to take notice while reading otherwise you'll find yourself drifting. His class is the same which is weird because for someone so attuned with how to construct a great story his delivery, at times, sucks. The other, lesser complaint is that the example movies he cites are mostly pretty old - Casablanca, The Godfather, Tootsie, The Verdict and while these are all great films I would have liked to have seen more contemporary examples and some indie films too, he does provide these breakdowns on his website so he should really update the book to match.
The thing is, none of these books are right or wrong, none will make you a great screenwriter, but in a world of me-too, also ran books often cannibalising work that has gone before, maybe with a slight twist before schilling the resulting fluff as a new paradigm, a cast-iron, guaranteed way to write the million-dollar script it's nice to find something that lives up to the promise and can help you construct a decent story, with all the necessary parts, in the right order. The Anatomy Of Story is a nicely in-depth book and while it's clearly aimed at screenwriters it would make a great addition to any writers bookshelf.
Let's hope the follow-up volume on genre isn't too long coming.
Incidentally, I won a competition on his website a couple of years ago and asked for a copy of his audio class on 'Detective, Crime Story & Thriller' - it never showed - so if you're reading this John, cough up the prize!
The Anatomy Of Story is published by North Point Press through Macmillan and is available from Play.com, Blackwell and all good book stores.
John Truby's website is here.