1. What
inspired you to write this book? I felt very strongly that it was the next
thing, that it was the right thing, that there were real live people who had
read my first book, Blueprint Your Bestseller, who wanted more and this
was the more they wanted. Sometimes that’s all you have to go on!
2.
What qualifies you to write it? Well,
I have studied the theories behind my Book Architecture Method since I was a
Senior Fellow in Creative Writing at Dartmouth and went on to get a Masters in
Literary Aesthetics at NYU. Which basically just means that I’ve read a lot of
books, and I’ve gotten to write about these concepts at length which always
helps you clarify what you think. Teaching the Method for seven years also
really helped me see when the lightbulbs went off, when things I would say were
challenged (in a good way), and when people were looking at their watches...
3.
Do all great writers follow a formula? Is
there more than one formula? Two great questions. Let’s take the second
first. There is likely an overarching psychological structure that influences
how we receive narrative: sometimes that structure takes Five Acts
(Shakespeare), sometimes it is three movements (Freytag), and American writing
circles have now boiled this down to a formula, where you know, the inciting
incident has to happen 5% of the way through the work, the point of no return
has to be reached at the quarter-pole, etc. To answer the question of whether
all great writers follow a formula, I am of course consigned to what I have
read (or viewed in terms of a film or play), but the answer seems pretty
clearly to be: No. Some do, and some don’t. And greatness can’t be achieved
both ways, and empty or regurgitated material can happen both ways as well.
4.
Doesn't great writing come naturally,
from the heart and from experiences and from the depths of one's imagination? It
does...but here I wonder if you’re contrasting the imagination to concentration
on structural methods. We have a saying around the office, “Intelligent
planning is not the enemy of creative genius.” (We don’t actually say that, but
it is on the wall.) Writers need to use both sides of their brains.
5.
Did you use a formula to write your book?
Heck, no! But I did use three tools which I talk about in Book
Architecture, the target, the grid, and the arc. These tools apply to
non-fiction as well as fiction, and not only “novelistic” fiction such as
creative non-fiction or memoir, but prescriptive non-fiction as well.
6.
Will we soon see robot-authored books
that are created based on a formula? That’s funny. To some degree we see
that now, at least writers being robotic, and filling in boxes – oh, you know
here we need to have the midpoint where my hero takes control of his/her
destiny... I think you can tell the books that have written strictly to
convention in the hope of riding the coattails of some famous works to getting
published well – and don’t forget that movie deal! Because most of those folks
use a formula like it’s nobody’s business.
8.
Where do you see book publishing is
heading? Well, my first book was traditionally published (one of the Big
Five, then the Big Six). My second book has been independently published – so
that might give you a sense of my bias here. I wanted to write exactly what
people were asking for, to have Molly’s marvelous graphs and diagrams in full
color, and to get my book to market on a much shorter time span. That said, I’m
so glad I have the first experience of watching a book come to life and all of
the talented people I got to meet at Penguin. Everybody’s got to find their own
road. I guess I’m just saying that book publishing is heading towards a hybrid
future of traditional and independent publishing – I can’t see what the end of
that road looks like even if I squint.
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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas
expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can
follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him
at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the
third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2015
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