Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Part 1 Free Yourself From the Paralyzing Rules of Fiction 15
Chapter 1 Prologues 20
Chapter 2 Description 25
Chapter 3 -Lk Adverbs 31
Chapter 4 Purple Prose and Painted Paragraphs 36
Chapter 5 The Immediate Inciting Incident 41
Chapter 6 "To Be" Verbs 47
Chapter 7 Show Versus Tell 51
Chapter 8 Begin With Action 59
Chapter 9 Point of View 65
Chapter 10 Speech Attributions 72
Chapter 11 Outlining 78
Chapter 12 That 83
Chapter 13 Switching Between Storylines 87
Chapter 14 Floating Body Parts 91
Chapter 15 Gerunds, Participial Phrases, Sentence Fragments, Beginning with Conjunctions, Ending with Prepositions, and Passive Voice 95
Chapter 16 Breaking the Fourth Wall 100
Chapter 17 Weasel Words 104
Chapter 18 Read Everything 109
Chapter 19 Elmore Leonard's Rules 113
Chapter 20 The Big Enchilada 119
Part 2 The Great Commandment of Fiction 146
Chapter 21 Hacking Your Reader's Brain 150
Chapter 22 Character Brain-Plot Brain 156
Chapter 23 A Brain Chemistry Story Map 162
Chapter 24 What's It All About, Alfie? 177
Part 3 The Brain's Greatest Hits 180
Chapter 25 The Monomyth 182
Chapter 26 Archetypes 202
Chapter 27 Aristotle's Rhetoric 216
Conclusion 228
About the Author 230
Index 231
