Reddit reviews Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

Someone else recommended this book on here a while back: Wired for Story. It's so focused and clear in its writing advice that I usually make it halfway through a chapter before I want to stop reading and get to work.

Check out Wired for Story and Techniques of the Selling Writer. The latter is dated - as in the guy wrote it from a white, male perspective in the 60s - but the advice on craft is solid. Good luck.

ETA: This is a decent podcast series so far.

• Writing the Romantic Comedy
  by Billy Mernit
  
  
• Not on Kindle, which is my main gripe. Very useful structure.
  
• Supposedly the ebook is a coming. I'm ready.
  
  
• Writing the Comedy Blockbuster: The Inappropriate Goal
  by Keith Giglio
  
  
• Save the Cat but focused specifically on writing comedies. Really focuses on making sure you derive maximum conflict from your protagonist meeting your premise.
  
  
• Elephant Bucks: An Insider's Guide to Writing for TV Sitcoms
  by Sheldon Bull
  
  
• A decades long professional writer and showrunner tells you how to write a sitcom. You're dumb if you wanna write sitcoms and haven't cracked this open yet.
  
  
• How to Write Funny: Your Serious, Step-By-Step Blueprint For Creating Incredibly, Irresistibly, Successfully Hilarious Writing
  by Scott Dikkers
  
  
• Again, a professional explains how he works. Dikkers was head writer on The Onion for years and years.
  
  
  
• Writing the Pilot
  by William Rabkin
  
• Again, a veteran showrunner explains what he knows.
  
  
• Screenwriting is Rewriting: The Art and Craft of Professional Revision 1st Edition
  by Jack Epps Jr
  
• Fucking gold. I'd read it even before you start a first draft.
  
  
• William Martell Blue Books
  
• Three Hundred Pages on Act Two and how to craft it. Three Hundred and Ten pages on the first ten pages of your screenplay! Three hundred and ninety! Pages! On! Action lines!
  
• Essential if you want to really dig deep on a specific skill of screenwriting.
  
  
  
• Writing for emotional impact : advanced dramatic techniques to attract, engage, and fascinate the reader from beginning to end by Karl Iglesias
  
• A very useful lens to think about screenwriting through. I'd consider this the intro to the kind of specificity that the Blue Books will break down into.
  
  
• Writing Movies for Fun and Profit by Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon
  
• Four quadrant movies are probably the hardest movies to do well. And these guys did them, very well. Plus the book will make you laugh as you read it.
  
  
• Writing the Other by by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward
  
  • Which is a practical guide to writing about experiences that are not your own, with a focus on race, gender, and sexual orientation.
    
• It'll definitely inform my take the next time reddit implodes on who can write what character.
  
  
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  The only non Screenwriter on the list are Scott Dikkers, Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward.
  
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  I'm Currently going through:
  
  
• Wit's End: What Wit Is, How It Works, and Why We Need It by James Geary
  
  • I am always trying to be smarter and funnier. And funny smart people get hired.
    
    
    
• Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence by Lisa Cron
  
• The science behind why we enjoy narrative and how that can guide writers to write well.
  
  And want to read:
  
  
• The Hero Succeeds: The Character-Driven Guide to Writing Your TV Pilot by Kam Miller
  
• Working Writer. 500 pages on characters in a pilot. Real world examples. Of course I want to read this.
  
• I think I heard about it from Paperteam, or a blog post on the WGA Foundation page.

>How do I get people to care about my story in the first place?

Therein lies the ultimate question. :) If you're looking on how to make your readers care and how to hook them, I would absolutlely seriously recommend this book. It completely changed how I approached my characters and story, and it's a joy to read!

To help you out a little, and give you a clue what the book's like, here are some notes I made from it after giving it another read today (I fleshed out my novel for NaNoWriMo):

>What does your protagonist have to confront in order to solve the problem set up for him or her?
>
>A story is how what happens affects someone who is trying to achieve what turns out to be a difficult goal, and how he or she changes as a result.
>
>All is not what it seems. Something to grab us, make us care. Balls in play. Trouble brewing, preferably longstanding, raising questions about how the protagonist is going to win. What are you talking about and why should I care? Curiosity.

>What is this story about?
>Whose story is it?
>What’s happening here?
>What’s at stake?
>
>Conflict that is specific to the character’s quest. First page - sometimes even first line.
>
>Every single thing in the story must have a clear impact on: will the protagonist achieve her goal; what will it cost her in the process; how will it change her in the end.
>
>Everything in a story must be there on a need-to-know basis. What question does the story ask? How does it answer it?
>
>A story needs focus: protagonist’s issue, the theme, and the plot. The story question translates to the protagonist’s goal. The story is about what she has to overcome internally to reach her goal.
>
>Theme: what your story says about human nature. What does the story tell us about what it means to be human; what does it say about how humans react to circumstances beyond their control.
>
>Plot: events that relentlessly force the protagonist to deal with her issue as she pursues her goal.
>
>We love to figure things out and we don’t like being confused.
>
>Even if the protagonist does not appear on the first page, everything that happens before he shows up must occur with a clear eye toward how it will affect him.

TLDR; In order to make your reader care, you have to understand and care about it too!