I just finished my first read through of Meander, Spiral, Explode by Jane Alison. (All links are affiliate links.)
Sometimes a book hits you different. I’ve been devouring books on writing. For some value of devour, I suppose. I read roughly 26 books last year. This pales in comparison to most of the people in my feed, but I’m generally a one book a month kind of reader.
This is a book that popped into my feed as a recommendation. Free if you have an audible subscription. ($7 is the cheapest.) I wouldn’t have run into it otherwise.
In my storytelling deep dive I did all of the Great Courses on writing. I read Mathew Dicks, Story Worthy, etc. etc… but Meander was the only one that was almost completely knew ideas. Because it takes such a sideways approach to looking at narrative, it doesn’t have to explain show vs tell for the umpteen millionth time. It says, “Look at everything in a new way. Find what’s already there, that you haven’t been able to see.”
Just Thinking Out Loud
I haven’t said anything concrete about this book. Just written enough to pique interest. I spoke at the last two shows that I am working on a lesson regarding the book. Figuring out how you could apply the thought process to the oral tradition… and I’m going to say, Doug Lipman’s book, Improving your Storytelling, has some ideas regarding how one could visualize this kind of structure via various outline methods.
If you’re interested at looking past, the three-act structure, I highly recommend this book. Hopefully in the coming weeks I’ll write about it in a more specific and articulate way. But for now, at least it’s on your radar.
Hopefully I see you on Monday, 6pm on Twitch.tv/storyluck.
