Wired for Story by Lisa Cron

Rosey

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Dany and I both loved this book so much. There was so much good stuff in it, and it really affected how we discussed books after reading it. It almost was the first book but then we have this conversation:

Dany: … I think we should not start off with a non fiction book.
Rosey: yeaaaaaaah. I really want to, cause Wired for Story seems to be getting in everywhere, but… I think we should wait on it too.
Dany: yeaaaah, wired for story was…. it was great. I keep applying it to a lot of stuff — whether it’s the books I read or what I write, or well, trying to apply it. I need a copy. Definitely.

And then I immediately bought a physical copy.

Here’s the thing about Wired for Story, it’s non-fiction and focused on writing, but three pages in, I wanted to be taking notes. I wanted to underline every sentence. It was the first time that I read something and really got it. Wired for Story would come up in all our conversations about books. For example, things I said about Minnow Bly:

“I was thinking about Wired for Story while reading it, and thinking about how Cron describes endings as a character facing their internal struggle, and I was contemplating what Minnow’s struggle was, and if the ending answered that,” (answer, we did not think it did).

The great thing about Wired for Story was that you could immediately see that she was right, and could immediately start applying the lessons brought up in the book. Learning about internal struggle made me contemplate the way that Minnow Bly’s struggle wasn’t answered in the book, while also giving me a direction in my novel (characters want things, but they should be things that bring them closer to the internal struggle, whether they like it or not!). I was thinking about motivations and how Peter’s goal in Midnight Riot did not line up with his internal motivations. And, it made figuring out the end of my novel so much smoother by giving me a guide to pinpointing the issue that I wanted the novel to be about since the beginning.

I have read a lot of books about writing, process and motivating yourself to write, but Wired for Story is among my favorites now. It was clear, and hooked into the things I am always considering while studying craft — what makes stories interesting, why we tell them and most importantly, how to apply them to our own writing.

Rosey’s rating: 5/5 stars

Dany

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Wired for Story hasn’t only become one of my favorite books about writing, it’s also turned out to be one of the most influential ones for me. Lisa Cron did such a good job at picking apart why and how stories and characters matter to us and what we, as writers, need to pay attention to make sure that the characters we create and the stories we tell turn out to be interesting enough to hook the reader.

One of the many great things about Wired for Story is that most of the book deals with what got me so obsessed with writing in the first place: it’s character centric writing that focuses on the deeper psychological aspects of your character and then starts to develop the story from there. I’ve always loved picking apart my characters’ motivations, finding the reason why they struggle with certain issues and can all too easily deal with others, what their fears are and where those fears come from, what pushes them forward and what holds them back, etc. For me writing is all about conflict, and trying to find out what makes a person (usually my MCs) tick, and what kind of rocks you have to toss their way in order to get them to face their biggest inner demons.

This book gets into that, and Cron does it in a way that is precise and logical and, yes, literally noteworthy. I have never gotten hooked on a non-fiction book before, not like I did with this one, which given the title and contents of this book is, of course, just a little amusing. Reading this book has made me ask a lot of questions about my own writing, and how my characters work and what I still need to figure out about them to make sure I’m not only writing a story that turns out to be interesting, but also one that answers the questions the story / the journey of the character asks in the first place.

All in all, I am a huge fan of this book and will be buying a physical copy once I get back to Vienna (I am currently at Rosey’s in Los Angeles, wheee!). I also found Lisa Cron to be very likeable and would like to recommend Wired for Story to anyone who writes and anyone interested in finding out why and in what ways stories, and a character’s journey, matter to us.

Dany’s rating: 5/5 Stars