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| Introduction | |
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| How to Hook the Reader | |
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| Cognitive Secret: We think in story, which allows us to envision the future. | |
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| Story Secret: From the very first sentence, the reader must want to know what happens next. | |
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| How to Zero In on Your Point | |
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| Cognitive Secret: When the brain focuses its full attention on something, it filters out all unnecessary information. | |
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| Story Secret: To hold the brain's attention, everything in a story must be there on a need-to-know basis. | |
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| I'll Feel What He's Feeling | |
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| Cognitive Secret: Emotion determines the meaning of everything-if we're not feeling, we're not conscious. | |
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| Story Secret: All story is emotion based-if we're not feeling, we're not reading. | |
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| What Does Your Protagonist Really Want? | |
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| Cognitive Secret: Everything we do is goal directed, and our biggest goal is figuring out everyone else's agenda, the better to achieve our own. | |
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| Story Secret: A protagonist without a clear goal has nothing to figure out and nowhere to go. | |
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| Digging Up Your Protagonist's Inner Issue | |
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| Cognitive Secret: We see the world not as it is, but as we believe it to be. | |
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| Story Secret: You must know precisely when, and why, your protagonist's worldview was knocked out of alignment. | |
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| The Story Is in the Specifics | |
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| Cognitive Secret: We don't think in the abstract; we think in specific images. | |
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| Story Secret: Anything conceptual, abstract, or general must be made tangible in the protagonist's specific struggle. | |
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| Courting Conflict, the Agent of Change | |
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| Cognitive Secret: The brain is wired to stubbornly resist change, even good change. | |
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| Story Secret: Story is about change, which results only from unavoidable conflict. | |
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| Cause and Effect | |
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| Cognitive Secret: From birth, our brain's primary goal is to make causal connections-if this, then that. | |
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| Story Secret: A story follows a cause-and-effect trajectory from start to finish. | |
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| What Can Go Wrong, Must Go Wrong-and Then Some | |
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| Cognitive Secret: The brain uses stories to simulate how we might navigate difficult situations in the future. | |
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| Story Secret: A story's job is to put the protagonist through tests that, even in her wildest dreams, she doesn't think she can pass. | |
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| The Road from Setup to Payoff | |
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| Cognitive Secret: Since the brain abhors randomness, it's always converting raw data into meaningful patterns, the better to anticipate what might happen next. | |
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| Story Secret: Readers are always on the lookout for patterns; to your reader, everything is either a setup, a payoff, or the road in between. | |
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| Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch | |
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| Cognitive Secret: The brain summons past memories to evaluate what's happening in the moment in order to make sense of it. | |
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| Story Secret: Foreshadowing, flashbacks, and subplots must instantly give readers insight into what's happening in the main storyline, even if the meaning shifts as the story unfolds. | |
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| The Writer's Brain on Story | |
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| Cognitive Secret: It takes long-term, conscious effort to hone a skill before the brain assigns it to the cognitive unconscious. | |
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| Story Secret: There's no writing; there's only rewriting. | |
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| Endnotes | |
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| Acknowledgments | |
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| About the Author | |
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| Index | |