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A review by absentminded_reader
Million Dollar Outlines by David Farland
4.0
I bought this book on sale years ago, then forgot about it. When I bumped into David Wolverton at a FanX last spring, he recommended the book to me, and I was embarrassed to discover I already owned it! Since then I’ve been reading through the book and enjoying it. It goes far beyond the mechanics of what makes a best-selling outline. This book is all about story craft. I highly recommend it for intermediate writers who have a few failed novels under their belt already.
I believe even pantsers will enjoy this book. Although Wolverton is an outliner extraordinaire, there’s enough to be learned just by reading the headlines of each section for pantsers to come away enriched. I’m not sure if I will ever outline as extensively as Wolverton does, however. Wolverton‘s method is very thorough, but felt to me as if I would be writing my book over and over again in different forms. I worry that the impetus for creation, the spark to write the story, might be snuffed out in some of these iterations.
Of special interest to me was the appendix where Wolverton analyzed the brainstorming session of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas as they discussed the Indiana Jones story with the screenwriter, Lawrence Kasdan. There are pearls and pearls of wisdom to be gained by reading that section alone. It’s very informative.
Overall, I recommend this book. I appreciated the reminders on story craft. Although the primer in the beginning was too novice orientated to be of interest to me, the book quickly became very in-depth and useful. I’ve made copious bookmarks and plan to refer to it frequently during my next work in progress.
I believe even pantsers will enjoy this book. Although Wolverton is an outliner extraordinaire, there’s enough to be learned just by reading the headlines of each section for pantsers to come away enriched. I’m not sure if I will ever outline as extensively as Wolverton does, however. Wolverton‘s method is very thorough, but felt to me as if I would be writing my book over and over again in different forms. I worry that the impetus for creation, the spark to write the story, might be snuffed out in some of these iterations.
Of special interest to me was the appendix where Wolverton analyzed the brainstorming session of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas as they discussed the Indiana Jones story with the screenwriter, Lawrence Kasdan. There are pearls and pearls of wisdom to be gained by reading that section alone. It’s very informative.
Overall, I recommend this book. I appreciated the reminders on story craft. Although the primer in the beginning was too novice orientated to be of interest to me, the book quickly became very in-depth and useful. I’ve made copious bookmarks and plan to refer to it frequently during my next work in progress.