Two years ago, at the WRW Annual Retreat which was held in Leesburg, VA, I had the great fortune to win a raffle basket donated by Dianna Love.  Inside were all sorts of cool treasures but the greatest of all, as I discovered last month, was a copy of her book with Mary Buckham, “Break Into Fiction”. 

I highly recommend this book if:

You are a beginning writer.

You are an experienced writer.

You are beginning a new story.

You are like me and editing/revising a completed draft.

The book is so very friendly.  It shows you how to easily recognize the key elements of successful commercial fiction in several popular movies (by walking you through templates for each of the movies) so that you can then use those same templates to develop your own story idea.

There are two aspects I like best about Break Into Fiction.  The first is that this book is multi-genre.  The movies associated with the templates range from Suspense to Romantic Comedy and from Classic Romance to a modern Disney favorite.  I appreciated this because I write out of the box and I appreciate an approach that is about successful commercial fiction.  Period.

The other thing I loved about Dianna and Mary’s approach is that its focus is on your characters.  Don’t get me wrong, right smack dab on the cover of Break Into Fiction, it says “Power Plot Your Book”.  I won’t lie, when I saw that, my doubts crept in as to whether this was the book for me.  My strength is the internal emotional journey of the character, and so naturally, plotting books generally intimidate me.  However, that’s where Break Into Fiction is truly a blessing.  What you will learn as you go through the power plotting templates, is that everything blossoms from your characters.  There is no separation between your protagonists and the elements that will drive your plot.  Until I read and used Break Into Fiction, I always saw those as separate entities and therefore my stories felt disjointed between my strong characters and not so hot plot.  This book has helped me fix that!

And, Break Into Fiction isn’t just a book.  It’s an interactive system that includes a wonderful website with information on the authors, seminars, plotting retreats and professional editing services, among other things.

Did I mention that #1 New York Times best-selling author Sherrilyn Kenyon put her stamp of approval on Break Into Fiction by contributing the foreword?  Seriously, this is a book all writers need.  For more information, check out www.breakintofiction.com