Yes! No! Although… Wait: The Main Thing to Know to Write a Novel

About how to create stories. Tim Lott immediately states that no one can teach a person to write novels, and the industry that has emerged in recent years around such teaching merely speculates on human vanity and exploits the illusions of beginners. Lott himself suggests simply understanding the tools necessary for a story to be logical, alive, and engaging. His main idea is that plot and character are inseparable – character development drives the plot. The classic three-act structure, or its more complicated five-act variant, allows for optimal distribution of all important narrative elements: the setup, exposition, central turning point, climax, and resolution. The depth and liveliness of the characters' traits are achieved through conflicts of their desires and needs. Lott illustrates his ideas with numerous examples from world literature and cinema: from Dickens and Austen to Coppola and Lucas. And in his master class on transforming real stories into plots for storytelling, Lott uses incidents from his personal life.