Have you ever read a writing “craft” book before? Like a book about writing?
If you’re like many writers, you haven’t. Maybe we’re afraid of taking the fun out of the process. Maybe
we just don’t want to be bored reading a stuffy book when we can just…do the writing.
A quick Internet search shows that lots of writers, especially young writers, prefer to ask questions on
forums instead of reading a whole book. Or they think that their time is better spent reading and
analyzing good literature than reading about how to write.
But when you put your questions to strangers on the Internet, how do you know you’re getting a good
answer? This is a problem I see in the writing community, both in-person and online.
There are lots of writing groups where it’s a bunch of unpublished people giving other unpublished
people advice on how to get published. For the most part, they’re just regurgitating things that they’ve
found other unpublished people saying.
That doesn’t seem likely to yield very good results.
Wouldn’t it be better to get an answer from somebody who actually knows?
Like somebody with experience?
And learning by observation is great, but it takes a long time. Chances are that you’re smart enough to
read a lot of great books and observe what the author did. I believe that you can ask good questions and
arrive at your own theories about how to write.
That’s what I did. But it took me a decade to formulate a robust, comprehensive, provable theory on
novel writing. And I was doing it full-time.
I think we need to learn something from octopuses. You see, octopuses are super smart. Did you know
that? But they never advance as a species because the mothers starve themselves and die protecting
the eggs. So nothing other than DNA gets passed down to the next generation.
That’s what we’re doing to ourselves.
You could start at zero and learn your own way, like an octopus. Or you could learn from someone else’s
progress, and their end point becomes your starting point. Then you can go even further. You can start
at zero and get to ten. But why not start at somebody else’s ten and get to a hundred?
The other reason many writers object to craft books is because they find them boring, stuffy, and even
shaming. That’s not a bad assessment. A lot of craft books are just dusty academic jargon. Do this, don’t
do that. I can’t blame you for feeling that way.
That’s why I made The Novel Matrix different.
Like you, I’m no fan of the stuffy, outdated, circular academic nonsense that permeates bad literature.
So I went to the source.
Rather than regurgitating that old stuff, I spent the time observing stories that really work—the best
films and books of our time. Over years working with lots of different authors and helping them reach
their goals, I distilled all of that observation into a comprehensive writing theory called the Novel Matrix.
Today I teach that system of writing to my apprentices at The Company.
And I’ve just released it as a book called The Novel Matrix.
If the early readers and Amazon reviewers are right, The Novel Matrix is a game changer. No more stuffy
academic jargon, no more rule upon rule. On the contrary, The Novel Matrix breathes life into your novel
and gives you wings.
I like to tell people that it’s a skeleton for your work, not a coffin. It helps you to see how all of the
pieces fit together so that you don’t miss anything, without stifling your creativity.
As fellow human beings, you and I share the same basic anatomy, but we’re completely different
people. Shouldn’t our books be the same?
Let’s be real. There are some things that make novel-length stories work. You need that stuff. But you
should be able to do that without writing some hacky formulaic book. Your writing should still be as
original and unique as you are.
If you’ve never read a writing craft book before, I don’t blame you. But start here. Give this one a try.
Move your starting point way forward, so that you can take these principles and reach the stars.
Give yourself the gift of a ten-year head start. You deserve it.
The Novel Matrix is available on Amazon and wherever great books are sold.
