Nail Your Story: Add Tension, Build Emotion, and Keep Your Readers Addicted

Growth Hacking for Storytellers #2

By: Monica Leonelle

Narrated by: Cindy Piller

What makes a story feel connective, engaging, and complete?

If you've listened to dozens of storytelling craft books and still don't have a strong answer to that question, you'll love how Nail Your Story doesn't give you another laundry list of items that your story is supposed to have.

Instead, Nail Your Story attempts to reveal the connections between the various parts of a story so that you can more easily build cohesive plots, characters, themes, and settings - without having to stress over the decisions, because (surprise!) you've probably already made them in another area of your book.

Included in the book:

• Monica's Smarter Storytelling Framework, which shows you the many layers of a story and how they relate to each other
• Translation guides for building out your story (for example, how you can use character to build your theme and vice versa)
• Tons of examples from some of the most popular stories of our time, including Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, the Twilight series, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, How to Get Away with Murder, A Song of Ice and Fire, and more.

If you've struggled to get five-star reviews on your stories or build an audience of people dying to get your next book, Nail Your Story will help you identify areas of improvement and even show you how a few small tweaks in your currently available content can make a massive difference in your sales!

©2015 Spaulding House (P)2016 Spaulding House

Excellent methodology

This book suggests a very structured approach to the construction building with an efficient toolbox. It really opened my mind and enabled me to progress beyond traditionnal writing courses.I really liked the toolbox.
Some may prefer a more intuitive informal approach and for them, the book may be too structured.

Don't buy this as an audiobook

Any additional comments?

This book is probably a great book to have in print, but because of the large number of ever expanding tables used to prove a point, it doesn't work well as an audiobook. By the time Cindy has read the entire table to you to get to the "new" part of the table, I was bored out of my mind and had forgotten what Monica was trying to do/prove. It was fine when the tables were small, but as the book went on and the tables got longer, I got lost. I kept wishing they had just assumed that the reader could keep up with what had happened previously in the examples and would just get to the point. If you are deciding to whether to buy this in print or as an audio, go for the print. The visual aspect of the book will be more helpful than the never-ending drone of the examples. I have an hour left in this audio and just want to cry when I think about listening to it. I don't think I'll be able to finish it. However, I might just go buy the print book because I believe that might be worth the money.

Too repetitive with examples!

The author uses the exact same words when discussing the many examples they use. Then they repeat the depiction right after they finish their point. I almost fell asleep it was so boring and superfluous. They need to work on their rephrasing ability.

Helpful once you have an idea

I recommend reading over it a few times in kindle because when I first read it I did not get it at all. I was completely lost because I have never heard of the 4 part structure. I went back through it about 2 more times. I finally started to understand it while taking notes. The worksheets helped me understand it much better and I recommend the worksheets for anyone who is starting out reading this book because there is a lot of information to cover. There are still some things I do not understand like thematic elements but going online and using the examples really help. Take your time with this book. I really wish there were more drawn out explanations for the last 3 layers

Great info, but not listener-friendly

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

I would, but not as an audiobook. The information here is great; I have read other books on storytelling craft, but the advice here is extremely practical, helpful and in some ways unique. However the endless repetition of the same examples, in the same words, over and over and over makes it very painful to listen to and not that easy to sort the good information, of which there is plenty, out of the fluff - of which there is also plenty. I would assume that the repetitive examples are shown in the form of charts or tables in the e-book version, and in my opinion, the book should have been re-edited for audio so that it presents better. Still, it really is helpful in spite of these detractors, and the reader does an excellent job too.

Lightweight writing for dummies

If you've read other writing books, you'll be bored by this shallow-surface book. Buy agent Donald Maass' books or Lisa Kron's books if you want truly great in-depth books about writing.

Sounds like a paid infomercial. Terrible

The first hour of the book told you why you should read the book, as if you still needed to purchase it, but gave no information. It was like the author simply published her blog. Blog to book, but didn't pay an editor to organize it into a new format. The remaining listening time was so repetative that I honestly found myself checking to see if I had accidentally repeated a chapter.

The voice performance was well done, so there is that. Cannot fault the voice actor for the poorly thought out script she was handed.

Read "Creating Character Arcs" instead. 30x better