BOOK REVIEW 2019-147 = Paul Larkin’s “How to Write a Story..."

As promised I'm starting to post a copy of my book reviews here on my blog.

I’d won a Mobi.file copy of this book from the author through a giveaway he had on LibraryThing, and the following is my honest opinion.

Being an author of several books, including a YA Paranormal romance and an erotic novella, I’ve learned that there are components crucial to both genres, despite their differences.

This book looks at writing a story, not from the POV [point of view] of today’s authors, but from the time of creation when no stories had existed. Instead of stories, let’s look at something quite trivial for a brief moment, such as the wheel. In order for the wheel to have been invented, questions needed to get answered before it could finally come into existence. Now with the wheel’s existence being present, individuals have kept on tweaking it, to achieve an individualistic desired appearance.

Getting back to the writing of stories, a variety of forces interact to create the building blocks for each one, including that of the genre. According to the author, Paul Larkin, there are essentially five different storylines for any story along with seven possible different types of characters that are plausible to exist in these stories.

Coming from own experience, agreeing with the author, in writing and moreover having read/reviewed over 1,100 books, stories much have some plot twists which ensure to captivate and maintain a reader’s interest so they’ll keep turning the pages of the book until the story’s climax has been reached. And within these plot twists, there’s also the proverbial need of some conflict, regardless of how substantial or minuscule it might be.

This naturally brings us to the all-important language that’s being used in the text itself; boring dull language doesn’t cut the mustard it needs to be somewhat provocative in order to grab and maintain a reader’s interest from the first page to the last.

For wanting to inform his readers, whether they’re aspiring authors, have a few books already under their belts or just interested in the subject matter of how to write a story from a different approach or POV; I’ve given Mr. Larkin the 5 STAR rating he’s gotten.

Link to my review & book on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/review/R34D4O5OPDICGI