Blueprint Your Bestseller: Organize and Revise Any Manuscript with the Book Architecture Method

It is easy to lose control of a large manuscript, especially fiction. Too many characters, subplots, locations, etc can become so unwieldy that the author despairs over completing it. Blueprint Your Bestseller offers the Book Architecture Method as a tool to help you.FINDING THE STRUCTURE IN YOUR MANUSCRIPTBlueprint Your Bestseller is all about finding the story structure in a draft. It is geared toward fiction but is also applicable to nonfiction. Mr. Horwitz uses Hans Christian Anderson’s short story, The Ugly Duckling, to illustrate his points. For nonfiction work, he notes how he used the method to work with this book.Mr. Horwitz calls his revision scheme the Book Architecture Method. He depicts the method as a pyramid where you start with a manuscript and begin your work on it by ascending the pyramid (the steps in the Book Architecture Method) to its summit (where you find your theme), and then descend through steps of organization to your completed work.The method is presented as twenty-two “Action Steps” that are summarized in an appendix. Following these steps takes you through a process where you identify the scenes in your work, then the series (subplots, beats, acts, etc) and finally, the theme (the method allows only one). This is the pyramid ascent. The descent is the evaluating and organizing of this material and the structures revealed, resulting in a solid manuscript.A SIMPLER CONSTRUCT FOR STORYThough he prefers to use his own terms, Mr. Horwitz does present the basics of story structure in his method. He simplifies them into constructs that authors not into storytelling theory should find workable. I like that he starts with the scene as the basic unit of storytelling. This makes a baseline connection to other works on writing theory and editing such as The Story Grid. Hence, his definition of “scene” is useful:“A scene is where something happens, and because something happens, something changes in a way that propels the narrative.”Just taking this definition to heart and writing by it, will lend momentum to your storytelling.He also introduces the concept of “series:”“A series is the repetition of a narrative element (such as a person, an object, a phrase, or a place) in such a way that it undergoes a clear evolution.”He goes deeper into describing series which includes the subplots and threads we normally consider in a fiction. Mr. Horwitz doesn’t like the term, “plot,” however and doesn’t use it, feeling that it is too vague a term. “Series,” works for him to identify and describe constructs that make up the narrative, winding through the scenes.With the concept of series established, Mr. Horwitz takes us through a process to discover our story (or nonfiction) theme. He stresses there can be only one overall theme and that every scene and series must support it. He provides a process for discovering what the theme of our story is, as opposed to what we thought it was when we started writing. I very much liked this process and was pleased to use it to find the theme in my own writing.SIMPLE BUT PRECISEI think the greatest value of this book is the simplified, but precise, story constructs Mr. Horwitz describes and how to use them to visualize and modify a story.On the other hand, this simpler view may not be detailed enough to provide the tools needed for a deep story analysis, if that’s what you need. His idea of “key scenes,” for example, doesn’t work for me. I prefer to think of key scenes as they are described by Aristotle’s Incline (re: The Weekend Novelist by Robert Ray).GOOD FOR PANTSERS AND OUTLINERSBlueprint Your Bestseller describes the Book Architecture Method of story development that is a clever and understandable way to find the structure in a manuscript. With that structure found, revision can be accomplished. Also, the process for finding your story’s theme, as you’ve written it, is worth the cost of the book.This perspective on story structure should be especially helpful to seat-of-the-pants fiction writers, enabling them to see the structure they’ve subliminally put into their writing. It can also be useful to the writer who plans and outlines, providing a means to check for solid substructures (series) and adherence to theme.I found Blueprint Your Bestseller to compliment Shawn Coyne’s, The Story Grid, with the former helping to digest the latter. But even by itself, it is a tool for seeing a story (or nonfiction writing) as a constructed whole. Such vision is indispensable for authors, whether they are pantsers or not, for the sake of revision and understanding the literary work they’ve created.

If you have any experience at all with writing long works (and some of you may not and will find this book by Mr. Horowitz helpful), you will not need this book. Essentially, it explains scenes and themes, and has you physically write out every scene, then rearrange them in a logical order, even if not necessarily chronological, in order to reinforce a theme. It's as simple as that. No great magic, and if one eliminates the pages on such unnecessary (for this type of book) subjects as finding time to write, etc., and the many pages on the story of The Ugly Duckling which is then used as the template for teaching, then the book is quite slim. Additionally, the author has a way of writing that tends to string out short, concise concepts into many pages.If someone is a new writer, particularly a new novelist, this book may be helpful BEFORE you start plotting and planning a book. Although the author would have you write 50, or better yet, 100 pages of a story, the process of going back and dissecting out every minute scene is extremely labor intensive. I tried this method and stopped after a full day of dissection when i realized that this is ton of "wheel spinning" for an author who has spent enough time with their manuscript truly can get a feel for it's heft and bulk, the areas to shore up and the areas to cut away. Mr. Horwitz writes in the book that no author can remember every scene in even the most dog-earred manuscript, which is true, but that does not mean that writing the entirety of it on 3x5 cards or Post-It notes is going to facilitate the process, or the recollection of parts of the novel.For novelists with Scrivener, the Scene building, re-arranging Scenes, is very clear in the software--it's almost intuitive as the software is built around writing in "chunks" and rearranging. Again, a reasonable human being who is adept at writing and reading should be able to look over their sections in Scrivener (or any other software that allows drag-and-drop manipulation) and get a good overview of their work-in-progress. There are no shortcuts, and this method of writing everything out in longhand is the "long-cut", in my opinion. Money spent on a Scrivener For Dummies book and the software may help some; others (like me) used MS Word and carefully consider what we are writing as we write it, and the end is in sight while not wasting valuable time on making notecards for scenes.If one already has 100-pages or more written, then using MS Word, or Scrivener, and cutting and pasting "scenes"--those that you have already created--into the Folders and shuffling them around limitlessly is going to take you about 1/10th the time of doing it with a pencil and Post-It notes, especially because once you do the pen-and-paper method, you still have to shuffle your scene around in whatever software you're using to write your novel!Again, if someone is brand new to novel composition, this book might help them. Might. For those newbies, one or two words written on 3x5 cards for each small scene ("scene" is well-defined online, including McKee's Story writing book, and in countless youtube videos--it is important to understand the definition of Scene), jot them out AS YOU WRITE and keep them by your computer, and you can see what needs to be done if you want to re-arrange (this is a suggestion for the computer-averse). For instance, if I wrote a chapter today, 1200 words or so, and I put one sentence describing the scene on a 3x5 card at each scene change in the chapter (live, as I am writing new prose), I might have 4-6 notecards by the end of the day by my computer. Save the cards, and at the end of 100+ pages, I will have many cards, which is precisely what Blueprint Your Bestseller would have you do. I can rearrange, shuffle, etc. Some novelists will simply incorporate the "one sentence" in the text of the manuscript rather than on a notecard.Navigation in MS Word is very powerful, and watching a free 20-minute online video on MS Word Navigation and Mapping will allow anyone to use the power of their software to perform the task of tracking, manipulating, and rearranging much better (efficient as you are working in your actual finished work, not on paper and then re-doing the work in the software) than 3x5 cards.Again, for Scrivener fans, MS Word Styles fans, or those that simply keep writings in Folders instead of one huge, unwieldy manuscript, there is no need for even the 3x5 cards as your write: it's all in the software.Thanks, and note that I did give this book 3-stars just the same. The idea is good, but the execution is onerous and largely a "time suck".

I read this after his later book, Book Architecture (which I gave 5 stars), because that one really resonated with me and I wanted more. I was not disappointed. I recommend reading both, in any order, for a fresh perspective on writing that moves away from the tired old hero on a journey to save the cat and hit those beats. You will get a lot from both books, and Horwitz's easy-going and slightly jokey writing style just adds to the pleasure.

This is a very useful way to look at the structure of your novel. No writing techniques such as POV or description are looked at; instead, Horwitz shows how to pull a draft apart and analyse it, to see the structure and themes that are emerging. You can then review and strengthen those throughout the book, producing a much tighter manuscript.This book is best used when you already have a first draft.