M. Suzanne Terry

The Story Cure is a how-to manual from a book doctor on fixing your manuscript. This book can do for your manuscript what a physician’s home reference book can do for what ails you physically.

According to Dinty Moore, a book doctor is “a person who will take a book manuscript…and diagnose why it is not yet working.” He then goes on to detail what aspects you might need to address during the editing process. The goal of this book is to help writers get from “I finished/started/proposed a manuscript” to “I have a real book that people might actually want to read.”

When I am evaluating writing books, I look at three things:

1. How many notes I take
2. How many ideas I scribble in the margin for current or future projects.
3. How long it takes me to get through it or how often I come back to it while editing

Judging from my five pages of excited jottings, this book was a success. I read it straight through once and then went back to start some of the tasks Moore lays out. It has improved my focus on my main fiction project and has inspired new ideas for a novel I’m going to start in November. It’s been so helpful, I may have to give him credit in my acknowledgements section when the books are published.

It should also be noted that I said “when” – not “if” – they are published, because The Story Cure has armed me with tools that I’m confident will lead to publication.

Elements that I found particularly helpful include

• character motivation/development questions to focus your characters (and thus your story),
• a massive amount of examples and advice from other writers (complete with reference list), and
• adaptations for people who write fiction vs. nonfiction and for people who are at varying steps in the writing process.

I also appreciate his writing style, particularly when it includes gems like this when referring to why we fix bad writing – “So Roland is safe after all, but unfortunately not everyone is safe, because it is at this point that the reader pulls out a gun and shoots the author at point-blank range.”

The Story Cure is a helpful tool for people who are in the midst of editing a story that isn’t quite where they want it to be. This book can help get you there.

I received a copy of this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review.