Today’s book review is on a wonderful book I read while on vacation that I’d recommend to all writers, The Plot Whisperer. This book is a wonderful rundown about how to construct plotting stories for writing books, offering various methods of outlining for both, the plotter and the pantser.

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Blurb:

When it comes to writing bestsellers, it’s all about the plot. Trouble is, plot is where most writers fall down–but you don’t have to be one of them. With this book, you’ll learn how to create stories that build suspense, reveal character, and engage readers–one scene at a time.
Celebrated writing teacher and bestselling author Martha Alderson has devised a plotting system that’s as innovative as it is easy to implement. With her foolproof blueprint, you’ll learn to devise a successful storyline for any genre. She shows how to:

• Use the power of the Universal Story
• Create plot lines and subplots that work together
• Effectively use a scene tracker for maximum impact
• Insert energetic markers at the right points in your story
• Show character transformation at the book’s climax

Filled with dozens of exercises and examples from both classic and contemporary novels and best-selling authors such as To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, The Old Man and the Sea by Earnest Hemingway, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, and many more, The Plot Whisperer is the ultimate guide for you to write page-turners filled with conflict and suspense that sell!

My 5 Star Review

This book offers a great breakdown of plot construction in simplified terms and added pages of infographic charts indicating elements of peaks and scene trackers demonstrating where to drive plot crisis from beginning to end of a book.
The author also offers handy tips, such as using post-it-notes of various colors to represent characters and their traits for tracking progression throughout the story.

There is also a section explaining the difference between the writing process for authors who are both right and left-brained writers. Interesting deductions are made stating left-brained writers are analytical, detail-oriented, dramatic writers who prefer pre-plotting and outlining, and language preference to big picture, compared to right-brained writers who are stated to be more intuitive toward character emotion, preference to pictures more than language, and who are referred to as pantsers because of the thrill of writing on the seat of their pants. I’d highly recommend this book for all writers new and old.

Are you a pantser or a plotter?