The Mind of Your Story

The Mind of Your Story: Discover What Drives Your Fiction
By Lisa Lenard-Cook
ISBN: 978-1-58297-488-0
Coming in April 2008!

The Best Fiction Has a Mind of Its Own

How do you create a successful story that captures readers from its first page and never lets them go until the final page is turned?

The secret is a delicate balancing act between allowing a story a mind of its own and holding tightly to its reins.

Award-winning author Lisa Lenard-Cook takes you through the entire writing process, showing you how to

• nurture your ideas—the seeds of your fiction—so they bloom more fully
• develop nuanced characters with distinct voices that intrigue readers
• manage your story’s “mind”—carefully pacing your scenes
• navigate the intricacies of the revision process—so your own edits are more efficient and effective

Combining practical advice with down-to-earth candor, The Mind of Your Story illuminates the often-elusive elements of fiction and helps you turn your creative obsessions into that mysterious yet undeniable connection with readers.

Praise for The Mind of Your Story:

“Lisa Lenard-Cook’s The Mind of Your Story provides terrific inspiration and expert instruction for writers of all levels. An engaging, informative book—detailing story creation from fictional seeds to revision. Required reading for all writers.”
—Jewell Parker Rhodes, Endowed Chair & Artistic Director for Piper Global Engagement, Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, Arizona State University

About the Author

Lisa Lenard-Cook holds a BA with departmental honors from SUNY Buffalo and an MFA in fiction writing from Vermont College. Dissonance, her first novel, won the Jim Sagel Prize for the Novel while in manuscript. After its publication by the University of New Mexico Press in 2003, it was selected as a book of the year by such diverse libraries as the Tucson-Pima County Public Library and the Cincinnati Public Library. Lisa’s second novel, Coyote Morning, was published by UNM Press in 2004, was selected a Southwest Book of the Year, and is in its third printing. “The Art of Fiction,” her monthly column about fiction writing at Authorlink.com, has been called “a refreshing approach to the art of fiction writing.”

Table of Contents

Part I
Seeds and Their Nourishment

Chapter 1. Fictional Seeds
Chapter 2. I’ve Got Voices in My Head
Chapter 3. The Plot Thickens
Chapter 4. Where It’s At
Chapter 5. What’s Your Point?
Chapter 6. Getting Personal
Chapter 7. Look Who’s Talking
Chapter 8. It’s Not What You Say …
Chapter 9. Putting Words in Your Characters’ Mouths

Part II
The Mind of Your Story

Chapter 10. The Mind of Your Story
Chapter 11. Managing Time
Chapter 12. Keeping the Pace
Chapter 13. Tense and Tension
Chapter 14. Who Do You Love?

Part III
Start All Over Again

Chapter 15. Start All Over Again
Chapter 16. Where Do I Begin Revising?
Chapter 17. Picking Up the Pieces
Chapter 18. Other Readers, Other Rooms
Chapter 19. The Big Picture
Chapter 20. Self Confidence and the Writing Life