In “Story Skeleton” one discovers how stories are written. To quote Brown “we must understand its anatomy.” It goes into the different ways a book’s plot is written. I think that this is a book that should be of interest to writers. This was interesting to me but I did find myself losing interest. I did read it to the end.

Thanks so much to NetGalley for the free Kindle book. My review is voluntarily given, and my opinions are my own.

This book breaks down tons of classics to their 'bare bones' as a tool to help writers. However, as this book does such an amazing job describing each book, I would recommend it to anyone. I don't know anyone who has read every single one of these classics or even plans or ever reading them. You can read this and know exactly what happened in the book and understand it perfectly.

Definitely would recommend this!

Typically, I don't read nonfiction, but since this is nonfiction about fiction, I knew it would be great. I love being proven right! If you enjoy classic literature, or if you don't understand it at all, this guide is for you!

Story Skeleton: The Classics is a worthwhile compilation of story analysis and outlines for 21 classic works curated and edited by David Griffin Brown & Michelle Barker. Released 1st Feb 2025, it's 291 pages and is available in paperback and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. For Kindle Unlimited subscribers, this book is currently included in the KU subscription library to borrow and read for free.

Although ostensibly mostly aimed at writers (or would-be creatives), this book is *packed* with salient, interesting, and relevant information for students, readers, and literally anyone interested in understanding what they're reading and how/why the authors of the work wrote what they did, the way they did. It's supposed to be the first volume in a series, presumably for different genres.

This volume includes analysis of 21 classic works from Jane Eyre to The Godfather. The authors write lucidly about the different structures (allegory, genre, conflict, entwining storylines, lots more), and more importantly, make them easy to understand. Most of them were originally published in English (one exception is Flaubert's Madame Bovary, translated from French).

Five stars. This would be an excellent choice for public library acquisition, home library reference, or book clubs.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

I think this is a valuable book for an aspiring author to read. This was initially a tough book to review, because I have to think about what I wanted the book to achieve vs. what it is realistic for me to want it to achieve. When I sat back in my chair at the end of the read my first thought was "Would reading this book make it easier for me to write a novel?" Then, my second thought was "Writing a novel is never easy, so make sure you're not setting the bar at that level." Finally, I settled on wondering if I had read anything that I a) didn't know before and b) will make it easier to write a novel. The answer to both those final questions was yes, therefore, I think a positive review is warranted. Of course, the standard that we're tempted to hold the book up to was Save the Cat which says the author will do x, x, x, and x. This book does not give you a checklist in that way. Rather, the book merely points out the ingredients in classic novels and the author will have to decide which classic novel example is most like the book that they are trying to write and can they therefore copy the structure of that classic novel and achieve a successful result?

I highly recommend this book to writers, students of literature and creative writing as well as teachers/lecturers.
Story skeleton, as a term, is something that I use in my screenwriting lectures, and I was eager to see how structure was implemented in classics.
The writers' approach is sound and engaging.
An especially cool book for beginners.