How I use John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story to Outline Fiction, Part Four

Or: Chapters 6–11 (The fourth of five posts)

Photo by Joshua Rawson-Harris on Unsplash

(This is the fourth of five posts that first appeared on the Bittersweet Book Launch blog — a project with my marketing manager at the time, Dan Blank, where we documented our marketing efforts for my novel Bittersweet for the year around publication. The series of Truby posts went up in 2014, talking about how I’ve adapted Truby’s screenwriting bible, The Anatomy of Story, for writing fiction — and I’m reposting it here on Medium because I often get asked about how to outline, and I love the idea of these musings from the past helping a new group of writers — and probably me too.)

Chapter Six: Story World

After all the deep discovery prompted by the previous chapters, this chapter always feels like a sigh of relief. This might just be me, but my novels almost always come attached to a very strong sense of place, and so I have less unpacking to do. But that doesn’t mean this chapter is “easy,” no, there’s still plenty to uncover. Truby wants you to think intentionally about the metaphors and symbols of place you’ll be employing…