Universal Grammar of Story: GAME BOOK OF PRACTICAL EXERCISES FOR WRITERS

Description

The Universal Grammar of Story™: Game Book of Practical Exercises for Writers is the companion game to Universal Grammar of Story™: An Author’s Guide to Writing for the Soul of the World, and the accompanying workbook. The object of the game is to learn this revolutionary new mythopoetic writing method while creating a strong, balanced story in 46 moves that can be played with a chess-like strategy or left to chance with the spin of a wheel. Levels range from easy for the novice to staggeringly complex and challenging for the seasoned professional.

Step by step, each move evolves the story by shaping its setting, environment, social order, plot, character chemistry, rhythm of timing, and moral underpinnings as well as many more attributes. Players can use these thought-provoking moves to create a new story, bring life back to a dragging one in process, or rescue the one with hundreds of pages abandoned long ago under the crush of writers’ block.

Writers can choose stories at any stage in their development including:

• Before a single word hits the page.
• After some writing has been done but the story seems to stop.
• After hundreds of pages are written but the story just seems to go in circles.
• Returning to a story given up years ago, but which will not give up on the writer.
• To bust out of any form of writer’s block.
• To analyze what makes a well-loved story particularly strong.
• To find out why a box office flop flopped. Or
• To help another understand why a story is stuck in writer’s block.

Universal Grammar of Story is comprised of four foundational pillars: The Call to Write, the Nature of Language, The Core Narrative Theories, and the role of mythology and mystical philosophy in story telling. The game addresses the latter two pillars.

This is a body of wisdom writers never outgrow but evolves with them over time becoming ever more multifaceted with maturity and life experience. Younger writers tend to be more interested in the nuts-and-bolts structure of writing found in the number Moves/Cards. Older writers, even those just taking up their first story later in life, tend to be more interested in the fundamental philosophies found in character chemistry and how they play out in the Myth Moves/ Cards.

For novice writers (including those who have yet to set a word to paper) the game introduces fundamentals of how to get those words to stick to the paper and behave themselves. For the advanced career writer, the game reveals why those unwelcome moments arrive when the story stubbornly goes on strike for no apparent reason.

This game is suitable for university textbook adoption.

Game components are not included with the purchase of the game book alone but can be improvised. The complete game box (ISBN 978-1-936262-06-9) includes all the necessary game components along with the main book and workbook.