Brick by Brick: How to Build a Story

Most writing craft books, courses, and workshops focus on the tools for being a writer and how to use them: dialog, setting, pacing, plot, openings, exposition, point-of-view. And so on.

And on and on and on.

Their aim is to add another tool, or maybe even a set of tools, to your writer's toolbox.

The problem with that approach is the vast gulf in knowledge between having your toolbox filled with tools and applying those tools to create a story.

Those craft books are the equivalent of telling a rookie construction worker, "Here's how to use a hammer, saw, level, screwdrivers, band saw, power drill, etc. Got that? Great! Now go build a house."

In this book, Douglas Smith, a five-time award-winning author described by Library Journal as "one of Canada's most original writers of speculative fiction," takes a different approach.

In these pages, Doug will show how to design that house so that you can build it. You'll learn how to create a blueprint for your story idea to take you from inspiration to story structure, a structure you can then build, brick by brick.

Or rather, scene by scene.

"One of Canada's most original writers of speculative fiction." —Library Journal

"The man is Sturgeon good. Zelazny good. I don't give those up easy." —Spider Robinson, Hugo and Nebula Awards winner

"A great storyteller with a gifted and individual voice." —Charles de Lint, World Fantasy Award winner

"His stories are a treasure trove of riches that will touch your heart while making you think." —Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo and Nebula Awards winner

"Echoes of Stephen King, Richard Matheson, and Clive Barker haunt the halls of Smith's work, but the end result is completely original, and always enthralling." —Cory Redekop

"Smith is a master of beginnings … some of the most well-crafted hooks you'll find anywhere: deft introductions to the characters and their not-quite-familiar worlds packed into just a sentence or two that draw the reader in. As for the endings … Smith's tendency is to forego the shocking twist for endings that feel satisfying and right, a trade-off that I'll take any day." —Canadian Science Fiction Reviews

"Smith's writing, evocative yet understated, gracefully brings to life his imagined realms." —Quill and Quire

"Smith paints his worlds so well that you are transported within a paragraph or two and remain in transit until the story ends." —Broken Pencil, The Magazine of Zine Culture and the Independent Arts

"I've yet to read a work of his that wasn't beautifully written, but more than that, his stories resonate with a deep understanding of the human condition as well as a characteristic wry wonder… Stories you can't forget, even years later." —Julie Czerneda, award-winning author and editor

"Douglas Smith is an extraordinary author whom every lover of quality speculative fiction should read." —Fantasy Book Critic