Book Review: Finding the Core of Your Story by Jordan Smith

Age Appropriate For:  All Ages

Best for Ages: 10 and up

Description: What’s your story about? It’s the most frightening question in the world if all you have is a blank stare. But what if you had an attention-grabbing answer that left your audience wanting more? It’s not only possible, it’s simple if you have the right tools. Story consultant Jordan Smith has helped countless storytellers strengthen and pitch their stories. His tool of choice is the logline, a technique for selling screenplays that is little known outside of Hollywood. Jordan has adapted this powerful tool and made it accessible to all storytellers. Not only is a logline useful for answering that frightening question, it’s also handy for keeping your story on track. If you don’t know the core of your story, you run the risk of meandering it into places where it doesn’t belong. With these techniques, you can solve story problems early before they cause you trouble.

I don’t think I have enjoyed a book on the writing craft as much as this one in a long time. I picked this up one Sunday afternoon, feeling in the mood to learn something. I came away with a skill that I didn’t even know I needed, but I am so glad I have.

Almost every book I have picked up on creative writing has been… uncreative. Not so with this book. Jordan has an engaging style of writing that made me wish he had a whole series of books on different aspects of writing. You feel like you are sitting in a small class with a personable professor who injects just the right amount of humor into his lessons.

The subject of the book itself was very timely. Writing loglines, one sentence summaries, of your story is something every author us supposed to do, but it can be very hard. Jordan made it easy. He used lots of examples that showed me how to write it. By the end of the book, I wrote three loglines that I was very proud of.

I highly recommend this book for all writers.

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