THE STORY WITHIN (PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE)

  • One of The Writer Magazine's "Top Ten Terrific Writing Books of the Year"

  • 8 printings from Penguin/ Random House

  • Poets and Writers Magazine The Time is Now "Book of the Week"

  • Poets and Writers Magazine "One of the Best Books Published on Writing"

  • Selected by Gotham Writers Workshop in New York City for their 78,000 writer membership

  • Excerpted in Glimmer Train, November Writer's Bulletin

  • Excerpted in The Writer Magazine, "Where to Begin" May 2012

  • 200 Likes from around the world on Facebook

  • 40 5-star reviews on Amazon

The Story Within employs the art of memoir to illuminate craft. Oliver weaves anecdotes from her life as a writer, mother, and teacher throughout this book, infusing each engaging story with fresh advice and inspiring prompts. New subjects addressed include how to use the latest discoveries in neuroscience and quantum physics to facilitate success; how to thrive in the tension between fiction and non-fiction; how to cultivate literary intuition; and how to use even a past we may regret, in a way that transforms us with good will.

The Story Within teaches how to write something funny without telling a joke and how to identify and illuminate the deeper connections hidden within your work. The book even addresses how to make the distraction of children a gift and how to make jealousy a productive tool.

Traditional subjects are also covered, including finding subject and voice, inspiration, creative points of entry, how to plot, dramatize, maintain tension and eliminate writer’s block. The Story Within enlarges the heart and reveals once again that the power of story is unsurpassed for teaching writers to write. 

What writers are saying about The Story Within

So much  has moved me in the book.   Exquisite clauses, sentences, paragraphs.   Straight-forward craft presented with such freshness that it might never have been written before.  Your huge understanding of what it is to be human. e.g.;  "...the bafflement of those who did harm."   /   "...On the wings of truth lost time is recovered in the air."  /   "But what the reader gains from the story is in direct proportion to what the author gains from writing it."  Such a gift this book is.  Thank you for writing it.

-Donna Larson

Packed with new ideas and deeply engaging, The Story Within inspires, instructs and entertains. Laura Oliver is an immensely talented writer, teacher and storyteller. This book is fun to read and will make you a better writer.  

-Jon Franklin
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism and the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.

 

Blunt, witty, relentlessly honest about the hard simplicity of the writing craft, immensely useful, and startlingly thorough. As penetrating and stimulating a craft workbook as I have ever seen.

Brian Doyle
Editor of Portland Magazine