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Brick by Brick

How to Build a Story

By: Douglas Smith

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Paperback | 15 September 2026

At a Glance

Paperback
162 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.86 x 15.24 x 1.04

Paperback

RRP $30.79

$30.75

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Let a multi-award-winning writer teach you 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.

~~~

"In his decades as a freelance writer, Doug's learned that the important thing about fiction isn't the mastery of the tools, but how to use them to create a story structure. That's why this book has the construction analogy in its title. He's not teaching you how to write like everyone else; he's teaching you how to use an expected structure to be your very best writerly self."

- Kristine Kathryn Rusch, multi-award-winning author and editor

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