How to Build a Story

Tactical and Practical Strategies to Engage Audiences, One Scene at a Time

By: Charles Euchner

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

UPDATED AND EXPANDED IN MAY 2025: PACKED WITH 60 SPECIFIC STEP-BY-STEP TECHNIQUES, WITH CASE STUDIES AND EXERCISES FOR MASTERY

Grab and hold your reader from start to finish.

You’re working on a story that matters. You need the advice of the best storytellers from ancient times to the present. You have come to the right place.

Whatever you're writing -- a novel or nonfiction narrative, a company history or memoir, or a story about a person, place, or event -- you need to follow a complete set of tricks and tools.

In How to Build a Story, Charles Euchner shows you 60 specific techniques to do the job.

You would benefit from Shakespeare’s maneuvers, Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway’s twists, not to mention the deft touches of modern masters like Elizabeth Gilbert and Emma Donoghue. It’s all here.

How to Build a Story works because it doesn’t repeat old bromides like “show, don’t tell” and “show characters’ inner lives.”

This guide goes deeper, by reverse-engineering the best storytellers to show you, step by step, how to create compelling characters as they confront “brick walls,” get stuck in compromising positions, and battle inner and outer demons.

Euchner taps the greatest minds of psychology, economics, anthropology, and sociology to understand how the world works-- and how to show it in your story.

Charles Euchner, the author of the renowned Nobody Turn Me Around who has taught in Yale’s renowned writing program, has not just broken down the best of the best to identify their tricks. He has also dug into the brave new world of brain research to figure out how to manage your writing process—and give your reader a compelling experience.

In just 250 short pages, Euchner shows you how to:

• Create a compelling cast of characters, using the Character Dossier and the Wheel of Character Types.
• Build scenes that reveal the “world of the story”—but also don’t detract from the characters or action.
• Show action that arouses the reader and also reveals worlds about the character and place.
• Pace scenes beat by beat, so everything matters and everything feels “whole."
• Find the details that reveal essential, telling clues, so your readers can experience your story, moment by moment, as it unfolds.
• How to tap into the senses to make your story physical and sensual—and unforgettable.
• And so much more.

Charles Euchner has taught his unique system to audiences across the U.S. He works the full range of writers--from high school students and teachers to first-time and bestselling authors. Euchner is the author of a whole library for writers. For more information, search Amazon or visit theelementsofwriting.com.