Includes index.

Subtitle from cover.

Introduction -- Free yourself from the paralyzing rules of fiction. Prologues ; Description ; -ly adverbs ; Purple prose and painted paragraphs ; The immediate inciting incident ; "To be" verbs ; Show versus tell ; Begin with action ; Point of view ; Speech attributions ; Outlining ; That ; Switching between storylines ; Floating body parts -- Gerunds, participial phrases, sentence fragments, beginning with conjunctions, ending with prepositions, and passive voice. Breaking the fourth wall ; Weasel words ; Read everything ; Elmore Leonard's rules ; The big enchilada -- The great commandment of fiction. Hacking your reader's brain ; Character brain-plot brain ; A brain chemistry story map ; What's it all about, Alfie? -- The brain's greatest hits. The monomyth ; Archetypes ; Aristotle's Rhetoric -- Conclusion -- About the author -- Index.

"The Irresistible Novel frees you from the limits of so-called "rules" and instead provides you with a singular goal: you must engage your readers from beginning to end. Filled with down-to-earth discussions on the various debates of writing, as well as innovative research on neuroscience and reader response, this book shows you how to: Navigate the various debates on writing fiction--showing versus telling, purple prose, outlining, writing description, and more--to decide what kind of novelist you want to be. Hack your reader's brain to hook her interest and trigger emotional engagement from the very first page. Incorporate enduring elements of storytelling from masters like Joseph Campbell, Aristotle, and Carl Jung" --