Change the way you think about stories.

In Discovering the Soul of Your Story, author Roger Rueff applies his unique perspective as a scientifically trained creative writer to identify the potent secrets that lie at the core of great stories and transform them into groundbreaking principles that you can use to create your best work and solve development problems as they arise.

• Part One—The grok Approach derives a unique new approach to story creation and shows how you can use it to develop your story along its truest course
• Part Two—Thematic Imprinting develops a universal thematic grammar and reveals how you can use it to best identify and express your story theme
• Part Three—Meta-adaptation combines the grok approach and thematic imprinting into a powerful tool that you can use to generate compelling stories from scratch

Through the generous use of step-by-step reasoning, detailed explanations, and illustrative examples, the author weaves a tapestry of practical storytelling wisdom that you can apply immediately to your story regardless of medium, type, form, or genre.

Roger Rueff's book has broken new ground. His innovative method allows a writer to identify a story's fundamental strengths and weaknesses, providing a clear understanding of what works and what needs work. I cannot recommend it more highly. W.C.—Chicago, Illinois

Roger Rueff came to creative writing by way of engineering, in which he holds advanced degrees and patents. It is the engineering need to understand how things work—and how to fix them if they go wrong—that prompted him to explore the fundamental nature of stories and led to the creation of the powerful-yet-straightforward principles that lie at the heart of Discovering the Soul of Your Story.

His creative works have been produced around the world and translated into seven languages. His best-known play is Hospitality Suite, which he adapted to the big screen for The Big Kahuna, starring Kevin Spacey and Danny DeVito. He served as the lead writer for the European Union Health Programme animated Web series Boys & Girls and is the author of Fifty Things I Want My Son to Know (Andrews-McMeel), a collection of poetic proverbs written for and dedicated to his son.

Roger and his wife live in the Lake Country of southeastern Wisconsin, where he makes a habit of Friday night fish fry and she goes for vegetarian options.