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Summary: A Must Read
Review: "Stealing Fire from The Gods" is like a rediscovered, ancient remedy for the ailing creative soul. Bonnet has tapped into a wellspring of lost knowledge that goes to the very core of the creative unconscious, unlocking the natural storyteller that is encoded in each and every one of us.
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Summary: If you find this fascinating...
Review: ...then I can highly recommend "Maps of Meaning" by Jordan B Peterson, which uncovered whole new layers for me of the meaning of myths in our lives.
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Summary: And then, .....Wow!
Review: As a writer with work published in numerous national venues, such as OMNI, Success, Writer's Digest, Reader's Digest and more, it is a great pleasure to find, after 20 years of writing, such a great collection of stimulating, visionary, inspiring, yet at the same time immediately useful and practical ideas. I thought I was buying a book on writing, on story structure concepts. Little did I know that I was going to discover, in addition to an extraordinary book on writing, a profound treatise on understanding being human. James Bonnet has written a book every psychologist should read. Having already read and immensely enjoyed Robert McKee's Story Structure, Christopher Vogler's Writer's Journey and other books on writing, I was amazed by how much new and different material, really transcendent, creative, mind stretching, James Bonnet offers in his book. When a story works, it produces magic-- taking you on a ride, pulling your heart strings, making you connect with and feel the emotions, adventures and thoughts of the main characters. This book gives you amazingly precise, insightful strategies for building stories that work, that go to the reader's heart and soul. The book uses an understanding of mythology and more important, of the creative unconscious-- of both the writer, reader or viewer. He takes the ideas of Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung and weaves them into what he calls a Golden Paradigm, which uses visual charts which make it much easier to begin to understand the multiple levels his concepts apply to. I put off writing a review to this book. After all, how do you describe the substance you've stolen from the Gods? But I am grateful to him for the new energy and excitement I've discovered in my own writing. I can't wait till James Bonnet offers one of his storymaking workshops on the east coast, as well as the ones he's been doing in California. An update: Since writing this review, I've read and perused numerous other books on story creation. This one still stands high on the list of must reads. I've put together a website about the Story conference I have organized-- StoryCon; The Art Science and Application of Story, at storyscience.com, where you can find a lot more information on who I think are the top experts in story creation. Most have written books you can find here on Amazon and some even have links directly to their books.
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Summary: Create stories that will live forever.
Review: Dear Reader, I'd like to thank you for taking an interest in this book. You will not be disappointed. It is a true cracking of the story code and puts forth revolutionary new ideas concerning the nature and purpose of story, the meaning of metaphor and myth, the creative unconscious, and the art of storymaking. It's special emphasis is on how the great myths and legends were really created and how contemporary stories with that kind of magic and power can be created again. Armed with this new, deeper understanding of story, there is no limit to the power and art that can be created through them. The reader will know how to tap powerful creative sources deep within themselves and have the tools to use modern metaphors to create stories as significant for today as King Arthur and The Iliad were for their time. This book will, therefore, be of great interest to every type of storymaker, since it contains important new knowledge about story that is not available anywhere else and is relevant no matter what kind of story, true or fiction, you want to write, for whatever medium -- film, television, novels, plays, and so on. It should also be of interest to producers, editors, studio executives, and anyone else whose livelihood depends on an understanding of what makes a story great or successful. It is, in fact, everything the storymaker needs to know about his craft, and it should impact storymakers like the " good news." But there is much more to this book than that - the secrets of great stories, it turns out, are the secrets of the human mind. And the study of story is the study of this remarkable phenomenon. Every great story reveals some small piece of that magnificent mystery. People interested in self-help should be interested in this book because story and storymaking are healing arts; they are ultimate self-help tools. A knowledge of story and the act of storymaking are essential links in a creative process that can reconnect us to our lost or forgotten inner selves. An understanding of story leads inevitably to an understanding of these dormant inner states and to a perception of the outline and stages of the path which can lead us back to who we were really meant to be. In short, a vast, unrealized potential exists within all of us which a knowledge of story and storymaking can help to make real. Ultimately, this book could be of interest to everybody since its core element, THE GOLDEN PARADIGM, reveals universal patterns that embody, touch, and affect every facet of our lives. The archetypes, patterns of action, and cycles of transformation revealed in story are the same archetypes, patterns and cycles which run through every individual and every group, and are being played out in all of life's important stages. If you understand these patterns, you understand the world, your place in the scheme, and the paths which can lead you to self-realization and success.
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Summary: Entering the Stream of the Storyteller!!!
Review: Having read a great deal of Joseph Campbell's work on myth and the Hero's Journey and being in the process of writing a screenplay, I was greatly relieved to find Jim Bonnet's book Stealing Fire from the Gods. Here is a man who has taken the painstaking process of aligning all of the lessons of the mythic journey to our modern day rendition of the old storytellers, screenwriting. In a step by step process, Jim lays out the process in such a way that a mental formula is created in one's mind as to how their individual story is tracking to the concepts and metaphors of the hero's journey. All done in a way that one can review their own work with a guidepost to track the progress with the power of the hero's journey. But, do not take this warning lightly. Once you commit to working with this process, it does not stop once you finish the book. Having re-read the book multiple times now, I find it to be a slightly different and deeper read with each pass. Each pass through it opens a new cavern in the recesses of the process and the wisdom pores out like a flame from the torch in the inner recesses of the ancient wisdom. Venture forth with this in mind and enjoy the read and the journey!!!
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Summary: Worse than Useless
Review: Here is a book that manages to offer nothing new to the ideas set out in Vogler's "The Writer's Journey," while claiming to be both work- and life-changing. It takes more than a slew of poorly-drawn diagrams to understand story structure, and it takes more than "one side of the circle is the hero having a problem, and the other is him solving the problem" to get to the heart of conflict and character change. But that's all you get here. Stick with Vogler. His version of mythic structure may be limited and in need of revision, but it's infinitely more useful than this pap.
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Summary: Worse than Useless
Review: Here is a book that manages to offer nothing new to the ideas set out in Vogler's "The Writer's Journey," while claiming to be both work- and life-changing. It takes more than a slew of poorly-drawn diagrams to understand story structure, and it takes more than "one side of the circle is the hero having a problem, and the other is him solving the problem" to get to the heart of conflict and character change. But that's all you get here. Stick with Vogler. His version of mythic structure may be limited and in need of revision, but it's infinitely more useful than this pap.
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Summary: The book of all books
Review: I am a screenwriting and first-time filmmaker. I have read almost every book on story to fine-tune my craft: I have read, Aristotle: Poetics, I have watched the video's on Joseph Campbell, I have read Chris Vogler's, Hero's Journey, I have read the screenwriting Gurus from Sid Field, Linda Segar, to Michael Hauge. Let me tell you...I have been searching for the secret...the one thing that makes a good story...that magic that captures one's emotions, the element that makes a story a legend in the mind and hearts of the people who see it. I thought I'd found it with Voglers, but his method seemed to apply only to a specific format centered around the Hero. This works with Wizard of Oz, Star Wars and Titantic but it didn't work with other stories. Then I stumbled upon "Stealing Fire from the Gods". James Bonnet's created a method called the Golden Paradigm "story wheel" It is unbelievable! It cracks the code to great story telling. His method is based on the key elements to telling a great story using the archetypal patterns that all of us go through in our journey through life. This was it! There is even a metaphysical relationship in his teachings as it relates to the human body and the energy centers/emotions/archetypes discussed in the Eastern Philosophies. James doesn't leave out anything! You can take any story, any film, and apply it to Bonnet's story wheel and crack it's story formula. Most people think this stuff is beyond a mortal's understanding- that it is only meant for the Gods to know. Out of all my books on my shelf, I feel like encasing this one in gold and putting on the top of my altar. It deserves worship. When you read this book you truly feel like you are stealing fire from the Gods. Thanks James for all your hard work and all the years you spent searching for immortality. I just hope the Gods aren't angry.
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Summary: This book is the greatest gift any writer can give themself
Review: I am an independent filmmaker and writer in the Bay Area, and I just recently finished Stealing Fire From the Gods.
Bonnet's work is absolute genius. I have always had this burning conviction inside myself as a writer to tell the TRUTH. To pull realism from the aspects I see in life and craft my characters to be real and true and human. I knew I had an even more important goal to achieve as a storyteller, but I couldn't put my finger on it. When watching films that had it, I of course could point it's quality out, but I did not know
how those film's invisibly touched me. Unlike most films, I related to these few somehow and "got" what the filmmaker's were trying to say in such a way that they moved me.
I read the first ten pages of Stealing Fire in a bookstore, and my jaw dropped..... This was it!!!! This is what I've been working toward in all my stories. This is the REAL truth. I've read the book now, and am so enlightened. No kidding, I would
pay thousands of dollars for the wisdom it's awakened inside me now. Bonnet has shown me how I always wanted to tell stories and gave me the easy ways to break them down into the blocks necessary to build them. The secrets to those movies I'd see that touched me, are no longer invisible and I understand them now.
I cannot thank him enough for how he has changed my writing, and my current script (which was missing something) just started to click for me, because I know where I am going now. I am no longer caught up in the glitsy sugar-coating-but-no-substance phase common in today's films, and am on the path to sharing my wisdom with my audience.
This book has taught me that to be a Great Writer, I need to teach my audience the ancient lessons I have learned in my life, and enlighten them as I would a friend. The Great Stories are how we've always shared this wisdom and how we evolve as humanity. Fascinating!!!!
If you read this, Thank you James Bonnet.
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Summary: From a beginner
Review: I am reading this book now and I think that it lives up to most of what people say about it. It is the most complete theory of story that I have seen but as such it also takes time to absorb. In fact, I can see spending a lot of time referring to this book as I read and write. There is one caveat from Jung however who cautions people against reductionist interpretations of symbolic language. Life is too complex to have only one model. With that in mind, this seems like a great place to start. If you're looking for a nice counterpoint to this book, one which reaches similar conclusions but does so in a way that is more subtle and elegant, check out King's On Writing.
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