Helping you to broaden your approach to narrative design and to play around with structure, this clear and engaging guide to crafting modular and non-linear fiction provides the foundations for writers eager to embrace alternative patterns in story sequence. With a balance of big-picture analysis and hands-on exercises and entry points, Stack, Build, Write gives writers a tour of, and workshop in, narratives that at first seem chaotic or daunting, but which can unlock a realm of structural possibilities. Making a case that linearity and modularity exist on a spectrum and that elements of both traditional and alternative arcs are present in most narratives, Christopher Lowe leads writers through the methods and processes for leaning into the modular end of the spectrum. Taking examples from writers such as Jennifer Egan, W.G. Sebald, Alice Munro, Peter Carey, Ingrid Jendrzejewski and Carmen Maria Machado and discussing modularity in film, TV and videogames from Pulp Fiction to Lost to Fallout, this book delves into novels, novellas, short stories, flash fictions and collections with detailed discussion of the key differences between how non-linearity manifests in fiction of different lengths.

With modular storytelling everywhere in fiction and media, the time is ripe for guidance that helps writers understand these forms and provide a starting point for trying them out in practice to show that they are not just experimental but that they can be stable and consistent elements in the writer's toolbox. Stack, Build, Write kicks off this conversation, providing you with an introductory knowledge of how fiction narratives that eschew a traditional causal-chain can function, enrich your work and even lead you into multimedia storytelling.