Reading stories is one of the great joys of life. But writing about them can lift your enjoyment and appreciation of fiction to another level. Of course writing about a novel or fairy tale isn’t as easy as reading one. But the right approach can make the process doable, straightforward, and even fun! Here is a step-by-step method for writing reviews of written stories that does just that. It can also be applied to films, shows, or any other fiction format.
The Formal Critique Model
This method comes from the “Structure and Style” writing curriculum, developed by the master writing instructor Andrew Pudewa and his Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW). I highly recommend IEW’s resources, especially for homeschool parents and microschool teachers. See also my other essays on IEW: “Learning to Write and Writing to Learn,” “Building Solid Writers, Brick by Brick,” and “Of Mentors and Master Educators.”
The “Structure” in Structure and Style refers to the various “structural models” for compositions taught in the curriculum. The model used for essays about fictional stories is the “Formal Critique.” The Formal Critique essay has the three classic essay parts: Introduction, Body, and Conclusion. But IEW teaches students to write essays “inside out”: Body first, Conclusion second, Introduction last. This may sound strange, but it makes it easier to write each part. It’s tough to introduce an essay before you’ve decided where it’s going to land, or to conclude an essay before you know what it’s going to say. I found that writing this very essay “inside-out” made the process much smoother.
So the best first step is to tackle the essay’s Body. In a Formal Critique, the Body is built using a writing tool called the Story Sequence Chart. This chart is a framework for analyzing a story by breaking it down into the three essential elements of any good tale:
Characters and Setting
Conflict or Problem
Climax and Resolution.
In the simplest Formal Critique, each element gets one paragraph. So does the Introduction and the Conclusion, which means a 5-paragraph essay.
Characters and Setting
Per the Story Sequence Chart, start the Formal Critique’s Body with the Characters and Setting paragraph. But don’t jump straight into writing. For all but well-seasoned writers, that tends to result in rambling and messy paragraphs. In Structure and Style, every composition is pre-planned using a “Key Word Outline.”
A Key Word Outline has one line for each sentence you will later write. Each line covers one story detail, using a maximum of three comma-separated key words, plus unlimited symbols, numbers, and abbreviations. Each paragraph’s outline begins with a Roman numeral (I, II, etc.) for the first line, followed by indented Arabic numerals (1, 2, etc.) for subsequent lines. So a Key Word Outline for a 3-paragraph composition would look something like this:
I. word, word, word
word, word, word
word, word, word
word, word, word
II. word, word, word
word, word, word
word, word, word
word, word, word
III. word, word, word
word, word, word
word, word, word
word, word, word
For a Formal Critique, you pick details to include in your Key Word Outline by asking basic questions about the story. Often these questions involve the six classic interrogatives enshrined in verse by Rudyard Kipling:
I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who
For the Characters and Settings paragraph, ask questions like:
Who are the main characters?
What are they like?
Where is the story set?
When does it happen?
For each answer you come up with, add a line of three key words to your outline.
For example, earlier today I used the Formal Critique model to write a 5-paragraph essay about a short comic book story (“Ground Zero” from Grant Morrison’s Zenith) for my Superhero Studies Substack. This is how my Characters and Setting paragraph turned out:
The story is set in an alternate history World War II in which superhuman soldiers dramatically alter the course of the conflict. Fighting for the Allied Forces is Maximan, a British super-soldier who is impervious to bullets and strong enough to lift a tank. Maximan was engineered with the help of defecting German scientists who had participated in the Nazis’ “master race” experiments. That project spawned the Axis Powers’ own living weapon: the Übermensch Masterman.
Such a paragraph could come from a Key Word Outline like this (I say “could,” because the Key Word Outline I actually made wasn’t as clean and exemplary as this):
II. alternate, WWII, superhuman, alter
Maximan, UK, super-soldier, strong
engineered, defecting, race
weapon, Übermensch, Masterman
You can see how every sentence in the paragraph incorporates the key words from its corresponding line in the outline. Also notice how I used abbreviations to fit in more key words. And finally note that the first line of key words is preceded by the Roman numeral II. That’s because the Characters and Setting paragraph will end up being the second one, after the Introduction.
Conflict or Problem
After outlining the Characters and Setting paragraph, proceed to the Conflict or Problem paragraph, which you can outline by asking yourself questions like:
What is the conflict that needs to be settled or problem that needs to be solved?
What do the characters need or want?
What do they think, say, and do?
Here is my Conflict or Problem paragraph:
On the first page, a British newsreel confidently predicts that the patriotic hero will vanquish his Nazi foe and the war will “all be over by Christmas,” echoing a British World War I slogan. But pride goeth before the fall, and days before Christmas 1944 in a bombed-out Berlin, we see Maximan lying broken at Masterman’s feet. As the defeated super-Brit mutters a final prayer, the triumphant super-Nazi cruelly taunts him and cryptically proclaims that he and his fellow “Many-Angled Ones” will soon dominate the earth. Masterman prepares to deliver the fatal blow and all seems lost for the Allies.
This could be written from a Key Word Outline like this:
III. p1, newsreel, vanquish, Christmas, WWI
pride, 1944, Berlin, broken
prayer, Many-Angled Ones, earth
prepares, fatal, lost
Climax and Resolution
Next, outline the Climax and Resolution paragraph. To do this, ask yourself questions like:
What is the story’s turning point?
How is the conflict settled or problem solved?
What are the outcomes for the main characters?
What is the story’s aftermath?
This is my Climax and Resolution paragraph:
But in the skies above, an American airplane flies over the heads of these living weapons of mass destruction, bearing its own super-weapon. The flight crew drops the first atomic bomb, not on Hiroshima, but on Berlin, destroying the city and vaporizing both super-soldiers. In a full-page splash, we see a massive mushroom cloud mark the beginning of the Atomic Age. Finally, in a disturbing epilogue set in the rebuilt Berlin of 1987, two conspirators descend into a secret Nazi base and prepare to resuscitate what seems to be the still-living Masterman.
And here’s a Key Word Outline that could have been used to write it:
IV. skies, USA, airplane, WMDs, super-weapon
atomic, Berlin, destroying
mushroom, beginning, Atomic
epilogue, 1987, resuscitate, Masterman
Once you’ve outlined all three Body paragraphs using the Story Sequence Chart, use your Key Word Outline to write out the Body.
Conclusion and Title
Next, tackle the Conclusion. This is where you give your opinions about and interpretations of the story. Come up with the Key Word Outline details by asking questions like:
What are the story’s strengths?
What are its flaws?
What is the moral of the story? Its message? Its theme?
After completing the Key Word Outline of your Conclusion, use it to write your Conclusion. Mine was:
In a mere five pages, Grant Morrison wove an intriguing yarn that merges historical fiction with superhero fantasy. He imagined an alternate history arms race that results in the advent of superhumanity and a super-weapon that can end all humanity. Morrison thus transmuted his childhood fears of “the Bomb” into a cautionary allegory about hubris, the romanticization of war, and the weaponization of science.
And that could have been written from the following Key Word Outline:
V. merges, historical, superhero
arms, superhumanity, super-weapon
transmuted, fears, cautionary
The Conclusion can be useful for titling your essay. A title that repeats or reflects 1-3 key words from the last sentence can frame the essay nicely. My title was “Clash of the Super-Soldiers,” with “Clash” reflecting “war” and “Super-Soldiers” reflecting “weaponization of science.”
Introduction and Revision
Your last step is the first part of your essay: the Introduction. A good Formal Critique Intro will:
start with some kind of an attention getter (like a fascinating fact or an intriguing question)
name the story title
include relevant biographical information about the author
Ideally, it would also tie one of these items to something in the Conclusion (as I did below by again referring to the author’s fear of nuclear war), so that the essay will “come full circle,” which readers find satisfying. Create a Key Word Outline with a line for each item, then write out your Introduction. Mine was:
The specter of “the Bomb” has haunted Grant Morrison since he was a boy growing up in Scotland during the height of the Cold War. The acclaimed comics writer has, throughout his career, channeled that existential terror into gripping narratives with nuclear war as a recurring theme. An early example of this is his 1987 story “Ground Zero”: the prelude to his breakthrough series Zenith.
And a Key Word Outline it came from might have been:
I. Bomb, haunted, GM, boy
channeled, narratives, theme
example, “Ground Zero,” Zenith
Once you’ve done all of the above, you’ve written your first draft! Then all that’s left is to edit (proofread, reword, expand, etc) your essay to finalize it.
Writing a review with Structure and Style’s Formal Critique model is easier to do than to explain. IEW’s track record of successfully teaching it to thousands of students is a testament to that fact. I myself recently taught the model to a small group of 14-year-old students, and the book reviews they wrote with it were excellent! Once you get the hang of it, the model’s step-by-step approach makes writing a coherent, complete, and readable review is far easier than just dumping sentences onto the page with no plan. Fiction lovers especially should give it a try. Writing about stories is one of the best ways to deeply enjoy them, extract their lessons, and share them with others.