It's kind of rare anymore that I find a new how-to-write book that looks interesting, but Blueprint Your Bestseller by Stuart Horwitz caught my interest. The basic concept is that anyone who has at least half a novel manuscript or long script can analyze what they've already written to identify important thematic strands and project what needs to be in the rest of the manuscript, as well as identifying what's most important and might need added to vs. what's least important and might get trimmed away. He doesn't mention the possibility, but it was immediately obvious to me that even if one doesn't have half a manuscript this analytical exercise can be done on the body of one's previous works to identify thematic strands that recur throughout your work and are thus likely to pop up in a new thing you want to write.

The only thing about the book that disappointed me was that it didn't have a section about how to brainstorm missing scenes, even though it mentioned brainstorming missing scenes as a standard final step of the exercise. I figured out why after I listed to an interview the author had done online - he described his approach to the actual writing as Buddhist and meditative, a complete contrast to the analytical approach of the Blueprint book. He must have intended the writers doing the exercise to naturally become inspired to write any missing scenes and just go do it. Not really useful to me, but oh well, the theme analysis part was very interesting. I ended up with a sort of "universal diagram of a sunandshadow story". Perhaps the most interesting point was how closely related the internal conflict and external conflict were.