Principles of storytelling
I read Författarskolan (“writers’ school”) by Göran Hägg. A simple, unpretentious, very funny and interesting book; unfortunately for those of you that can read Swedish, it is out of print, and for you others, I don’t know of any similar book in English to recommend. But after I read it (or actually re-read it, but I had forgotten just about everything in it) I found that I could study the “structure” of the story in a book or a movie, as well as enjoying the story.
Good stories often are very skillfully structured, and if you know a little about storytelling principles and techniques, the fact that you can “see” its structure doesn’t spoil the fun. I once saw a few episodes of a documentary series where some magician anonymously gave away the secrets of many well-known tricks. But I thought it didn’t spoil the experience. It only made apparent the skillfulness of the performers. I feel this to be the case for the principles of storytelling as well. For a good story, you only appreciate it more if you can see how it is “done”.