Brooks makes the point many times that the problem for many writers is that they didn't know what they didn't know. True in my case, and there is a great deal of knowledge in here about the craft of story that will balance that equation more in favour of knowing than ignorance. It's a little heavy going at times, especially when he delves into quartiles and percentages etc., and in term of non-genre fiction, some of it is open to a certain amount of licence, as he admits himself. However the essence of it is sound in terms of what makes stories work and what makes them fail.