Customer Reviews

Advanced Writing: Fiction and Film

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is the first review I have posted on Amazon because I was outraged enough to publish a rebuttal to the otherwise glowing testimonies you see here. I recently ordered a shipment made up entirely of screenwriting how-to books and, of the six I purchased, "Advanced Writing" was the second one I picked up to read (the first was Wendell Wellman's "A Writer's Roadmap" which, being as concise as it was useful, I read in one sitting. I highly recommend it).

As is the common practice, I based all of my book choices on the customer reviews - a time-consuming and frustrating enterprise, given that so many books inspire contradictory appraisals. Who to believe? People feel passionately about their books and money well (or poorly) spent. And so it was with a sense of gratitude that I added Draughon's book to my shopping cart - there were only a handful of reviews but all had given the maximum five stars. The moral of the story? DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ. This, of course, applies to my own review, but if I can save one screenwriter/filmmaker from wasting their hard-earned money on this poor excuse for a manual, then the time I spent earning the $21.95 to buy this book, will not have gone entirely to waste.

Don't be fooled by the table of contents - contrary to the author's claim that his book is intended for those with "college level intellectual sophistication" and "writers who are ready to take the next and final step towards becoming good writers", reading this book gave me the distinct (and icky) sensation of being dumbed down and preached to. Draughon is downright unhelpful - his prose is tedious and cumbersome, reaping 'insights' that are simplistic and condescending. Moreover, he has a chip on his shoulder that compels him to take a jab at critics, reviewers and anyone else who doesn't subscribe to his own view - time that would be better spent illuminating the reader on the subject of writing instead. But I will let the writer speak for himself. Some of his tips include:

Page 4 - On audience motives: "Some people want to immunize themselves against certain problems by, for instance, laughing at those problems. By laughing at the characters who have similar problems, they can laugh at their own problems and prevent themselves from feeling the effects of these problems as much."

Page 177 - "In order for the reader to believe that the two people would in fact fall in love, each of the characters must be: 1) attractive. This refers to the appearance of body parts, which need to be described or shown effectively. The writer must make the reader/viewer desire the opposite sex character, not merely show the opposite character desiring him/her. 2) eligible. The reader or audience is not going to invest emotional energy in hoping that a relationship will form unless both characters are available. They can be available emotionally even if one or both are married. 3) The reader/audience must not only be told how desirable these two characters are, they must see it and feel it themselves etc. etc."

And it goes on and on. Of course, the book isn't all bad - it is `gold' in that you could open it up randomly at any point and find something as hilarious as the excerpts above. And I have to admit to agreeing with the author on one matter and taking his advice: "some readers may discover that they have better ways to spend their evenings than with such a character. They tolerate the irritation for awhile, then put the book down. Permanently."

P.S. Another writing book I strongly recommend is "The Courage to Write" by Ralph Keyes. Interestingly enough, both Keyes' and Wellman's books had plenty of rave reviews by credible sources on their jacket sleeves - something that was glaringly absent in Draughon's book. This might explain the beef he has with critics and reviewers.

There are so many HOW TO books out there, and sadly, most of them are subpar. Mostly they are hacks of hacks. A few are useful. A few might be insightful. If you want to learn the basics, you can find those books in any search on screenwriting or fiction writing.

Now, this book doesn't waste your time with the basics. Instead, the author analyzes all the ingredients of great writing/great film. Dynamics of Hope, Threat, and Need to Know are explored. Characters and character appeal, reader and audience appeal are also explored. Honestly, I can tell you that if you want to raise your story telling to a professional level, this IS the book. This author is analytical and insightful in ways that all the others are not. Any hack moron can tell you that you need a plot or a three act structure or those basics. But this writer goes far beyond that, exploring what makes a story more compelling and engrossing. I bought this book two weeks ago and have been reading it very slowly because there is just so much wonderful stuff to absorb.

Here is a chapter breakdown:
Introduction
Reader and Audience Appeal
Global Constraints
Large-scale Desiderata
Dynamics: Threat
Dynamics: Hope
Dynamics: Need to Know
Consummation Scenes
Characters
Character Appeal
Relationships
Architecture and Design
Sequential Structuring
The Set-up or Problem Situation
Beginnings
Endings
Scenes and Embodiment
Voice
The Line Level
Description and Setting
A Note on Comedy
Developing and Testing a Theory of Writing
Endnotes

As you can see, the author delves into all of it, giving the reader opportunity after opportunity to analyze their story and see where it fits in, how they can improve it, what it might be missing if it's not selling, etc.

There's a sort of common sense approach about this book, but it's the sort of common sense writers tend lose when they have a story in mind, and they are so passionate about it that they overlook some of the key ingredients any well written work needs. But DO NOT mistake this for some sort of cookbook to churn out script after script or novel after novel. It's simply a study of techniques - all the things that make a good story a great story or even a bad story a good one.

The insight this book will give you is worth it's weight in platinum. This book should be the one all writers read after they've got down the 'basics' of their craft. It definitely is advanced and it will help advance any writer's story to the top of the pile.

The basic premise here is as sound as it is obvious: You must hook the reader/viewer from the outset, and then keep him/her hooked. The book is thus about the tricks of the trade in reader/viewer hooking. The author disparages "devices," but in fact offers nothing but. His views are offered as dogma, usually in a way that summarily trashes other views. For example, on p. 257: "Most books on fiction writing present this [first or third person use] as a choice for the writer. The choice is spurious. Third person should be used. Readers object when character suffering is presented in the first person: the character is perceived as whining; [...]" That simple. It is fortunate that Salinger wrote "The Catcher in the Rye" without the benefit of this book's advice.

Draughon is very big on coining new terms, since according to him the old ones are either misleading or meaningless. For example, still on p. 257, the term "stance" appears for the first time in the following sentence: "Three questions are confounded under this single term [point of view]: (1) whether one or more than one stance is used to tell the story, [...]" So far, no explanation of what the author means by "stance". The next use of the term is two paragraphs down: "More than one stance should be used." Still no explanation. At the third use we get it, sort of: "Shifts in stance (that is, shifts in "point of view") are [...]" This seems to indicate that "stance" is synonymous with "point of view", but that the author prefers "stance" for the novelty of it.

Apparently this kind of thing is "advanced" stuff. It seems to constitute the how-to side of the author's new theory of writing, which is offered in another book. The I-am-the-smartest-person-I-know tone is irritating, as are the incessant put-downs of "N.Y. editors" and "academics." Enough already! The useful content of this book - yes, there is some - could have been boiled down to a dozen pages.

If you think Draughon's advice will get you past the much-vilified "N.Y. editors," think again. It hasn't worked for him. All his books, including this one, were self-published through iUniverse or its subsidiaries. You might want to save your money toward the $499 minimum package at iUniverse. After all, even James Joyce had to self-publish at first.

In Writing Popular Fiction Loren Estleman warns book buyers to beware of self-published authors. This is an example of why.
The author restates the familiar using an idiosyncratic vocabulary that adds nothing. Since you cannot access the contents on Amazon you won't know how little you're buying until you spend $30.

Their are occassional tid bits of interest(hence the two stars) but IMO it's not worth wading through circa 300 pages of obfuscation to find them.

This book is basically a bunch of the author's opinions on the elements of good fiction and film. These elements carry rather abstract titles such as 'character appeal', 'consummation scenes' etc.; the rest have been listed by other reviewers so I won't repeat them. The ensuing chapters amble around the subject,however, and give no real insight as to how these principles might be applied practically.
The author's primary opinion consists of a vehement bias against what he terms 'academic' fiction, which he claims people do not enjoy and read only to impress other people at dinner parties. The constant reiteration of this opinion borders on rant.
Now I'm not completely averse to the notion that there are genre writers who could show 'literary' writers a thing or two, but in a book dubbed 'advanced' writing, I expected a very detailed explication of craft, not these discursive ramblings on what the author considers to be good, bad or indifferent in film and fiction.
Others have noted the overburdened syntax, and it is distinctly irritating. I quote one sentence from page 19:
'Of course, ex post facto criteria of any sort can also be used by the human artist in guiding the generating of the novel or drama in the first place, since they can be applied as soon as some component of the novel or drama to which they are relevant is thought of or created.'
I rest my case!

I agree with Pilgrim & Antonio on this one...
A third of the way through & I'm not sure I can suffer the "Advanced" chip factor-relative to inherent value. Yuck!

There are many writing books on the market. Most repeat the information in all the others. Usually, there is one new idea, and it is almost always a very minor one.

Advanced Writing: Fiction and Film is different. It is filled with much new and original information. Some specifics are given below. Also, the book is very dense: almost every paragraph has a new piece of information in it. It is necessary to stop and think after most paragraphs to get the benefit. There are numerous examples, but no chitchat. The purpose of the book is to inform, not to entertain. If this book had been written the way most writing books are, it would have required a four-volume set.

Another difference of this book is that it discusses the advantages of using the various techniques it presents as well as the possible problems or pitfalls of each. Not everything is clear-cut in writing. Much if not most is debatable, and this book takes you into some of the advantages and disadvantages of the various techniques.

Still another difference is the recognition that in order to achieve certain goals in a novel or movie, other goals may have to be sacrificed. For instance, more thorough characterization may lead to slower pace. How much pace should you give up for how much characterization? And so on. This is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The book takes you into the labyrinth of such problems. In discussing such issues, this book forces you to think and to solve problems for yourself. After careful study of this book, the generalizations in other books will be seen as vague and as open to possible objections.

Some specifics:

The book discusses the relation between conflict and threat and argues that threat is more basic than conflict. It also gives you the hierarchy of threats and the levels of threat and discusses the uses of the different kinds and levels. It also makes explicit the relation between the threats used in a novel or movie and a particular scene which these point to, and the ways in which this relation can be ruined or the scene short-changed (or even omitted).

The discussion of scene in general moves beyond the usual beginning, middle, ending view of scene to a much more elaborate analysis of the possibilities of a scene. In fact, the book points out that only certain scenes should have an ending.

The book makes explicit the five broad categories of reader or viewer appeal and discusses numerous subcategories within each, and makes it clear that the appeals should be created beforehand during the design phase rather than tacked on after the book or screenplay is written. Perhaps the most devastating idea is the fact that different readers or viewers find different things appealing. Everybody knows this, but no writing book discusses the vast implications of this fact.

A few writing books may discuss relationships, but usually they are tacked onto a discussion of characterization. This book holds that relationships are a factor of equal importance to characters, that (figuratively speaking) a relationship is like another character in the novel or film. A whole chapter is devoted to relationships.

A few books have begun to talk about likeable characters in the last three years, but this book discusses the difference between character appeal and character likeability and discusses literally dozens of ways to achieve both.

It also discusses acceptable and unacceptable ways of making a character repellant. Every book says to avoid the villain stereotype, but most are of little help beyond that.

Most books mention voice and some have a long and totally vague discussion of voice. This book not only makes the notion of voice clear but presents dozens of kinds of ways to do voice. Moreover, other books seem to assume that if you can give a character a voice, you've done something good. This book goes further and discusses the important of giving your various protagonists appealing voices and your antagonists unappealing ones.

The notion of possibly multiple protagonists and especially of multiple antagonists brings us to structure. This book presents kinds of macro-structure and ways to do micro-structure effectively.

Another interesting difference is the distinction between happy endings and satisfying endings.

And this list merely scratches the surface. If you want this information and all the other information in this book, you won't find it in other books. You'll have to get this one. The good news is that the information is available at last. This book gives you a fighting chance if you take the time to study it, ponder the issues it raises and review it from time to time.

Good grief, this fellow is bitter against "literary fiction." And yet his condescending tone makes you feel as though he's talking down to you, just like the academics and NY editors he complains about...

Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maas is much more helpful AND fun to read!

Advanced Writing:Fiction and Film, by Wells Earl Draughon, is a virtual roadmap for conceptualizing and formulating a successful novel or screenplay. It would be an excellent choice for classroom use as a textbook for college-level writing courses. It is a detailed instruction manual for the advanced student, and serves also as an indispensable guideline for critiquing rough drafts and works in progress. The author has obviously made an exhaustive study of hundreds of novels and films. He uses his expertise to make countless comparisons of good vs. bad and strong vs. weak novels and screenplays, in order to help the writer avoid the kind of mistakes and pitfalls which can keep a story from achieving its full potential as a popular and financial success. Film producers would do well to study this book. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in creating a well-crafted novel or screenplay.

There are so many "how to" books out there by people who don't even know how to themselves; it depresses me when would-be writers take the advice of those to heart. This is not one of those books. Wells Draughon lays out a very straightforward analysis of useful writing styles, explaining the positives and negatives of each one, ending each point with closing thoughts about when each technique should or should not be used. Keep in mind that the reader of this book, as explained in the introduction, is expected to already know about different writing techniques, and have read multiple books on the topic, of which Draughon makes reference when he wants to provide an example. This book is extremely useful, but only if you are proficient enough to understand it; i.e. Advanced Writing.