Customer Reviews

The Complete Handbook Of Novel Writing: Everything You Need to Know About Creating & Selling Your Work (Writers Digest)

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

 

 

As a reviewer and reader, I subconsciously knew some of the material here, after reading thousands of good and bad books.

Writer's Digest has gotten the best writers to discuss their art, then boiled it down to a wonderful book that had me going "YES! YES!" every few pages. Especially some of the "things not to do" discussions. For example, introducing the main character early on. The Silmarillion might be a great novel, but introduces a few hundred characters at the start. Not recommended.

The morning routine cliche, or the phone-answering cliche -- no. After looking through thousands of novel starts, I suppose I've gotten used to spotting signs. This handbook gives me new things to look for, but will also help me to be more forgiving.

One book I loved, Horker's Law, a free book, establishes an interesting set of rules at the start, then uses a short chapter to establish the entire world, then follows up with a fascinating character moseying through a typical town. Reading through the chapters of the Handbook, everything in Horker's Law seems to have been done correctly for keeping a fickle reader like me turning the pages. Many of the other books, movies, and stories I've loved seem to follow these rules of the writers.

And the books I've hated or couldn't get into -- they tend to make mistakes the writers advise against.

Highly recommended. If you're a reader, you'll like this.

EDIT -- The highlights being selected for this book are excellent.

This book is a master collection of articles on writing, on every subject imaginable. It is highly comprehensive and complete, and the articles are written by professional authors who know their stuff. Great book. Highly recommended.

I read this book because of an individual's recommendation, then the title, and then its reviews. It all lead me to visualize a `Handbook'. But, words always matter. This is not the handbook like the CRC `Handbook' of Chemistry and Physics, or the Machinery's `Handbook' or even the Boy Scout `Handbook'. This is a big, short essay collection of shot gun pattern opinions with no topic explored in depth beyond notional or what a reader might independently string together.

At 500 pages and divided in 5 parts, part 3 "Exploring Genres" might be interesting if your seeking your 'genre'. At this high level of conceptualization, you might find the collection of different utility. Yeoman purposed essays are the missing ingredient. The essays feel sorted as a post categorization from a call for papers then purposed to novel construction. The 2-3 page essays are independently entertaining.

It is an entertaining read for the reader of novels. By the end, you will have an appreciation for your notions regarding why you might and might not enjoy what you do but how the enjoyable novels are cogently packaged is not so clear or how 'bad' novels could have been otherwise is missed.

Reading a 2 or 3 page big name author's reflections is not easily transferable to crisp, vivid writing that continuously moves forward in flows of plot and sub-plot and draws the reader to demand more to finally leave the reader breathless for an hour in the dark after finishing the last page.

This is a secondary read for the would be novelist I think; a feel good collection. A quote, "Your goal is to misdirect, but never confuse" is a handbook of novel writing by cliché. This is a better reader's read than writers must have - 4 Stars as a reader's handbook. 3 -stars is a stretch as 'writer's' device.