128 of 130 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Here is the novel's framework!, February 23, 2003
This review is from: The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing (Paperback)
1) At work I'm constantly encountering situations where templates/spreadsheets made by someone else save me tons of time. At the most, all I need to do are minor revisions on the template to meet my specific business need. This book is exactly like that. This is a template, a formula, that lays out one (1) suggestion on how to put a novel together.
2) This is not a book about how to write great dialogue or develope charasmatic characters(even though there are tips on how to get some of this accomplished). That is what all the other books on the market are for. This book is a blueprint, the scene by scene layout of your novel's plot structure. He gets as detailed as stating the order in which the first 15 scenes (he calls them sections) need to occur and what characters need to appear in those scenes and what in general terms need to happen.
3) This is the first book I've read so far that talks about multiple subplots and how to handle them. Thank you Mr. Marshall!
4) Normally when I take notes on a book, I find that only 10% of the book is the core of what the author is trying to teach. The other 90% are examples to support the 10%. Examples to win you over to the author's viewpoint/opinion or examples to help the reader understand the point and see a demonstration of that example. This book is just the opposite. Mr. Marshall is 90% core material and very little examples. He explains his points clear enough that if you've ever read other books on the craft of writing, then your mind grasps the concept and has already filled in the example.
Yes, when you get to this level of granularity it both shows that novel writing isn't glamours and full of spontaneous creativity. On the other hand, the formula breaks such a project up that it becomes doable, like eating an elephant one bite at a time.
**UPDATE**
A couple of co-workers and I used this "plan" to outline our novels for NaNoWriMo 2011. If it wasn't for even the basic outline of what section should come next in a 3-POV story, I would have been stuck. It's now 11/30/2011 and I'm about to write my last 3,000 words for the challenge. I couldn't have done it without the outlining genius contained in this book. Thank you Mr. Marshall!!
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76 of 78 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Good Roadmap, September 5, 2004
This review is from: The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing (Paperback)
It's not too hard to dismiss this book out of hand as being too arbitrary or deal-a-mealy. I was tempted to myself, but upon reflection I saw that while it's not perfect, it presents several advantages to going it alone.
While it's certainly possible to produce a formulaic, cookie-cutter book by following Marshall's guidelines, it's not inevitable. On the other hand, if you're too anal in your efforts of following "the plan," odds are you'd have been too anal to produce a saleable manuscript without it, as well. While it may not result in providing you with a break-out novel, the plan isn't intended to provide that result. Better to break in first, then you'll have somewhere to break out of.
As with most things, the principles behind the plan are its soundest points. I think there's room for some leeway in the execution of Marshall's points. Your decision may be different from mine, but I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt before I begin flailing around in the dark without a guide.
At first glance, though, parts of the plan seem to make no sense. For instance, in sections told from the (for lack of a more nuanced word) villain's p.o.v., Marshall says the villain never experiences failure. This doesn't mean, however, that the villain can never face a setback, but whatever setback he or she faces is resolved and turned back against the hero before the section is concluded. Likewise, I think it's fair that the hero can stymie the villain in a hero section (or the confidant/love interest in their sections), but he/she/they/it needs to recognize the inevitable repercussions for what has been done (publicly insulting Snidely Whiplash may make your hero(ine) feel good at the moment, but upon further reflection (s)he ought to have doubts about the wisdom of those words/actions).
The only thing that has left me scratching my head is that Marshall has would-be writers determining the word count of completed manuscripts by a mathematical formula based on page count, rather than as determined by word processing software. If you use an old Underwood typewriter, I suppose his way makes sense, but it seems defining a broader word count target for a genre novel would be more appropriate than eliminating "a half page of space" at a time by combining two chapters into one. Maybe this will make better sense to me when my manuscript is done and I actually have a word count in hand ("No!" my self-doubt screams, "You've found the ultimate flaw in the plan! Don't attempt to follow it! Never begin work on your novel! Use more exclamation points!!!").
Ultimately, the plan boils down to this: know your characters ahead of time; map out your plot before you begin to write, basing each section on what your character(s) did in the preceding section(s); remember to take your characters' emotional states into consideration as you develop your story and reflect it in your writing; put three big escalating "surprises" in the story and drop them in at the appropriate places within the novel; keep your prose tight and your points-of-view focused. Do you have to wait until your second draft is complete before breaking the book into chapters? I don't know, but the basics of the plan are sound whether you choose to follow them to the letter or not.
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38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A novel guide, November 27, 1999
I just had to thank Evan Marshall for giving me the opportunity to purchase The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing. It is a life-saver from beginning to end. Each step of the 16-step book gives suggestions and advice on how to. . . I have read this book many times and I am still amazed to find a chapter in Evan Marshall's Novel Writing to help me through that problem. For the little I paid for it, Marshall Plan for Novel Writing is as important to me as my dictionary, my thesaurus, or my word processor. I took a Creative Writing evening class and let others read the contents of the index. They liked what the book offered and bought copies as well. A while back I purchased Storycraft software. WHAT A WASTE OF MONEY. The Marshall Plan is available for a third of the price. I don't know if it's allowed to down Storycraft in this way but I wanted others to know. This 16-step program helped me decide the type of story I wanted to write, to how to finish a novel, along with how to write a query letter. Thanks a whole lot, Evan Marshall.
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