Customer Reviews

Novel Shortcuts: Ten Techniques that Ensure a Great First Draft

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I really enjoyed this book. This book is for those of you who like to plan your book before you sit down and start writing it. I am a planner. I outline the whole book and then outline, chapter by chapter, so this book was right up my alley.

I have a completed manuscript that I am editing/rewriting. One thing I had struggled with up to this point was being able to boil my main theme/plot down to one sentence. This book helped me do it with the "writing jacket copy as revelation excercise." I enjoyed the personal examples that the author used as well as examples from other works.

Whether you are just starting a novel or you have finished it and are doing revisions, this is a great book to have around. It really helps you strip away the fluff and get down to the core of your novel, from which you can work back up to ensure the fluff is necessary and purposeful. She provides techniques to get your ideas down in order to move ahead with a scene or book as a whole and helps troubleshoot and fix common problems, such as plot and characterization. I especially loved the "shortcut to a scene" chapter and the "finding the core of your novel" chapter. Also she has exercises and recommended reading throughout the book. It's really well organized and written with humour and compassion. The only thing this book could have used more of, was talking about writing your hook. Other than that, I don't feel it's missing anything, if you look at it as a book that provides possible techniques to get your plots and characters written faster. Not every technique is going to work for every writer, that's important to remember.

Do not begin to read this book unless you have a pen and paper handy! If you don't, you'll find you've marked up the book with notes, and you're going to want to keep this book pristine to refresh your memory with all the terrific tips to help you everytime you create something new. And long after you've put it down, your brain will be working overtime on how to improve your own manuscript.

This one of the best self-help books on writing to come out in a long time. Don't pass it up.

I should say from the outset, that I have no novel writing aspirations for the near future. I am strictly a short story (and poetry!) writer at this point in my life, so some of what this book covers was not as relevant to me as it would be to its targeted audience, which as near as I can tell is fiction novelists actively working on drafts of their novel.

That being said, there were many helpful tidbits of information that I was able to glean from this book and apply to my own writing. Chapter One: Finding the Core of Your Novel covers discovering the heart of your story, and factors to consider in choosing the main character, setting, and story problem for your novel.

Chapter Two: Deciding How to Tell Your Story presents some of the mechanics of telling a story, including voice, tone, storytelling devices, and point of view. This was all equally applicable to the short story. Chapter Five: Balancing Scene, Summary, and Reflection has a good discussion of how to control the pace of a story through the judicious use of summary and reflection to tie action scenes together. Chapter Seven: Stealing Tricks From the Best corroborated my belief that the best way to learn about the craft of writing is to line up books by your favorite authors, and read, read, read.

The only section of the book I found somewhat troubling was Chapter Ten: Goals and Miracles, which seemed to imply that the end goal of writing a novel is to become rich and famous. Considering how few authors will ever achieve that elite status, I would say by all means write as if you will be picked up by a big-named publisher someday if it makes you feel good, but if your primary motivation isn't the joy of the writing process itself, you'd be well advised to just hang onto that day job!

This was a nice, solid book on how to write a novel and had some good advice on how to structure plots, build suspense, etc. Most of it's stuff that I already knew (I've taken short fiction classes, etc.), but the examples used to illustrate most of the points are fairly good. (Even if I think that Whitcomb did take a bit too much from her own books. I hate it when writers do that. To be honest, I've probably never read their book, and even if I have, it sounds very arrogant. I prefer it when they pick apart classics.) It's probably worth purchasing if you want a book that goes over the basics of novel writing (i.e. plots, character development, style, etc.).

In her book "Novel Shortcuts" Laura Whitcomb provides the reader with a roadmap to writing a quality first draft novel. She presents ten proven techniques using detailed instruction, valuable exercises, and stimulating examples.

Among the suggested strategies, tools and practical pointers I found the following particularly helped me: To craft and develop stronger scenes, plots, voice, style, and description. Whitcomb's writing is well organized and presented in a logical progression. I found her recommendations for additional reading helpful.

"Novel Shortcuts" is rich in practical principles presented for today's writer. Whitcomb's strategies and techniques promise the reader a "roadmap" to writing a "High-Quality" first draft fast.

I bought this book thinking that it would be like the "No Plot No Problem" book by Baty but with some more specific direction & useful tips in getting a good first draft done. The suggestions offered are a personal account of what supposedly worked for the author. There was nothing original or even varied of what she offered. All of her advice was too general and felt more like a Remedial collection of very basic creative writing tips. And although the author may be a brilliant writer; I wouldn't know because I haven't read any of her fiction books or the other writing reference book that she cowrote; I felt like this book would leave a beginner writer with more questions than answers. In lieu of this book, get the Writer's Little Helper by Jim Smith or Creativity Rules! by Vorhaus or even The Novelist's Guide by Geraghty.

Laura Whitcomb also offers a recommended reading list almost after every section. And one almost has to read these as well as well as others to just get the meat of what she's suggesting; although some of these books are not the best out there.

So if writing 3 column lists; plot webbing; writing dialogue without tags; or selecting story structures that she calls "devices" such as fairytale, confessional, or myth helps you to jumpstart your draft - then go for it.

Although Whitcomb seemed enthusiastic about this book, I think what she offered in this book could have been summed up in a chapter or two at best. There really needs to be more substance in this book to substantiate the book's title.

Whitcomb writes so personably, and has such good, practical ideas, I am inspired to get back to writing myself! I was deeply moved by Whitcomb's novels - can't wait for the next one - and I love reading the tips and strategies she used in writing them. Now I am ready to pick up my own first draft and get back to work on it! Thank you, Laura Whitcomb!

Somehow I failed to notice this was a Writer's Digest book, or I would've known better. They published some great books back in the 1980's, but lately they're all package and no content. They've become the Llewellyn of writing books. Several passages of this book were plagiarized from Scott Meredith's "Writing to Sell." The author didn't even paraphrase. Like all of WD's stuff, it's a crazy quilt of random tips lifted from books that were written in the 80's - Paul Reynolds, Dwight Swain, etc. If it weren't for WD fogging up the marketplace with useless crazy quilt books that don't cite the superior sources they steal from, we might see a bigger generation of new and exciting writers. But editors haven't got time to edit anymore, teachers haven't got time for individual students, and the schools and publishers have all degenerated into scams now. There's no big mystery why the American literary scene sucks. The initial learning process has become tedious, expensive, isolating, and hollow.