Customer Reviews

The Weekend Novelist

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The beauty of the ORIGINAL edition of this book is its simplicity and its straightforward style. It was/is the ultimate how to write a novel if you also have to have a day job guide.

This second edition is full of hot air! It's laden with jargon and complex diagrams, assumes the reader knows way too much. Concedes completely that writers should adjust their vision because today's readers have been corrupted by TV and film. I STRONGLY disagree with the shift in focus from character to plot. I too will hang on to my worn copy of the original.

Don't bother buying this one. It's not worth the money.

Before I begin, I'd just like to clarify something. I'm not sure which page this review will end up on - the page for the first edition, or the second. It belongs on the page for the second.

The first edition is the one with a plain yellow cover and a small picture of a typewriter in the center. It's the plainer of the two. The second edition is the one with the glossier cover, and a co-author as well as Robert J. Ray.

That being cleared up, I'll begin.

I've owned the first edition of this book for several years now. I've worn it to shreds - it helped me write my first novel, dig me out of writer's block, and give me the drive to search for a career in writing. The margins of the pages are all filled with penciled-in notes, and I know almost all of the exercises by heart.

So when I saw that a new, expanded edition had come out, I was estatic.

It was only after I bought it and sat down to read it that I remembered the true, if slightly cliched, saying: "if it's not broken, don't try to fix it."

The new edition of The Weekend Novelist has tried to become too many things. The first edition does what it says it will, and it does it with a quiet grace. This book is full of large, black letters, and assurances that writing will the most difficult thing you've ever done, that it almost certainly can't be done, and that it shouldn't be attempted.

In an attempt to cover more types of novels, the new edition has introduced two new forms of plotting your novel. In addition to the old, linear Aristotle's Incline, there are two new forms: the circular Hero's Journey and Mythical Journey. This would work well, but the references to different points in them are vague, it's difficult to tell when you should use the Journey plots, and the information isn't very coherent. The first edition used one book (The Accedental Tourist) as an example, and it worked wondefully. The new edition uses dozens of books as examples, the result being a large, difficult-to-wade-through mess. I was constantly forgetting which book was which, and having to flip back to find out.

Robert J. Ray's first edition was beautifully written. It praised the act of writing through writing, and it quietly stole your respect. This new edition, like I said before, seems jaded. It makes every part of writing sound like a difficult chore. Instead of inspiring me to write, it made me frightened of my own notebook.

Perhaps the thing that I was most dissapointed in was the book's lack of structure. The first edition weaves all the exercises together seamlessly. This one is confusing - the pieces don't fit together. You'll be left with a series of exercises that aren't coherent, wondering how on earth to connect them all.

And it doesn't even get you to the end of your novel! The front cover guarantees you a completed novel within a year, but this new edition completely demolishes the chapters about the second and third drafts. It makes vague references to them - but then, after you've finished the first draft, it gives two small, frustrating chapters about memoirs and screenwriting - not about novels at all!

This second edition has definitely changed for the worst. The exercises are still good, but they lack something to pull them all together. There are lots of conflicting examples, and the whole tone of the book is depressing. Buy this book, but buy the first edition. It's the real masterpiece.

I've read all of the so-called writing gurus, John Gardner, Janet Burroughs, Dwight Swain etc., but this is the one that has been most helpful.
Don't be put off by the title. This was how Robert Ray wrote his first novel; I don't think he means to imply that everybody should write only on weekends.
If you're a beginning writer, Ray will take you from idea all the way through three rewrites. The first thing he will do is help you get to know your characters. You will write a back story for each of your main characters, you will come up with a time line, and you will dress them for business. When you finish they will start to come alive for you.
Next he will provide a structure for your novel, something I've been led to believe is the biggest problem for beginning novelists. Ray uses the Three Act method. Act one is where you show the problematic situation and bring your main characters on stage. Act Two is where you build complications. Act Three is the climax and resolution for your novel. Ray will help you fashion plot points that will help you write all the way to the end. There are three of them, plot points one and two and midpoint, which will give you targets to aim at. Ray also emphasizes chains of events before and after each plot point which will further hold your work together.
Every time I start a new novel I skim over the WEEKEND NOVELIST. The man clears things up. I had no idea how rhythm worked in a novel until I reread this book. The scales have fallen from my eyes. What's really surprising is that the book is out of print (Used copies are available). It was originally a Dell Trade Paperback but I got it from Writer's Digest Book Club. They need to republish this baby; it will enhance their somewhat suspect reputation.

I wish I had studied this book before I ever put pen to paper. I used to think that if only I had something very interesting to write about, then all I would have to do is start writing, and a great story would magically appear. Robert Ray helped me understand just how much planning and preparation go into writing a good novel, as well as what to focus on when plotting your story. There are three things in particular that this book taught me which were especially helpful.

First, this book taught me that what really drives a novel is the characters and their relationships to each other and to events. I looked at Grisham and Clancy and thought that smooth prose filled with action would make a novel into a bestseller. Although that is sometimes true, Robert Ray showed me that the real key to a compelling, meaningful story is a stellar character through which the reader can identify. A good character can drive the whole novel.

The second thing this book taught me, which was perhaps the most valuable for me, is that the basic building block of the novel is not the chapter or even the major plot points, but the individual scenes. Robert Ray shows that each scene is like a compact story within your story, with a set-up, a middle part for conflict and development, and a climax which pushes the story into the next scene. The section on scene building in this book was excellent, and it gave me the breakthrough I needed in understanding how to give a story real structure.

Finally, this book helped me understand the importance of the major plot points, and what has to happen in the scenes at these points in order to make your writing tight.

In addition to the above, this book has many basic tips on how to organize yourself, how to approach your writing, and how to work through the major revisions of your story. There's even an appendix at the end with tips on getting published.

For an amateur like me who has never had any classes in story writing, this book was the most helpful guide that I was able to find.

Robert J. Ray's "The Weekend Novelist" can help just about anyone realize their potential as a novelist. I don't think any of us out there can drop everything to become a professional novelist (unless you're born into wealth, I guess). We all have to work sometime. So, Mr. Ray puts together a program that will allow you to not only write a novel on the weekends but also write a novel with depth and meaning.

Before I read this book, I wrote lots of short stories and the start of a few novels. I used this book to turn some of my old ideas into the reality of a manuscript.

I felt myself getting bogged down at first by following his program of hashing out the details of the lives of the characters. But I quickly realized the commitment that is involved in writing a novel. It's important to develop meaningful characters/structure before you start writing.

Thanks, Mr. Ray! I highly recommend this book to any aspiring writer.

Mr. Ray's Weekend Novelist is an excellent reference book. However, I wouldn't necessarily use it as a template for writing a novel . . . unless you plan on writing novels similar to Mr. Ray's or to Ann Tyler's "The Accidental Tourist", the novel that Ray uses as an template throughout citing it as a perfect example of a well written novel.

For those new to the daunting task of writing a novel, this book can pigeonhole you into thinking this is the only way to tackling writing. I came across that dilemma. After getting halfway through the book, doing the exercises and starting to write my own novel I began to abandon my old habits of writing and started to adopt Mr. Ray's. I started to feel that I couldn't put pen to paper UNLESS I completely plotted my novel, developed my characters and set up every scene. This didn't work for me. The natural flow I usually feel when writing was taken away and eventually I completely gave up on the process returning to my methods of writing: sitting down with a pad and pencil and allowing the ideas to flow. Then fine tuning the story only after I have a huge chunk of it written and some idea of what I want to convey. Not all novels are structured in Mr. Ray's manner, not all novels use Aristotle's incline to develop plot and storylines and not all novels can be written in 52 weekends.

Not to say this is a bad book at all. It's a wonderful reference book full of ideas and exercises to help you strengthen your writing. For example, it never occurred to me to create backstories and timelines for each of my characters giving them dimension and realism. Ray also offers exercises to help you set up scenes, write dialogue, write action and plot your novel. I now find that I refer to these exercises to help me develop my writing but I no longer follow the program.

This book is a great starting point for those interested in writing a novel but do not have an idea how to start (one more thing: you definitely have to have some idea of what you want to write BEFORE you start). However, for experienced writers you will find that this book is more useful as a reference guide rather than a program to follow.



UPDATED REVIEW FOR REVISED EDITION DECEMBER 24, 2007
Five years ago I wrote a review for the 1st edition of this book. I felt, and still feel, it's not necessarily the best way to write a novel but the exercises are excellent and I use this as a reference guide anytime I set pen to paper.

The interesting thing I didn't realize when I initially wrote my review is that Robert J. Ray and Bret Norris both live in my hometown of Seattle. I had a few compliants about the 1st edition i.e. that the Accidental Tourist isn't the only example of a perfect novel or that not all novels use Aristotle's incline.

Now I can't help but think that maybe Mr. Ray read my review. In this new revised version he uses several different examples of a perfect novel and gives two other ways of plotting out the novel besides Aristotle's incline, two of my complaints. It's nice to see more options available this time around but the overall cohesion of the 1st edition is lost. Like others have stated: if it ain't broke don't fix it.

I still HIGHLY recommend the 1st edition while using the revised edition as supplemental information.

With all this controversy about which edition is better, I just had to buy the second edition to compare (I already own the first edition - the one with the typewriter picture on it). Well, if IT AIN'T BROKEN, THEN DON'T FIX IT! Newer is not always better!! The second edition was a huge disappointment. What was Robert J. Ray thinking? I'm not sure if he teamed up with Bret Norris in order to get this second edition published because he owns a literary agency (just my suspicion) because the whole book got reformatted into something that felt so disconnected(was this B. Norris's idea? WRONG MOVE).

Well what do I mean by a huge disappointment? The book lists 5 main books used as example for presenting the material and then it lists another array of about 2 dozen books referenced as well. Because of this, each chapter doesn't always reference the same major works consistently. I read through the whole book and you can probably get away with not reading any of them at all (which defeats the purpose of this kind of book). You definately want to learn and build up on that learning from one novel and then mention other works to support your point as a secondary focus. That wasn't the case. Examples were heavily borrowed from his other previous editions (i.e. The Accidental Tourist), which wasn't even listed as a referenced book. He also referenced The Great Gatsby alot too, and Gorky Pork (mentioned in his Mystery version), as well as the Cinderella story line. If you're going to do such a piece-meal of literary examples, then at least select short stories to make your points as it is more accessible for writers with limited time to read. But he selects stories that are 400 to 600 pages long and then he doesn't exploit them to the fullest level to do them justice. So don't bother buying them.

This new format also assumes that you know the basics and doesn't even try to rehash some of the basics as a refresher for other writers who might need it (like he did in the first edition). However, his focus in this book seem to lie more on the Screenwriting structure which is very applicable to novel writing, but what is offered is a half-baked attempt to define 3-act structure, mythic structure, heroic structure using diagrams that were not really that helpful because they were not described thouroughly.

As a result of adding this new plotting information to the second edition, the 2nd and 3rd round of revising (included in the first edition) were cut off from this edition. He supplemented the last few chapters on rewriting your novel with a memoir and writing screenplay section. Why? I have no idea. I thought this was a book on novel writing. And even those sections are just too lame to even comment on.

What Mr. Ray should have done was keep the same book model and use that model, maybe another new one as well, to explore anything new he wanted to add to the second edition. I think it would have been more welcomed.

My suggestion to the prospective buyer is to purchase his first book (the one with the yellow cover and picture of a typewriter on it which I would give 4 STARS), The Accidental Tourist (which is the model book used), (and the Great Gatsby but not required).

Mr. Ray recommends Syd Field's books on Screenwriting. Don't buy it. I did and that is another mess. Not easy to digest. I recommend Dara Marks' Inside Story: The Power of the Transformation Arc; Robert Kernen's "Building Better Plots"; and for a simple refresher that outlines story structure but has a great focus on endings, consider Drew Yanno's The 3rd Act. All of these books are all applicable to novel writing. If you can only buy one or 2, then consider Dara Mark's book or Kernen's book.

Another book worth having that touches on all of the other elements is "The Lie That Tells a Truth" by John Dufresne. If you are looking for a fiction writing book that discusses the basic elements of fiction with a focus on Children's writing, then Nancy Lamb's The Writer's Guide to Crafting Stories for Children is also Excellent.

And lastly, if you need a book to help you with charting your scenes (because what Mr. Ray offers is incomplete), then I recommend Martha Alderson's Blockbuster Plots Pure and Simple. Check out her website for an idea of what her tools can do.

I hope this review helps to settle which version to buy. I will be going back to the bookstore today (with a broken foot) to return my 2nd edition. Sorry Mr. Ray, I really wanted to like this edition but found no use for it.

Ps. James V. Smith Jr.'s book "The Writer's Little Helper" also has a treasure trove of tips for writing as well. Check it out. I highly recommend it for the beginner writer! And if you are looking for a collection of short stories with commentaries from reputable writers to learn from and apply what you have learned from the books mentioned above, then consider Ann Charter's The Story and Its Writer, Compact Edition.

Well thats it folks. Those are all of my Touchstone Books on Writing Fiction. You can't go wrong with any of them. Check them out at the bookstore first and see for yourself and then buy it online at a lower price.

I bought this book on the basis of its good reviews and the prospect of learning how to break the novel writing process into easy-to-manage chunks. I'm not sure *why* this book has the good reviews it does. Very often while reading it, I could envision the author pacing back and forth in an imaginary college classroom, gesticulating wildly as he (eventually) made his point. While that speaks for a strong voice for a novelist, it's not at all what I want from a writing guide.

The author pulls examples from several novels, which the reader is urged to have on hand as "models". 'Buy these books,' we're told, 'or get them from the library.' There are no less than five "model" novels, and *twelve* 'referenced' novels. Useful reference books for writers, like 'The Elements of Style', 'The American Heritage Book of English Usage', 'The American Heritage Collegiate Dictionary' and 'The Chicago Manual of Style' are added at the bottom, after such questionable additions as 'The Screenwriter's workbook' (I thought this book was for *novel* writing?), 'The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects' and 'The Wordsworth Book of Opera'.

This book seems to operate on the assumption that the reader 'wants to write a novel,' but has no idea as to who the main character is (or even the gender of the character!), the most basic elements of a plot, or the kind of story s/he wants to tell. The exercises are pointless (observe people in the library, in a cafe, in a public place, write down a series of descriptions, then pick your protagonist from there, or write a dream a character has, regardless of whetheh that dream will have any purpose in the story, or guidelines for dressing your characters and snooping in their closets).

The 'spinning down the page' technique is really just a condensed version of the 'morning pages' from Julia Cameron's "The Artist Way"--which is *not* included in the useful books list. Again and again, the reader is refered to other authors as examples, showing the end result, but not the route taken. The most baffling statement is in the 'Dressing Your Character' chapter: "The best way to get meaning is through repetition: work boots, work boots, work boots." Gibberish, gibberish, gibberish, is more like it.

There *are* good points to "Weekend Novelist": keeping thorough character files, the idea that characters are more than names and physical descriptions, brainstorming, quirks, the importance of backstory, and different methods of plotting, and using more than one protagonist.

These few things do not make up for the preachy tone, the endless tangents, and the statement of the obvious as if it were divine revelation (Read! Then read some more!) This is not the book to use if you want to write genre fiction, though Robert J. Ray is a mystery writer. The advice here seems better suited to mainstream, glitz, or chick-lit novels. If that's your goal, this may work better for you. Then again, if you know what you want to write, you'll have to skip the first third of the book before you get to anything useful. $16.95 is too much to pay for so little.

After reading the amazon reviews of this book, I decided to purchase both editions to find out why several reviews extol the first edition over the second and why the author thoroughly revised the original.

In TWN first edition, Ray lucidly analyzes the fiction craft in one novel, Anne Tyler's "The Accidental Tourist," a great favorite of mine ("Anne Tyler is not merely good; she is wickedly good," wrote John Updike). The preface to the second edition notes: "This book started with character and moved on to plot and scene and writing. The second edition expands the plotting section. From a dozen or so pages in the old edition, we [Robert J Ray and Bret Norris] have enlarged this focus to give you a range of choices for building your book. The basic concept you need to build a plot is architecture" (ix).

In the second edition, the authors analyze the fiction craft in five contemporary novels including two with cyclical structural design. The five novels are:The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon,Amsterdam: A Novel by Ian McEwan, White Teeth: A Novel by Zadie Smith; and the two with cyclical design, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, The Namesake: A Novel by Jhumpa Lahiri.

Also new in the second edition are the authors' responses to twenty interlinked exercises that develop a work-in-progress "Trophy Wives." The concluding chapter, "The Weekend Novelist Writes a Screenplay," gives suggestions on how to adapt your novel draft to a feature-length screenplay.

If you can find the first edition, rejoice: its coverage of plot is more than adequate for beginning novel-writers; it's more lucidly written and simpler to follow.

-- C J Singh

I never seemed to find the time to work on my book during the week, so I found that I was spending loads of time on the weekends trying to do what I felt I should have been doing a little at a time all week long. I read several books on writing a novel and did the exercises they recommended. I ended up doing a lot of stuff, without a lot of thought on what I was really doing-and most importantly WHY. Then, out of the blue, a friend asked me, "Hey, aren't you working on a book or something?". I sort of beat around the bush that I was, but that it was going to take me a million years to do it, and they told me that they were secretly working on a novel on the weekends with the help of a book they got. I borrowed it from them, and WHAM...I had to buy it!

Ray's book is designed to give you the main points of novel construction, yes, one weekend at a time. You do a little thinking about stuff during the week, but you sit down and do the "assignment" on the weekend. Ray's book is one of the best books for a weekend warrior like myself. The assignments given aren't difficult, unless you haven't thought out your plot...or characters...or anything else. What makes these things, and many others hard, is that it makes you understand what you are doing in your story. You have to do a lot of hard thinking during the 52 week period. This is a good thing! You will better understand your characters and plot if you do the background work he suggests.

Like I said, if you would love to write that novel you have been mulling over but only have the weekends to do it-GET THIS BOOK!