Customer Reviews

How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them--A Misstep-by-Misstep Guide

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is very smartly written and also hysterical (I can hardly get these words out because I am so self-conscious of my sentences after reading it).

Few How To books are in themselves an enjoyable read, but this one is more entertaining than most humor fiction or non-fiction.

The authors know what they're talking about and, more importantly, SHOW they know what they're talking about by illustrating both how you shouldn't write and how you should.

Their website is a riot too.

If you are (like me) an unpublished novelist and avid reader, you may have two reactions to this book. One, you may blush at some of the mistakes you have made (and included in a submitted manuscript). Two, you may see at least a few of the errors listed occur in novels you've read, and you'll indignantly wonder why those authors get a pass and you don't. The answer is, that somehow they've found an audience, and you haven't, so you'd do well to pay attention to the "missteps." Although, the book's authors are careful to point out that there are exceptions to each rule.

Some of the advice is rather crude, as someone here as already pointed out, clearly the book is intended for an adult audience, not a young writer, unless they have a colorful vocabulary already. In addition to the 200 mistakes, the author's helpfully describe how not to write a query letter and where not to send your novel, at least if you want to avoid paying someone a large sum of money to publish your book.

I don't laugh very often when I'm reading. I'll smile at an amusing passage but I usually don't laugh outright. It takes special talent to do that to me, and this book hit the mark. I will say up front that I'm inclined to enjoy humor about bad writing or badly constructed sentences. I even enjoyed the examples of this in grammar handbooks. The fact that the book is very funny and also extremely helpful at the same time helps a lot.

Even if you're not writing a novel, I think readers in general will find a lot to enjoy in the book. If I had one minor complaint it is that some of the examples are a bit too silly for their own good. Having a ton of mistakes in one paragraph is fine, but when it's coupled with a lot of silly names and silly situations I think the humor is actually lessened. That being said, this is only really noticeable in a couple examples and it doesn't really weaken what the writers are trying to illustrate.

Pros: Offers advice in a non-absolutist, entertaining manner, clearly shows how misusing techniques can lead to disaster with humorous examples, has many, many tips.

Cons: Occasionally gets a bit too caught up in the humor and not enough on the advice.

This book offers a very large selection of things to avoid when writing your novel which is in many ways more helpful than all the books that tell you what to do. Most authors don't want to feel like they are writing to template and the writing process is different for each individual person, but it is also good to know what to avoid, what tends to make a novel unsuccessful. There is advice on many different aspects of writing a novel from plotting to writing to characters.

This book is also short on absolutes (though there are some). Many writing books declare dramatically that you should "never" do a certain thing and all the while I am naming half a dozen best selling and/or critically acclaimed novels that do just that. This book tends to acknowledge that some of its rules can be broken to good effect -- you just have to be careful how you do it.

The best feature, though, is the humor. The made up "examples" that the authors provide are hilarious and often give you a much more vivid picture of what is meant by the tip than the explanation alone. For a few of the tips, I think that the authors got a little too caught up in making the examples funny so that I would forget what I they were supposed to demonstrate, but this was rare.

A very non-pretentious, helpful read. So entertaining that I read through it in a day which I cannot say of any other writing books I've read. 5 stars.

I'm a published novelist who often leads writing workshops. I always provide students with a resource list of the best writing books and "How Not To Write A Novel" will now to be at the top of my list. This book is destined to be a classic like BIRD BY BIRD. Not only is it wickedly funny, it points out some less obvious writing mistakes that even many pros are guilty of making. This book is a MUST HAVE for any writers' library.

O.K., we could all benefit from this book, and there are many great tips here. But 2/3 the way through, I realized that the authors are making some of the mistakes they warn against. When they draft a passage to describe, for example, how tedious it is to read about what every character has ordered at dinner, they invade the prose with so many ridiculous names, nonsequitors, etc., that I was asking myself -- what mistake were they trying to point out again?

And unfortunately, every time they pointed out a problem, an author, either one I like very much, or don't like at all, comes to mind. Interior monologue? Lack of scenes and too much In the Narrator's Head? Ever heard of a guy called Henry James? Kingsley Amis? Martin Amis? Too much food, ever heard of the mega million seller Maeve Binchey? The authors praise James Bond in the same breath that they warn against super-heroics.

I think the first two chapters here, dealing with set-up, offer the most useful advice. After that, their prose, over-loaded with jokes, gets wearisome and seems mean-spirited. The style of the book was so unpleasant, it took me two months' to get through -- hardly a page-turner. It would have served them better to intersperce, between their Bad Writing Parodies, examples of a Good, Published Writer carrying off with aplomb whatever technique they've highlighted in the parody. It takes no great skill to slam bad writing. As both are well published writers, I'm wondering why they didn't use examples of their own work?

This is geared towards genre writers, almost any literary novel out there breaks a good half of these rules, so if you're even vaguely literary, you're going to have to filter out a lot of this advice.

I'm a reader who doesn't like action, suspense, too much "snappy" dialogue, and welcomes interior life and philosophical tangents -- which the authors wrongly declare are a bore in literature and in life, using the cocktail party conversation as an example. O.K., I'm someone who gets bored when people tell me long detailed action stories at a party, but I'm often interested in hearing a stranger's inner thoughts, what makes them tick.

I'd say, take this with a grain of salt. They make declarations about what's good writing -- a page turner -- which are completely wrong for me. I like a book that makes me think, so I have to put it down for a few minutes,look out the train window and digest before I move on. Some of us read to learn something and deepen our life experience. This is for readers and writers whose goal is diversion, and nothing else.

I bought this book on the recommendation of a fellow aspiring author, who writes well, by the way. I'm sorry I did. This book is too satirical to be helpful. And the foul language wasn't necessary either. There are bits of wisdom here and there, but not nearly a whole book's worth.

I bought this hoping to learn how I might fine tune my manuscript and avoid common pitfalls of a beginning (though not entirely untalented) writer. What I got was a book that utilizes examples of writing so bad they weren't helpful. I kept thinking 'Well, duh. I know THAT's not acceptable. And anyone who has read more than a few novels and is serious about writing well would know that, too.'

What I need are examples of relatively good writing that is on the edge of or is mildly breaking the rules, and then examples once it's corrected, showing how it can be made better. This book didn't do that. The author(s) wasted a lot of words and space imparting what could have been done with simple lists or a few straight-to-the-point sentences. (e.g. If you're going to write a love scene, make sure you don't have characters doing things that are physically impossible or unlikely, such as......)

If you want writing advice that doesn't insult your intelligence and waste your time, save your money and look at other, better books, such as those in the Elements of Fiction Writing series.

This was an entertaining read, with just about every mistake a would-be author might make provided in amusing sample form. It's mostly for writers who have not read any other books about writing or who have never visited authors' forums, though; all the howlers described here should (hopefully!) be familiar to anyone who's spent any time learning about writing. Although it's possible a novice novelist might see some of his/her own writing in the examples in this book, it's more like a collection of the very worst writing samples the slush pile has to offer, and thus perhaps something to cheer you with the thought: "Well, at least I'd never write anything like that!"

I bought this book because it was recommended on [...]. I knew it was billed as humorous, but we all know how that tends to work out, right?

Forget what usually happens. This book is funny. This book is amusing. This book is drop-your-glass-and-snort-milk-hilarious.

It gets better though, because this book also makes you THINK. It helps you to examine your writing (dare I say 'with a fine-toothed comb'?) and make it better.

Bottom line: If you are a writer, and you want people to like what you read, you should probably get this book.

This is a very funny book, but also tough to read if you've made any of the mistakes they warn about (and who hasn't?). They exaggerate examples of atrocious writing for the sake of humor and to be sure you get the point. Then they attach trenchant comments to each example to further explain just how dreadful it is. I agree with a previous reviewer who said that some examples of good writing would've been helpful as a contrast. The book wouldn't have been as amusing, though.
A few of the writing examples are so sexually graphic and crude as to be offensive (and I'm not a prude). Definitely not for the squeamish or easily offended.
Still, this is one book about fiction writing I won't forget. I suspect that the next time I write some goshawful purple prose, one of the scenes in this book will pop into my head as a warning. That's a good thing.