15 February 2009
How not to Write a Novel - by Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark
18/02/09 22:56 Filed in: Books
If you’ve ever trawled through the Of Interest To Writers shelves of your local bookshop and unbalanced your monthly budget by buying yet more of those How to Write paperbacks, then spend some more money and buy this one.
Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark have turned the How to Write industry on its head and produced a book full of lessons in how not to get published. Do you tell your hero’s back-story, in full detail, before you move the plot forward? That’s right! Is your heroine’s appearance one long list of Barbie-like clichés seasoned with adjectives? Yay! Not researched your subject thoroughly? Attagirl! These and many more pitfalls and flaws are humorously – and mercilessly – exposed by the authors, but they give very good advice as well: ‘Know what the chase is, and cut to it … As a writer you have only one job – to make the reader turn the page…’ and, most insightful of all, ‘… if reading Stephen King on writing really did the trick, we would all by now be writing novels that got on the bestseller lists …’
So if there’s any nagging doubt that your manuscript won’t quite make it to the bestseller lists, or even into print, buy this book and learn from it. Or buy it for the picture of the kitten on the cover - well worth the money on its own, in my view.
Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark have turned the How to Write industry on its head and produced a book full of lessons in how not to get published. Do you tell your hero’s back-story, in full detail, before you move the plot forward? That’s right! Is your heroine’s appearance one long list of Barbie-like clichés seasoned with adjectives? Yay! Not researched your subject thoroughly? Attagirl! These and many more pitfalls and flaws are humorously – and mercilessly – exposed by the authors, but they give very good advice as well: ‘Know what the chase is, and cut to it … As a writer you have only one job – to make the reader turn the page…’ and, most insightful of all, ‘… if reading Stephen King on writing really did the trick, we would all by now be writing novels that got on the bestseller lists …’
So if there’s any nagging doubt that your manuscript won’t quite make it to the bestseller lists, or even into print, buy this book and learn from it. Or buy it for the picture of the kitten on the cover - well worth the money on its own, in my view.