Bahsettiği yazarlar biraz kişisel ve dönemsel geldi ama mizahi bir dille yazdığı için 2 yıldız vermek istemedim :)

Concise and to the point. My kind of guide. Shows writing as a craft. Ends by shedding light on the grit and work ethic required to write a damn good novel, or master any other craft.

See also: Stein on Writing by Sol Stein, On Writing Well by William Zinsser

Great advice. I found the examples given took away from the advice but if I ignore the examples given I think it's a great book

I got a lot of great pointers from this book. There's a lot of examples where the author demonstrates the "lesson" you just learned, which I found very helpful. It was also one of the first books kind that I've read and, as an author, I found it very inspiring. Now I've got 20 pages of notes and a lot more knowledge in my head. I've been able to use his book and the lessons I e learned in my current writing, and will now have a more thought out plan on how to move forward with future writings. Thank you!

3.5/5.0

After having read so many books on writing (and I will read many more) much of the ideas and suggestions begin to overlap. So there was that. There were parts where I felt the author had a "this way or the highway" attitude, but it was also his fearless, no-nonsense, entertaining attitude that kept me reading.

Stephen Frey - How to write a damn good novel

Dit is een van de betere schrijfboeken. Aan de hand van voorbeelden van grote schrijvers als Dickens, Flaubert, Nabokov en anderen beschrijft Frey hoe je karakters componeert, wat premissen zijn en het belang ervan. Conflict en climax, de soorten dialoog die je kan gebruiken, direct of indirect. Frey vertelt hoe je deze basisingrediënten toepast. De volgende stap is: even doen, een verdomd goede roman schrijven. In deel II gaat hij nog een stap verder.

Now I think I've gotten a pretty well-rounded introduction to novel writing for the novice. As a novelist and editor at a publishing house, Stein offered very pragmatic advice that I found I could apply to my writing immediately. Maass, a novelist and literary agent at a major agency, understood and wrote about what makes a novel stand out for agents and readers so that it sells well. What was missing perhaps was the perspective of the novelist who also teaches and trains writers. Frey fills this gap pretty nicely. He isn't as low-level as Stein or as strategic as Maass.

Frey repeats some of the principles that Stein covers, such as interviewing your characters and keeping them in a crucible (Maass identifies conflict as the driving force of a breakout novel). What he adds is the careful planning that can save a novelist a few major rewrites, such as character biographies, premises, and step sheets (which I'd never heard of before and still don't have a good handle on).

I also appreciated his matter-of-fact dismissal of literary symbols. What he terms "life symbols" are encouraged; these are items that come to have meaning to the character through the course of the story, not something planted in the story for the reader to pick up on. Boy, am I glad to be let out of that one!

Finally, besides all the specific examples for handling dialogue, viewpoint, story arc, foreshadowing, and others, Frey advises the would-be-novelist on the necessity of rewriting. I especially liked his final chapter titled, "The Zen of Novel Writing." His pragmatic, straight-forward advice is refreshing. I almost wish that I could study with someone like Frey.

I hit the wall on this one, not because he gives bad advice on writing, but because I disagree with his interpretation of a lot of the classic novels he gives as examples. ESPECIALLY Lolita.

Can someone tell me, please, why I feel compelled to read so many books like this one when I have no intention of ever writing a novel?

Off to a good start: "Homo fictus has hotter passions and colder anger; he travels more, fights more, loves more, changes more, has more sex. Lots more sex."

Unfortunately, the book was disappointing. There were a few words of wisdom, but a lot of the advice felt rather dated. Of course, the book was published in 1987, which could explain a lot of it -- the "keep x by your typewriter" references, and the instructions to have the final manuscript professionally typed, for example. All of which can probably be forgiven, since I doubt Mr. Frey was thinking personal computers and word processors and e-mail would become so widely available in such a short time.

But much of his other advice -- on writing, how to write, writing style -- also felt dated. If anyone out there thinks the kinds of books being published today are exactly the same as they were in 1987, they'd be wrong. Books now (at least in my opinion) are a little edgier, a little sharper. It's less common now to spend a chapter or two introducing the characters and their world. Instead, we're more likely to be plunged into the middle of the action, or at least less time is spent on establishing the backstory up front. Also, the section on editing and revising assumed typewritten or handwritten text, which often isn't the case. Writing on a computer screen is a whole different animal than writing on paper.

In addition, a lot of his examples were from A Christmas Carol and Madam Bovary. These are both classics, I'm sure, but let's be perfectly honest here -- if they came across an editor's desk today, they'd never get published. The style in which they are written is just too flowery and Victorian for today's market. They'd more likely go straight from the slush pile to the circular file. I felt that many of the style points he was trying to make were invalidated because of this.

I was also a bit annoyed by the author's tone -- the attitude of "there is one right way to do this, and that's my way." It got old fast. ("You must give up all of your friends and outside activities. You must write each and every day or else.") Since I know for a fact that the mere act of writing varies from person to person, every time I read something like that, I just wanted to throw the book against the nearest wall.

This might be a better reference for a brand-new author, one who needs someone to take them by the hand and give them some structure. However, I think I gleaned more useful information from No Plot No Problem.

Ich wollte ein nicht zu langwieriges Handbuch für Einsteiger und habe genau das bekommen. Die Tipps sind kurz und knackig formuliert, leicht verständlich, gnadenlos, wo sie gnadenlos sein sollen, und witzig, wo es passt. (Der Humor ist genial)

Fantastic. Instrumental in learning how to understand fiction writing and then to apply it. I learned a lot and would recommend to anyone interested in the craft of fiction writing.