“You have a story to tell….start here! You know there is a novel locked inside of you – cock full of conflict, humor, irony, enthralling events and fascinating characters. What you don’t know is how to set it free. “ “A direct, practical, step-by-step guide for the aspiring author”, is the promise.
And the book delivers on its promise. The book is very practical. It’s loaded with blanks to fill in and exercises to work on every topic.
It seems to touch on everything that I can imagine to be important to a novel and I found something I considered important to highlight on almost every page. But, I didn’t work the exercises. This will be a good book to come back to. But, at this time, I’m just not making a connection with the author, Ms. Stanek. Perhaps, I'm overwhelmed by the style of the book. She’s being really practical and I’m looking for an overview of the writing process.
As this is the first book I've read about ‘How to Write a Novel’, I simply don’t know enough to rate this book. And while I think its going to be valuable addition to my reference shelf, I seriously doubt that I’ll ever get around to working all of the exercises. No doubt it would be good for me but I may be just too lazy.
Ms. Stanek writes, “Writers learn to write by writing.” Guess I’d better start writing!
I had this book for years and it just sat on the bookcase, but then I read the magic words... write in character all the time. It has set my writing free. I didn't even know what to write about but the character told ME. Very interesting. My goal is to get to a first draft.
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