Hoo Boy.  I’ve been sitting on this review for a while.  This book was reccomended to me my Kay Kenyon, a wonderful person and talented author.  I came in to this book predisposed to like it and to learn from it.  Did I?  Well, let me just say that it’s unusual for a book of writing advice to fill me with disgust and profanity.  To that you may attach blame to my moral failings at to the tone and authorial voice of Larry Brooks.

I’ve never been to one of Larry Brook’s workshops.  I don’t know the man.  This feels like one of his workshops taken verbatium. It’s possible that in person he’s funny and charming.  That doesn’t come across on the page.

What I got was a huge pile of arrogance, sneering condescension towards writers more skilled and successful that he is (the way he berates Stephen King made me roll my eyes), and an even taller pile of declarative sentences.  You’d think such an experienced critiquer of manuscripts as Mr. Books would know the importance of narrative voice and of not alienating his target audience. Mixed in with this pile are a few nuggets of gold, sift for them if you have  a high tolerance for bovine byproducts.

That’s a very emotional reaction and I’ll try to explain and be more objective as I go on.  No promises, but I’ll try.  There is one thing I’ve learned in writing and working with three + critique groups: every writer is different.  Every writer needs to find the process that works for them.  There is no ‘one way’ that works for everyone.  For a lot of writers, including successful writers, the process of outlining and structuring your story according to the iron-clad rules Mr. Brooks lays out kills the enthusiasm and the creativity that makes them productive.  Mr. Brook’s continuing and withering contempt for these ‘discovery writers’ got on my nerves early and stayed there.  He views writers who do more than one draft as fools.  According to him, you must outline your story, you must hit the structure points on the page numbers he lists or you are doom.  Doomed!

Basically, Larry Brooks is repackaging screenplay story structure.  He even owns up to that in the book.  However, unlike Mckee’s Story and Field’s Screenwriter’s Workbook, this book didn’t inspire me and lift me up.  It didn't make me grab any random bit of scrap paper I could find so I could furiously write down story and plot ideas.  It made me angry, defiant and irritated.  And I’m pro-outlining!  What I object to is being berated and preached at as if I’d wandered into an EST seminar.

Worse, the book is filled with fluff, filler, call it what you will.  It feels more like an infomercial than a writer’s guild. If he cut out the cheerleading for how awesome he is and how awesome his 6 core competencies are this would be a useful 140 guide.  As it is, I fully expect Larry Brooks to start selling Shamwow’s. I really hated having to wade through this nonsense to get to the part that is useful. I wanted to (and may have) shout, “Stop spending chapters on telling me how awesome you and this technique is and tell me what you’re here to tell me.” 

There is useful information here.  The 6 core competencies listed are: Concept, Character, Theme, Story Structure, Scene Execution, Writing Voice.  I have no quibble with any of them, except perhaps Story Structure.  I do note with irony that one of this 6 competencies is Writing Voice and he chose a writing voice that talks down to writers, berates and displays swaggering arrogance unearned by any literary success of his own.

Here’s my concern about Story engineering: it invites stiff, artificial writing.  It invites the writer to create events in a novel that happen because the PLOT demands that they occur.  You have to have your first Milestone at 25 % of the novel’s length.  You must have your turning point at the 50% point.  You must have your second milestone/story point/twist at the 75% point.  Your Story must spend the first quarter of the book establishing character and creating your inciting incident, you must have the second quarter of the book with the main character running away/looking for answers, you must have the third quarter of the book with the protagonist attacking the antagonist, and then the climax should take up the last quarter of the book.  Can you see the kind of formulaic writing that can come out of such a structure?  I can and have. 

Eh.  I’m not doing a very good job of keeping my irritation at this book out of this review, so I’ll let it go.

There is good stuff here but wear your hip waders, don’t drink the kool-aid and keep asking yourself what you can apply to your own writing from Story Engineering.

This book was another recommended by someone in my critique group.  I’m glad I read it and I’ll probably go over it again to see if I can glean more insight from it.  (It’s not a terribly long read)  On the whole, however, I think it’s more in the ‘food for thought’ category rather than something immediately useful in my writing.

 

Stanley Fish is certainly an enthusiastic champion of the written word, that comes across clearly.  What is less clear is application.  Perhaps the fault is my own.  I just don’t see the point of doing writing exercises working on structure alone without the intent of using that hard work.  I’d much rather try to implement his advice in the course of one of revision drafts.  Then my writing is doing double duty and not being tossed away. (yes, yes, I know; no writing is ever wasted so long as we learn something from it.)  I only have so many hours in a day to write and I’d rather direct that time towards something publishable.

 

The author provides a horde of bellowing examples that come at you in a rush.  The examples are my favorite parts of the book.  I love great writing and Stanley Fish provides examples, some from surprising sources, of great writing.   

 

The author is also a maniac for structure, so much so that the purpose of that structure gets lost a little and I feel like I’m back in grade school, diagramming sentences.  I know that’s not the author’s intent but that is how part of the book feels.  In addition, there is a feeling, partly due to weight of the examples chosen that complex sentences are worthy of more attention and praise.  That’s not the kind of examples I need.  I need to learn how to write cleanly, even tersely.  My love for compound sentences is a sick, forbidden love and rightly so.

 

In the end, little from this book seemed to stick with me.  It did heighten my attention to my sentence construction, which is all too the good.  It didn’t inspire me, though, as great books on writing have.  No sparks flew up from the page to land in my mind.  I didn’t feel like rushing out and writing.  Again, this may be a flaw in the student rather than the teacher.  But I feel that the information in this book is too occult.  Too hidden.  Give credit where it is due, Stanley Fish cares about this subject.  I just didn’t, not enough.  My way of learning may be more from osmosis.  So my advice is to keep reading great writers, especially contemporary writers.  Let the beauty and power of their words work their way into your subconscious.  Imitate them, even.  Learn your own way.  Then maybe come back to this book and see if it has anything to teach you.

My apologies for missing yesterday’s update.  Work happens.

 

I’ve been trucking along with the 30 in 30 challenge.  I missed two days early in the month but I’ve gotten a story done every day since.  With a little luck, I should be able to catch up this weekend.

 

I don’t know if they’re great stories but I think a couple of them have the nugget of something cool and marketable. I just need to polish them a little.  My plan is to pick a story that I finished during the week, polish it and then send it off to an online or print magazine.   I may as well give someone who might pay me for a story the opportunity to reject them.

 (My #2 story I’ll submit to my writing group for advice on what can be improved. )
 

I also got some reading done during my commute.  One was recommended by my writing group, Wild Ink.

 

Oy.

 

I wish I’d scoured the local libraries before parting with hard-earned cash for it.

 

Wild Ink is subtitled: ‘How to Write Fiction for Young Adults’.  It isn’t.  It is, barely, a discussion of how the publishing process works along with some frequently-repeated advice better suited to a blog post than the $12 + shipping and handling I ponied up the dough for.  Nearly a quarter of the book, perhaps more, is just printed answers to emailed questions the author sent out to every YA author they knew.  The author’s input for each of these sections?  A paragraph.  If it was a printed, in depth conversation with just one or two high-profile writers, that would have been an improvement.  I feel cheated.

 

Here, let me save you twelve bucks and give you the distilled wisdom within: Write from your heart, not with an eye towards what’s popular.  Don’t write down to your readers.  Read what’s popular in YA right now.  Keep your length close to 80k words but write the story at the length it needs to be.  Be aware that adult themes, sex and violence will appall some gatekeepers (librarians and parents) but may thrill others.

 

That’s what’s at the core of the book. Notice, that I didn’t really tell you how to write YA fiction.  Neither did Victoria Hanley. It’s obvious she can, she’s a published author.  I would have preferred it if she simply had told the reader how she wrote her novels, in detail, the process she uses and what she learned.  That at least would have authenticity behind it.  As it is, most of what we have in this book is second hand advice.  In fact, some sections Victoria Hanley didn’t even try to answer the questions she raises.  Yep, for some areas she simply says, “I’m not very good at this, go find a book that talks more about this topic.”  In words of the Great Teacher, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

 

This books makes a decent introduction to writing for utterly new authors.  The details on the publishing process are interesting, though nothing I didn’t already know from going to conventions and talking to editors or sitting on their panels.  If someone is just getting started in their career, you could do worse than handing them this book.  You can also do better.

 

Not recommended for experienced writers looking for in-depth discussions on writing for the YA audience.

  I'm going to start on my final draft on Angel Odyssey this week but I thought I'd finiish off a few more book reviews.

  Walter Mosley is a writer I respect.  I don't know what expectations I had for This Year You Write Your Novel (it is a slim hardback volume) but I was looking forward to what he had to say.    

I'd describe This Year You Write Your Novel as a good book for first-time novelists.  It is not complex or difficult to read or process.  The advice is solid if not in-depth.  If you have a friend who is struggling to finish their first manuscript, give them this book.  It'll help.    

One of the things I like about Mosley's novels is his ability to write realistic characters.  That is the book I wish he'd written.  The writing examples, provided by Mosley himself, I assume, show Mosley's skill.  The rest of the text shows Mosley's sincere attempt to get across the secret of how to write a novel.  I could feel the effort and imagine the difficulty of explaining the years of effort that have sublimated into instinct.  This isn't intended as a criticism, it IS difficult to analyze your own process and realize that what works for you may not work for everyone.     

Mosley is trying to give advice that will work for everyone, that's not easy.  As a result, his advice is simple: write every day.  That's pretty much it.  Write every day.  Every single day, dedicate at least two uninterrupted hours to writing.  It's simple, workmanlike advice and every word of it is true.  Writing is about momentum and writing every day is something I struggle with myself.  So it's good advice as far as it goes and he repeats it at length.     

His second main piece of advice is: trust your subconscious (and I'm summarizing here).  This may sound like so much mysticism to a new writer, struggling with plot and characterization.  So be it.  Writing is an art as well as a craft.  He's no wrong there, either.  My subconsious is so much smarter than I am.  The best moments of writing flow from my mind through my fingers onto the .doc pages.     There are other brief chapters  discussing plot, character and other elements of craft that are essential to a complete novel.  None of the advice is fatuous or wrong, but it is brief.    

Reccomended for new writers but not for aspiring authors who have a novel or two under their belt.

  This is the single most useful book on writing for me.  I don't usually have a problem getting the words to flow (getting my hinder in the Throne of Writing (tm) is another story) but I struggle with revising more than anything else.  I may not know the answer of 'what to cut' but this book tells me why to cut or rephrase.  I can't praise it enough.    

  The book is filled with examples and exercises, many of which are taken from well-known published writers.  Seeing how to do things right is invaluable to me.  And I can't think of any other writing book I've read so far that gave even a hint about how to develop a writer's voice.  Brown and King's suggestion there was an eye-opening event.    
  The discussion ranges from exclamation points to profanity (both are suggested to be used sparingly...especially the exclamation points) and the author not only provide advice, they back it up with those useful examples I mentioned above.     This book belongs on every writer's bookshelf...actually, not on the bookshelf, it belongs on their writing desk.  For new writers, start with this book.  You won't be sorry.

  The first feedback on my prologue came back pretty universally favorable.  Most people in my critique group think it makes a better first chapter than a prologue.  That's good news for a rough draft. It still needs a coat or two of polish and I need to rework some things related to the Storyteller.  Ah but I really like the first line of my current chapter 1.  Decisions, decisions.       I finished Orson Scott Card's Character and Viewpoint last Friday.  Orson clearly knows his stuff.  Character and Viewpoint is more like a textbook compared to the other books on reading I've read.  That is mostly praise.  The book is dense, particularly the first half of the book.  It is a book that needs to be studied, not just read.  There's a lot going on in there.  I can tell that Mr. Card has thought deeply about the issues of character and point of view.  I plan to revisit it again, soon.       However, it is not flawless.  The second half of the book, particularly the last third, on viewpoint, feels rushed.  The most valuable advice lies in the discussion of character.  If someone has a hard time writing believable characters, I'd point them to this book in a heartbeat.  If someone was struggling with POV issues, I'd direct them elsewhere.  I can't call it a lack of polish, all I can say is again is it feels rushed at the end.  What does feel unpolished are the writing samples.       Mr. Card wore one of tentpole novels of Science Fiction in Ender's Game.  He is clearly a skilled writer, I've devoured a good half dozen of his books with pleasure.  Moreover, the majority of the writing advice given in Character and Viewpoint reinforces Mr. Card's writing chops.  That's why the writing samples he provides to illustrate his points are so painful.  Unlike Self-Editing for Fiction Writers or On Writing by Stephen King, the examples Mr. Card provides show little of the fit and finish of a master craftsman.       

The example dialog is often wooden.  Most of the passages were strrewn with 'telling' and not good, narrative 'telling' but almost amateurish descriptions of character's thoughtsm, feelings and actions.  Now these were not intended to illustrate writing mistakes.  In a section on First Person, you'd see this awkward 'telling' writing sample.  Again, the feeling is that the book was written in a rush.  I'm sure that if Mr. Card had spent more time on his writing samples they would have shown better quality.      

But apart from those two complaints, Character and Viewpoint's content is laudable.  The book does belong in every writer's bookshelf.  I didn't experience any 'ah ha' moments while reading it, as I have with other books on writing and I didn't have an overwhelming urge to go write immediately after finishing it.  Instead the book put me in a contemplative mood where the strengths and the flaws of Mr. Card's book seemed to stand out in even sharper relief.