My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is an odd book which is kind of a stream of consciousness rant about the ways in which an artist struggles with what the author calls “Resistance.” That in itself is not odd, there are many books on ‘the writer’s journey’ but this one reads as though it has been written by someone who is on, then off his lithium (or cocaine, whatever the cause may be.) The whole thing is a rant, sometimes it’s an enthusiastic, insightful rant and sometimes it’s just a manic bitch rant (people who are sick, or who put attending the birth of their child above their art are simply giving in to resistance) and sometimes it’s just straight out spiritual/religious mish-mash-whackadoo (and I put ‘mystic agnosticism’ on the census as my religion, so I can handle a high level of spiritual mish-mash.)

The best way to approach this book is probably to think of it as an editorial – it’s just a guy with a bunch of opinions about why a true artist takes his art seriously. If you’re pining for someone to tell you that it’s okay to ignore the world, your loved ones etc… while you work, then this is the book for you (personally, though I don’t know what on earth you’re going to write about if you avoid the world as completely as he seems to suggest.) The other warning about the book is not to expect anything on how to actually achieve this resistance to Resistance. Yes, he mentions over and again, sitting down to it every day but that’s hardly new advice though the angels and God and muses just arriving is not something I’ve heard expressed in quite that way before.

As I said. Odd.

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My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read this book immediately after being disappointed by It was the Best of Sentences, It was the Worst of Sentences, so I may have been primed to have an overly enthusiastic reaction to a book which offered such a different take on the subject. To me, Fish’s book was more like a philosophical work on how to approach sentences than a “how-to” book and (apologies if Fish is riffing on a philosophy espoused by others, this being my first exposure to it) I think Fish is really on to something.

As in any book on ‘the sentence,’ Fish parses sentences but he eschews the traditional literary terms, the parts of speech etc., and, instead, approaches the sentence as “a structure of logical relationships.” What does this mean? Well, as I understood it, it means that, rather than analysing the sentence for the parts of speech and labelling those parts and checking them against a table of what is and isn’t allowed (the traditional method,) Fish divides the sentence into logical segments and analyses each part, how each part relates to, and changes, the other parts and what meaning, as a whole, the words in the sentence actually communicate. The ‘logical’ segments I spoke of require only that you are fluent in the language the sentence is written in, you don’t need to have studied literature, nor know how to label all the parts of speech, to learn how to analyse a sentence for quality.

In short, where traditional methods focus on labelling and rules, Fish’s method concentrates on the relationships between words and their effect upon each other and the reader (the content communicated.) Fish’s method consistently reminded me of learning a new language; We can learn the rules and exceptions by rote, but we are far more likely to become fluent using an immersion approach – this is what Fish does with sentences.

Fish analyses many different types of sentences for us, by way of showing us how to do it ourselves, and we may not all agree with the sentences he chooses, but this is beside the point, they are simply samples used to show a method. Still, if we want him to tackle a favourite sentence, Fish asks that we email him (thus, bad ratings of the book based upon which sentences he chose are not only missing the point but betraying that they didn’t read to Fish’s request for alternatives.) Fish gives the reader no sense of “there, now you know everything you will ever need to know about sentences” at the end of this book, rather, he sends us on our way having provided us the tools required to spend our lives learning and improving our writing, or reading.

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My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I was expecting something different from this book. The back of book blurbs used phrases like “wickedly funny” and “you’ll laugh all the way to writing better” (the former is a sentence, I know,) so I was expecting a light, new and easily absorbed, for even the uninitiated, take on the art of the sentence. “It was the best…” is lighter than Strunk and White, certainly, and the sentences that Casagrande corrects in order to instruct were, occasionally so bad they were amusing but it wasn’t laugh out loud funny (like, for example, “How Not to Write a Novel” by Mittelmark and Newman.)

I was excited by the first chapter, in which Casagrande declared, “Thy Reader, Thy God,” I looked forward to her showing us how good grammar helps us to serve the reader and she did do so but not in any particularly new way, nor in a way which would help those who didn’t already have a good deal of traditional grammar under their belts. Despite the ‘cheekiness’ of using “actual sentences” from actual pieces Casagrande has edited, albeit disguised, her adherence to an essentially traditional method of teaching grammar results in a heavy treatment of the subject.

If you have the traditional grammar background, there is no doubt that there is much to learn from this book, but it doesn’t meet the purpose I was hoping it would fulfil: a book I can recommend to those without the traditional grammar background, but with an almost religious belief that grammar is unnecessary.

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“If you want to master the art of the sentence, you must first accept a somewhat unpleasant truth – one a lot of writers would rather deny: The Reader is King. You are his servant. You serve the Reader information. You serve the Reader entertainment…Only by knowing your place can you do your job well….

Here’s another way to think of this: Your writing is not about you. It’s about the Reader. Even when it’s quite literally about you – in memoirs, personal essays, first-person accounts – it’s not about you…

When you forget the Reader, you get what I call writer-serving writing. It exists at every level of writing expertise. I’ve gagged on it when reading personal essays and caught whiffs of it in award-winning books and articles. I’ve been horrified to find it in my own writing. Writer-serving writing is perfectly appropriate in diaries and journals – but any writing that’s meant to be seen by a Reader must serve the Reader”

We discussed what we all thought of this theory, and whether it applied not just to the art of the sentence but to any other, or all of the elements of the art of crafting fiction.  Most were in agreement, as long as writers weren’t going to the extreme of trying to pander to the reader or ‘cash in’ on trends – though we also agreed that few readers actually want either of those things, even when it seems it may be the case. I had expected for a few of the “F… the readers, it’s not art if you do it for anyone but yourself”  gang (that’s an actual quote, though I won’t “credit” it,) but they must not have been around, this week, because they could not have resisted if they’d been lurking. Perhaps they were all off being avant garde having Mothers’ Day dinner at home.

It was an interesting discussion – if you’d like to see how it went, the transcript is at The #Storycraft Blog, here

On the day, I’m not sure that it worked. Those who came enjoyed it, for the most part, but, also for the most part, had not read the book (some at all, some not for a decade.)  The sudden need to weed out the questions I had prepared which would not be understood without reading the book, made my job much harder and may also have skewed my view of how it went, so I’ve asked for feedback.

I have to remember, though, that I went to a book/philosophy club yesterday to which 5 of us turned up and most had not finished the book (guess who’s the girly swot) so maybe that’s par for book clubs? Even if it is par, it’s an awful lot of work for the organiser to go to if people are just as happy, if not happier, to turn up and chat with no preparation – normal #storycraft requires me to prep but not as much as a book chat does.  Maybe I misunderstood my audience but I didn’t think reading one particular writing book in 6 weeks would be even a blip in the lives of people who would be reading all sorts of books, fiction and writing books, to improve their writing. Oh well. Not all experiments work.

Anyway, if you’d like to take a look for yourself and see how it went, the transcript is here.

Beginnings, Middles & Ends, by Nancy Kress is one of the best writing how-to’s that I’ve read, yet. The book is targeted at both novelists and short story writers of any experience. Kress assumes little writing theory on the part of the reader and yet manages to be neither patronizing nor cliché when explaining basics (I swear some books are written from the same template – not this one!) Kress also takes care to emphasize that different writers work in different ways, addressing the “pantsters”, who like to write without plotting, acknowledging that, for them, most of the advice will be relevant only after the first draft is done (but it will be relevant.)

So what’s so good about this book? In short: it focuses on the writing. There’s no showing off the author’s understanding of Georges Polti, or proving that she bleeds Joseph Campbell. There are no structure formulas (three acts with seven turning points, no nine sequences, no 18 dips and crests of the roller coaster,) Kress has written a book which focuses on what you, the writer, need to know and do to organize your story’s structure. Not that there’s no theory, there’s plenty, but it’s all contextual, so it is clear how to apply it. How does Kress do this? Well – ahem – it’s how the book is structured.

The title of the book is its structure. Starting with Beginnings, Kress discusses everything that needs to be considered when writing a beginning, which, of course, touches on everything from characterization, to language, to how the beginning effects the middle and the end. She acknowledges writers who find beginnings easy and offers assistance for those who find them difficult, addressing the various reasons one can become stuck while writing a beginning. Kress then gives the same detailed treatment for each of Middle and End, followed by a section on Revision.

I highly recommend this book to any writer, whether they are new to writing and don’t know where to begin, or are wallowing uncertainly in a WIP. I particularly recommend this book to structure-phobics because, whether they think about it consciously while writing a first draft or not, a writer needs to know their craft and this book is a pain-free way to learn. I’ll be putting this one on the #storycraft Book Chat list.

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My rating: 2 of 5 stars

If you love Evanovich, you will love this book. She is generous with her process and uses lots of examples from own work, so it is certainly a glimpse into the writing life of this author. As a writing how-to, however, despite its blurb stating that it is “the perfect guide for anyone looking to strengthen their writing” (which suggests at least intermediate advice,)  it is introductory at most,  and that is the reason for my 2 stars.

The book is structured as a Q & A, the Q’s coming from her website, and they are very basic questions – almost a nightmare collection of newbie questions (yes, even ‘how do you come up with ideas?’) – which Evanovich answers kindly, and briefly. The book is, too infrequently, interspersed with solid theory from editor Ina Yalof but there is nothing that will be new to anyone who has devoted any time to studying the craft of story. I hope that Ina’s small summaries, as well as some of the references at the back, will hint to readers that there is more to the writing than just the questions asked in this book and that it can be learned, even if their favourite authors aren’t very good at explaining what they know, themselves.

Lead by the web questions as it is, the book is a kind of overview for the “I really want to write but…” crowd, and if it gives them the courage to actually start writing, then that’s great. I hope, however, for the sake of slushpile readers everywhere that when those first drafts are done, those writers don’t turn straight to the 42 pages on ‘Getting Published” and completely skip the 9 pages on “Editing and Revision.”

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Dufresne’s The Lie That Tells a Truth is an excellent guide to the craft, I enjoyed the philosophy, but I would suggest that it is more for those who are theory novices (as distinct from writing novices) because it leaned toward ‘dumbing down’ and explained a little too much, at times.

One thing that may also attract those who read to be taught how to be a writer (as against writers reading for the insights shared by another) is that he gives almost equal time to how to get ideas as he does to how to execute them. I found these ‘idea parts’ surprising and frustrating because I just don’t think they have a place in a text aimed at writers. I know lots of people say they want to write but have no ideas and so would love a book full of how to get ideas but, to me, this is snake oil salesman stuff. When I hear someone who claims to want to write ask ‘where do you get ideas?’ I’m afraid my response is “Frankly, if you don’t know then count yourself lucky not to be haunted by them and stick to the joy of reading!” If you have no ideas, then you have nothing you’re compelled to express and, I think Dufresne would agree, no piece of writing – or art – is worth anything if the writer has nothing to say.

If I could give an extra half star for his including the correction of “try and” to “try to” in his “Small Craft Warnings” chapter at the end of the book, I would!

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I’ve been enjoying Betsy Learner’s blog for a long time so I feel a little silly that it has taken me so long to read her book: The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice for Writers. In fact, I can’t even take credit for having finally decided to do so, as it was the first book chosen for discussion in the new book club which is an offshoot of the #scribechat tweetchat, which I try to join on Fridays. However it happened, I am so glad that I finally got round to reading it!

The Forest for the Trees  is not a how-to-write manual like Donald Maass’ books, nor a right-to-write inspirational like Julia Cameron’s, rather it is a memoir-style book, along the lines of Stephen Kings’ On Writing. The book has everything that keeps me reading Betsy’s blog; it is written with grace and humour, generous with her insight, blunt when necessary but never cruel, and it is peppered with just enough industry gossip to make us feel clever but not dirty.

I highly recommend this book to anyone considering publication, living with or loving someone considering publication and anyone considering a career in the publishing industry. Betsy worked as an editor for 15years before becoming an agent, and is also an award winning author and poet, what she shares with us in The Forest for the Trees is hard-earned experience, which only a fool or a writer could ignore.

Rather than write another how-to book, Mittelmark and Newman have produced a book in a format which will be familiar to TV Tropes readers, naming, describing and creating their own hand-crafted, hysterical examples of many of the mistakes that unpublished authors make in spec manuscripts (though I have certainly seen many of these in published books, too!)

Ask yourself, are you guilty of:

“The Overture: Wherein the prologue is a brief guide to the meaning of life”

“The Puffer Fish: Wherein the author flaunts his vocabulary”

“The Joan Rivers Pre-Novel Special: In which clothing is given too much prominence?”

“The Vacation Slideshow: In which the author substitutes location for story?”

“Gibberish for Art’s Sake: Wherein indecipherable lyricism baffles the reader”

““But, Captain…!”: Where characters tell each other things they both already know”

“Hamlet at the Deli: Wherein the character’s thoughts are transcribed to no purpose”

“Goodbye cruel reader! In which an inconvenient character is conveniently disposed of?”

“The Underpants Gnomes Where crucial steps are omitted?”

and does your novel end with

“Now with 20% More Homily! Where the author tells us what he’s just spent 300 pages telling us”

If you find yourself haunted by some of the examples (and if you are even slightly honest with yourself, you will) and if you find yourself trying to justify your particular use of them, then they are probably the things you most need to fix!

Laugh out loud, shriek out loud, funny, this book will teach you more than many similar books which take you away from your writing for far longer. Definitely a book every would-be novelist should read.

The first email in the article took my breath away with its description of the story development process. Obviously, Davies had been asked by Cook for notes which might be an insight to his process and Davies’ response is an insight into my own and I’m sure so many others’ process too… I’ve never seen the mud of story gestation and development expressed so clearly.  When I say to you "Sorry, I’m terrible when I’m writing" because I haven’t called in a while or because I’ve been sitting right there but not quite present and it’s been going on for months and yet I don’t have anything I’m ready to show you or even seem to be able to tell you the story very clearly… well, it’s not an excuse but this is why.

From: Russell T.Davies To: Benjamin Cook Sunday February 18, 2007 12:41:59 GMT

There’s little physical evidence of the script process to show you. No notes. Nothing. I think, and think, and think…and by the time I come to write, a lot has been decided. Also, a lot hasn’t been decided, but I trust myself, and scare myself, that it’ll happen in the actual writing. It all exists in my head, but in this soup. It’s like the ideas are fluctuating in this great big quantum state of Maybe. The choices look easy when recounted later, but that’s hindsight. When nothing is real and nothing is fixed, it can go anywhere. The Maybe is a hell of a place to live. As well as being the best place in the world.

I filter through all those thoughts, but that’s rarely sitting at my desk, if ever. It’s all done walking about, going to town, having tea and watching telly. The rest of your life becomes just the surface, chattering away on top of the Maybe…and the doubts. That’s where this job is knackering and debilitating. Everything – and I mean every story ever written anywhere – is underscored by the constant murmur of: this is rubbish, I am rubbish, and this is due in on Tuesday! The hardest part of writing is the writing.

 

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The Sequence approach is apparently the approach taught at UCLA (where Gulino is a lecturer) and represents a refreshing change and, to my mind, a more natural approach than the 3 Act Structure though it is by no means exclusive of it. The theory is clearly and succinctly outlined in the first 19 pages then demonstrated by the breakdown into sequences of eleven films: Toy Story, the simple fact is that the script for Toy Story is one of the better ones written during the last century; The Shop Around the Corner; Double Indemnity; Nights of Cabria; North by Northwest; Lawrence of Arabia; The Graduate; One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; Air Force One; Being John Malkovich and; The Fellowship of the Ring.

Believe it or not, that’s all I have to say about this book except to recommend it highly to anyone suffering Act 2 malaise – the sequence approach is likely to give you the lateral jump needed to see your way out of that rutt. Of course, this book is also a great excuse to revisit some old favourites, after all we are screenwriters – watching movies is work.

Click here to see James Bonnet’s article "What’s Wrong With The Three Act Structure" (Beginners: only read this if you have grasped 3 Act Structure and – this article is not an excuse for not knowing it!)

*FOME Fellowship of the Middle Earth – The Monash U. Tolkien appreciation society (the most welcoming bunch of people ever to inhabit the Southwest corner of the caf.) of which I was a happy member – it was the only club I joined other than the Choir. Yes, I was/am a bit of a geek!