Books How to Write a Damn Good Novel: A Step-by-Step No Nonsense Guide to Dramatic Storytelling
Books and Publications Average Rating:

Rating: - Simple and excellent
This is a simple to read book, with excellent advice and direction. A very good start to writing a novel for a beginner. Read it before you start writing!

---

Rating: - You gotta outscore the other team! Coaching your novel to victory.
My temptation is to rechristen this easy-reading book, _How to Write Pulp Fiction_. Frey's tone is a bit like a crew cut football coach. "You wanna win? Do ya? You gotta play hard! You gotta block. You gotta give a hundred and ten percent! Be a man." Of course, the content is different. It's more like: "Give yer characters personality! Spice up your dialogue! You're not gonna win if you don't have rising tension! You wanna get published? Get a premise!" I get the sense the man's had ten thousand mediocre writers pass through his courses. He's sick of it. He's fed up with the dumb mistakes.

Frey's approach is obnoxious, macho, and blustery. No doubt innumerable great novels would flunk his tests. His advice could ruin countless gems. You could see him screaming at Jane Austen, Joyce Carol Oates, or Albert Camus. They did well ignoring such advice. But would you?

For the novice novelist, Frey's book makes a good deal of sense. Are your characters vapid? Is there an absence of tension in your dialogue? Do your characters face no obstacles? If so Frey is right: your novel is junk. Tear it up! Rewrite! Get a clue! But if you're more experienced you may, like a veteran football player, find yourself rolling your eyes.

I'd like to think I'm far too good for Frey's advice. Maybe so, maybe not. At any rate, I did find myself writing notes in the margins, and rolling his words around in my head. I found myself checking my novel against his dictums. Usually I checked off his remarks about character, plot, and conflict. Yes, yes, yes, okay, good, fine. And now I then I thought, Screw that! (Frey's chapter on premise is particularly infuriating and potentially deleterious.) I especially think that an author who writes in the "literary" genre ought to stand up to this coach. The would-be bestselling author would probably do well to heed most of Frey's advice. The content may be obvious and the tone may be gruff, but this coach's words are more or less in the ballpark.

---

Rating: - If you write novels, don't miss this one!
I've read a lot of books on fiction and novel writing. There are a lot of good books available on the subject. You can read more and better advice on writing than you could a few decades ago, when there was little to be had.

James Frey's How to Write a Damn Good Novel is exceptionally good. He points out subtle but quintessential aspects all of us in the fiction writing field need to know. Most books on Amazon.com dealing with this area of skill cover the elements of fiction in helpful ways. But Mr. Frey interrelates key aspects together so that they not only make sense, they also come across with the force of brilliant insights, which indeed they are.

And if that isn't enough: The bits of zany humor here and there in the text make it also an entertaining read. Better than some portions of Saturday Night Live.

I've read half this book in 3 days, in spite of a bunch of writing, other reading, and watching Ghost Hunters on Sci-fi Channel last evening. That's fast for me.

Very highly recommended.

I'm on to volume II next.

---

Rating: - "It Does Help To Follow Proven Formulas/Guidelines"
"How To Write A Damn Good Novel", James N. Frey, St. Martin's Press, NY, 1987. ISBN: 0-312-01044-3, SC 174 pgs. Contents 3 pgs 8 ½" x 5 3/4".

Author Frey, a well-published novelist also taught novel and fiction writing courses at Univ. of Calif., Berkeley.

Like other authors, Frey developed and writes with strong witty prose that reinforces many of the ideas he shares with his students. Unlike some teachers on novel writing, he delves deeply into the essence of story-telling, back to the time of Aristotle and hammers home the essentials of dramatic writing: Homo fictus, character building, do's and don'ts, bonding, inner conflict, premise, storytelling, climax & resolution, viewpoint, dialogues, rewriting and Zen of becoming a novelist. Knowing essential elements of a novel clarifies for the would-be novelist those parts which are indispensable and those which are superfluous for a DGN.

Possibly, perhaps, reading the now numerous books on how to become a novelist make each discourse appear to have a touch of magic, but there are elements other than pure literary style at play: the mere fact of its being published is some testimonial, then too is the subject matter that may be the writer's concerted efforts to have something published and was for the now successful writer a stringent exercise for his own betterment. Frey's contribution, however, surpasses all these boundaries, for he's not only been well published but teaches the subject for Academia. This book's coverlet describes it as "A step-by-step no nonsense guide to dramatic storytelling", a depiction that tells it very well & truthfully. It's more than entertainment.

FINIS