★★★★★ 5
The Best Starter Writing Book Out There
Format: Kindle
Anyone who's serious about writing a book needs to start here. Gardner's advice on maintaining the "fictional dream" for the reader--that is, suspension of disbelief, immersion--is top notch. Part I, the discussion and overview of fiction, is engaging and helps contextualize the advice presented: where on the spectrum of the written word we are trying to fit into, what it aims to accomplish, what it needs to accomplish that, and how we go about creating it as writers.
Part II covers the common pitfalls and offers technical advice. Style and structure are covered, with especially good lessons on diction and proper sequencing of signals in the test (stimulus, involuntary reaction, voluntary reaction--which may be thought of as cause & effect and is explained in greater depth in Dwight V. Swain's book as Motivation-Reaction Units), with solid explanations for why mistakes here harm the fictional dream and why it is important to get it right. Also covered are the "clumsy writing" mistakes such as characters looking in mirrors to shoehorn description into the text, as well as melodrama, which relies on cheap sleight of hand in writing as opposed to real drama. I loved the section on vocabulary, which explained the problem with writing-by-thesaurus while emphasizing the importance of expanding ordinary vocabulary that include more uncommon words (such as technical architectural terms like "lintel," which, while uncommon, are a benefit to writing) as well as brand names.
What this book will do:
- Give you a good overview of fiction
- Help you understand what fiction tries to accomplish, why, and how
- Explain the common clumsy mistakes and how to avoid them
- Provide you exercises
- Entertain you with Gardner's engaging writing voice (so it doesn't feel like a manual)
What this book won't do:
- Help you understand nonfiction and how to write it
- Cover the common mistakes in-depth
- Give you genre-specific advice
- Cover anything related to self-publishing
- Explain the business of writing
- Take the place of critiquers, beta readers, or editors
This is a great intro to writing craft book. It should, at the very least, help you understand what you're trying to do and identify your weaknesses so that you may find more narrowly tailored resources to help you. I find myself referring to the passages I highlighted quite often, both in the paperback and the Kindle version.
FWIW, the Kindle version is now searchable. When I first bought it, it was not. The search function is a *great* help.
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Reviewed in the United States on February 10, 2016
