Taka's review
How to Write a Damn Good Novel: A Step-by-Step No Nonsense Guide to Dramatic Storytelling (How to Write a Damn Good Novel) by James N. Frey
Taka's review
rating:
bookshelves: japan_jul07-present, writing_reference
status: Read in September, 2008
rating:
bookshelves: japan_jul07-present, writing_reference
status: Read in September, 2008
Meh--
Having read a few books on writing (Stephen King's On Writing, Jerry Cleaver's Immediate Fiction, Renni Browne and Dave King's Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, and John Gardner's On Becoming a Novelist), I found James Frey's How to Write a Damn Good Novel rather narrow-minded, lacking in detail, and even trite.
Every time Frey gives advice, he comes across as dogmatic; it's as though he thinks his method is THE right method and other methods are inferior in themselves. But that's just plain wrong. While he does give good advice, the reader should be aware that there are many more methods out there (see Cleaver's book on this) that may or may not work for a particular writer. Frey's method may very well work for himself, and maybe for many others, but just as there is no one way of telling a story, there simply is no one way of writing a novel. As long as Frey's method works for you and gets you to write better prose and dialogue and story...more
Having read a few books on writing (Stephen King's On Writing, Jerry Cleaver's Immediate Fiction, Renni Browne and Dave King's Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, and John Gardner's On Becoming a Novelist), I found James Frey's How to Write a Damn Good Novel rather narrow-minded, lacking in detail, and even trite.
Every time Frey gives advice, he comes across as dogmatic; it's as though he thinks his method is THE right method and other methods are inferior in themselves. But that's just plain wrong. While he does give good advice, the reader should be aware that there are many more methods out there (see Cleaver's book on this) that may or may not work for a particular writer. Frey's method may very well work for himself, and maybe for many others, but just as there is no one way of telling a story, there simply is no one way of writing a novel. As long as Frey's method works for you and gets you to write better prose and dialogue and story...more
