This is a nice little hardcover book, and as grammar lessons go, it is one of the more enjoyable ones that I have had. The examples used to demonstrate the errors of weak writing are clear, concise and logical.

Trenga has a history as a professional copywriter and proofreader and is well accustomed to seeing the most common grammar errors. In this volume she covers those common errors in sufficient detail that they are easy to spot in your own work. Her writing style is open and enjoyable and this really feels less like reading a grammar textbook and more like reading a magazine article.

Overall the book is enjoyable and educational. It is not as difficult to master as many other texts, but it will give a beginner or even an intermediate writer a welcome boost in the grammar area. The greatest benefit is that you begin to think like a grammarian, without realizing that you are doing so, and that can only lead to better writing, which is what we all want.

I am rating this for beginner and intermediate writers.

4 stars overall
4 stars for ease of reading
4 stars for usefulness of information.

Eats Shoots and Leaves gives a good technical overview of one of the areas where most new writers have the most trouble. Half rant and half witty-commentary, the lessons that Truss conveys are easily understood and can help almost any beginning writer to feel more confident about matters of punctuation, and for beginners that is often a great benefit.

Truss’s advice is probably more useful in the UK than the US since, by the author’s own admission, many of the rules are different between the two countries. She does an admirable job of pointing out the differences, but for anyone who is not heavily into punctuation, this can rapidly grow confusing.

I have found this book is not one I keep as a reference work to go back to for daily advice, but it is a valuable read and worth keeping on my shelf for an occasional repeat reading.

This is probably most valuable for beginners and intermediate writers, and I have rated it for beginners.

Four stars for ease of reading.
Four stars for usefulness of information

This book is not beginner friendly. That doesn’t mean that a beginner wouldn’t gain from reading it, but for anyone starting out Story Structure Architect would not be as helpful as most other books. A number of books offer greater benefits for beginners who want assistance with writing in general rather than and overview of specific themes. For those looking for the most basic information on how to write a novel, this level of detail is overkill.

A bit more is offered for intermediate writers, but the greatest gain would belong to advanced writers and scholars who are seeking a deeper understanding of the way that stories are constructed. Each chapter of the book deals with a different type of plot, explaining how the different elements go together to create the finished story.

While this may sound to a beginner like a great set of instructions, the reality is something that is intended more for serious scholars than writers of general or genre fiction. Once you get past the first chapter, the book becomes repetitive since so many plots are very similar to each other and because each chapter is structured the same each is almost identical with a few exceptions. The feeling is very much one of looking through an atlas at a series of disconnected maps. The maps of foreign places are interesting, but not of great value unless you have been there. For most beginners who have never been there, the maps will not tell you how to get to the country, only what to do once you are there.

For serious students of the art who are looking to enhance their knowledge, this book will show the connections that all stories have one to the other. It probably would not be my first pick for my advanced bookshelf, but in the long run I’m glad that I own it, so I think it is worth recommending, even if only as a very advanced book.

Rated as advanced:
Two stars for ease of reading.
Three stars for usefulness of information.

Charming–there’s not much more I can say about this book. It is mostly biographical, following Ms Lamott’s quest to become a writer and shadowing her triumphs and failures. It is also very funny and entertaining enough to make me curious about her other books.

The hints and tips she gives are the same that many other gurus have expounded on over the years: write everyday; write what you know; write the truth; persevere. So, there was nothing that pounced out at me with startling clarity. No ‘tiger’ moment where the logic became so inescapable it grabbed me by the throat and shook me. No new and fantastic insights into method or craft.

That said, this was still a very entertaining read, and definitely one of the more pleasant books I’ve read of this type.

I guess sometimes a writing book doesn’t have to give you the Holy Grail. Sometimes it can just let you know that such an object exists. I think that’s what I’ve taken away from this book. A sense of peace. It’s a good read. If you don’t have a lot of writing books, it’s probably worth getting for the advice it does give. If you have a bunch of writing books already, this is still good for the entertainment value and the chance to see how your peers view the art.

I’m rating this as a beginner book since I think beginners might connect with the way of life of a writer, and the tips that do turn up in here are basic to the art.

Four stars for ease of reading.
Three stars for usefulness of information. (Although some of my friends have argued this should be higher).

If you think you’ve noticed an increase in grammar and typographical errors in books and magazines over the last few years, it is because you probably have. Most of the major publishers have cut way back on editing and rely on the writers to provide work that needs minimal reworking. While this has saved the publishing houses a lot of money, it has occasionally resulted in printed work that exhibits a number of errors.

This policy also means that writers are more than ever responsible for the quality of their work, and that publishers are much less likely to consider work that exhibits a multitude of grammar, punctuation or spelling errors. If you are wondering how to get published and worrying that your grammar might not be up to snuff, you are not alone. So, what is a writer to do?

Browne and King come to the rescue with help in just those areas. Both of the authors are professional editors and offer in this book their combined experience to help authors better self-edit their work.

The information that Browne and King offer is generic enough that it can be found elsewhere in greater detail, excluding perhaps one or two little tidbits that I haven’t found discussed in my other readings. What the books does offer, is an overview of the things that professional editors find most important. These are tips on writing a book that the average writer can readily adopt to produce a manuscript with the highest likelihood of sale. Even in the event that Browne and King haven’t provided enough information to correct every individual writer’s problems, most of us are still better off by knowing what problems we have.

I hesitate to recommend this book for absolute beginners. While there is a great deal that a beginning writer can learn from Browne and King, I think the real value will be unrealized until the beginner has gained at least some knowledge in story construction. If I were to tell a beginner that scenes are about people, it wouldn’t mean as much as the same advice would to a writer already somewhat skilled in scene structure. I believe that a beginner would be better off looking at some of the books that cover basic story and scene structure first, then graduate into books like Self-Editing for Fiction Writers later.

I’m rating this book for intermediate writers and above.

Four stars overall.
Four stars for ease of reading.
Four stars for usefulness of information

My copy of this is a smallish paperback that has a blue cover with a picture of a goldfish. A quick glimpse of this on a book shelf and you might think it is about pisciculture of some form, unless of course you read the subtitle: “write fiction that grabs readers at page one and never lets them go.”

I admit to being hesitant about buying this book. I had little faith that a book with a goldfish cover would be serious enough to do my fiction writing any good. I soon found out that writing great fiction is what this book is about.

There is no doubt that Edgerton discusses how to craft great opening hooks, in fact a major portion of the book is dedicated to it. But, the best hook in the world won’t help if the story behind it fails. To help us prevent that, Edgerton spends a good amount of time explaining a story telling system that includes two concepts, the “story worthy problem,” and the “surface problem.”

My own observations tend to agree with Edgerton’s that many beginners miss the existence of the story worthy problem and instead only write about surface problems, which makes for flat stories without depth or dimension. The insight that Edgerton gives should help many avoid that flat-story issue entirely.

With just the two concepts of “Story Worthy” and “Surface” problems, Edgerton goes on to detail in a very simple yet workable form how a good story is generally constructed. The advice and instruction match that given by many other authors that I’ve read, but the explanation is perhaps among the best I’ve encountered. It is simple, direct and very clear.

Hooked might not cure a hangnail, but it should be of vast help to beginners. This is a book full of construction information that will help new writers cook up better stories and intermediate writers find ways to garnish their own with a bit more flair. Advanced writers will probably find less fresh material here but might want to take a peek anyway.

I’m rating this as a beginner book although I think intermediates will gain insight also.

See you next time.
~Hilveticka

4 stars over all.
4 stars for ease of reading.
4 Stars for usefulness of information

As books for writers go, John Gardner has produced a winner for both advanced and intermediate level writers with his offering, The Art of Fiction. The Art of Fiction is also a good companion piece to Jack Bickham’s Scene and Structure, and Damon Knight’s Creating Short Fiction.

For anyone who wants to learn how to write a book, these volumes  make a formidable trio that covers fiction from genre to literary. Gardner’s language use is a bit heavy as he is speaking to us from a prior time, and some beginners might find it a bit hard to read comfortably and still gain very much. Also, Gardner describes this book as being for young writers, but I’d think most of today’s youngsters would need a pretty large vocabulary to understand everything being discussed here. In this instance, I take the term “young” to mean young in experience rather than years.

That said, Gardner has managed to explain a great deal about story creation and the underlying process that readers pass through when reading works of fiction. It is important to understand this reading process in order to get the writing process correct, and it is an important part of learning how to write a book or how to write a short story. Writing fiction is an interesting occupation or hobby and it is full of ins and outs. Everyone can use some good tips and Gardner has many, including tips for plotting, basic structuring, technique, craft and most other aspects of writing.

There is also an amusing rant about types of literature that Gardner feels lower the standards of being an author. Gardner is also the author of On Moral Fiction, which will be reviewed another time. From the title, you can imagine that Gardner has some very definite views of how fiction should function and work. He lays many of them out in the Art of Fiction.

I’m giving this book:
4 stars overall.
3 stars for ease of reading.
4 stars for usefulness of information.

The Spooky Art, by Norman Mailer.

This is not a book filled with tips about how to construct stories, or how to make your characters come to life. Instead, it is a book about Norman Mailer’s views about what it means to be a writer. Semi-biographical, the book contains many of Mailer’s ideas about how a writer should live within his craft and gives examples from Mailer’s own life.

Like all of the other works of Mailer’s that I’ve read, The Spooky Art is composed of heavy and sometimes ponderous writing as Mailer reaches for what he perceives to be a “literary” sound. Within the depths of this work, Mailer proposes the theory that a writer who doesn’t show his work publicly is committing “literary masturbation.” A few pages later, Mailer makes the comparison between himself writing and a prize fighter going into the ring. I have puzzled over the incongruity of these two comparisons, wouldn’t a prizefighter engage in far more practice rounds than public rounds? Why isn’t this permissible for a writer?  I also found the whole image of Mailer as a prizefighter a odd. Is writing supposed to be that hard? Perhaps that is why the books, while often good, are also often slow reading.

Despite this negativity there are some very good explanations within the pages of The Spooky Art, and Mailer makes one or two of those revelations that make you go “ah ha!” They aren’t really anything that you can’t find anywhere else, but Mailer has managed to view and present them in a different way.

Certain ideas and methods tie all professional writers together. I’ve seen them explained over and over in writing books–and not always are they explained very clearly either. Sometimes in reading this book I had the impression that Mailer himself may not have the best grip on how he actually creates a story, but by reading between the lines, I can tell that he follows many of the standard methods of other writers. In other words, he understands what he has to do on a level that is difficult for him to explain, or perhaps to even examine in close detail, and this book is an attempt at that explanation.

Mailer fans will like this book. Academics interested in hardcore exploration should get something out of this too. Beginning or intermediate writers will probably do better with one of the many other writing books available. As someone looking for pure writing advice, this one didn’t make it for me.

I’m rating this as an advanced book, and I’m giving:
1 star overall.
1 star for ease of reading.
1 star for usefulness of information.

Writing books can often be dull, at least the ones that try to be too authoritative can be. So, I was pleased when I found that Patrick McManus’ Deer on a Bicycle doesn’t fit that mold.

McManus’ short stories are always a delightful treat full of sweet surprises. How yummy it is to find a writing book written by this master of country humor that not only incorporates a lot of his know-how, but also demonstrates it time after time through the pages of his short stories. I enjoy when any author breaks one of his stories down for me and tells me why he made the decisions he did, and McManus manages that task time after time throughout this book.

McManus’ book is set up so that there is a lot of discussion in the first half about the techniques of writing humorous fiction. It is in the latter half of the book that McManus demonstrates the application of these techniques. No one who has ever read a McManus story can forget the adventures of Rancid Crabtree, Retch and the other characters that live in McManus’s created world–at least I hope it is a created world. In this book McManus has collected a dozen of his favorite stories including the title story, and each story has its own commentary. This is an almost unprecedented opportunity to hear from a practicing professional the how and why of his story telling.

The Deer on a Bicycle is a fun book to read, and while McManus’ insights were not as earth shaking for me as a few of the writing books I’ve read, the book provided me almost as much entertainment as education. That is a claim that very few other writers have been able to make. McManus has stewed up something unique and I’d say if you don’t want to own it, you should at least read it. This is a book for beginning and middle writers, with middle writers who have already mastered the basics of storytelling perhaps getting more than the beginners. It is very easy to read and there are tips for everyone.

I’m rating this one as an intermediate book. Beginners will find something too, but not the basic nuts and bolts of how to begin. McManus assumes you can do that already.

Four stars overall.

Four stars for ease of reading.

Four stars for usefulness of information.

~ enjoy. H. Midiam

This book strikes me as being for writers of intermediate skills a little bit more than beginners and a little bit less than advanced writers. If you are looking for raw basics to get started in writing as hobby or career, you might be better off leaving Mr. Knight’s book on the shelf just a little bit longer and looking instead at more basic instruction.

However, if you have already reached the mid-point in developing your skills–this is one of the first books to acquire in the next round. It is a smooth and interesting read and offers a deep well of information on various writing subjects, including a step-by-step walk through of one of Knight’s stories as he discusses why he made certain decisions in the plotting process and how each of those decisions altered the storyline later on. The entire book appears very well thought out and the information is generally useful and flows logically from point to point.

One of the earliest and perhaps best concepts in this book is the “collaboration with Fred”.  Knight has bestowed the name Fred on his subconscious, and goes on to explain how Fred can be used in creating fiction. (While I have been able to get my Fred to give me a lot of help, I’m afraid that Knight’s Fred must be much wiser and more helpful than my own.)

Other chapters cover viewpoint, background, action, beginning a story, finishing a story and most importantly controlling a story–keeping it from running away or leaving you stranded in a corner with your characters in a box of their own making.

Creating Short Fiction is among the more interesting of the writing books that I have read and it is one that I easily remember both the name and author of. When your pile of books is so tall that you can’t remember every author or book name, it means something when one book stands out this well. Knight has managed to pass on enough advice to take many novice writers and move them to the intermediate category.

I’m rating this as an intermediate book
Four stars overall.
Four stars for ease of reading.
Four stars for usefulness of information