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Style – ten lessons in clarity and grace

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how to refine your writing style

This is a twenty year old book already in its sixth edition, and the author admits that it’s still ‘evolving’, which is a good sign that serious thought is going into its composition. Style ten lessons in clarity and grace is based on a course Joseph Williams teaches at the University of Chicago. His approach is based on two principles – that ‘it’s good to write clearly, and anyone can’ – and the second part of the proposition is what he’s teaching here. His approach is to draw attention to the finer issues of clarity in prose, and to show how language can be used with subtelty to effect it.

Style ten lessons in clarity and grace His ten seperate chapters deal with each of these issues in turn, and his own prose style is engaging and friendly – which both proves his point and shows that he knows what he is talking about. He starts with a brief and amusing guide to bad prose and what creates it, and he ends with the most celebrated advice on creating effective prose – that good writing is about ‘rewriting’. His general advice is that improvement can be made – if you go slowly. So what then are his ten ‘lessons’?

  1. Write with readers in mind
  2. Write clearly
  3. Write concretely
  4. Write in an active mode
  5. Put the subject at start of sentence
  6. Put rhetoric at end of sentence
  7. Edit, edit, edit; and cut, cut, cut
  8. Get the verb in the main clause
  9. Create structure
  10. Write ethically

It’s pitched at a fairly sophisticated level, suitable for intermediate to advanced users. Williams assumes that readers know the basics of what is right and wrong, but want to improve in matters of clarity and elegance. He makes an interesting and useful distinction between three types of correctness – and offers different levels of response to them.

There are are exercises in each chapter with suggested answers, which I think makes this a text which might be more popular with tutors than with the students for whom it was presumably written. You’ve got to put up with a lot of grappling with ‘nominalizations’, ‘resumptive modifiers’, and elimination of the passive voice, as well as the same examples worked over and over until they’re right.

There’s a particularly good chapter on deleting redundant expressions, writing more concisely, and eliminating ‘metadiscourse’ [signposting or ‘writing about writing’]. He gives one example where a fifty word statement is edited down to a sentence of six. His advice includes one point I write on something like fifty percent of all student essays: ‘Put the subject at the start of the sentence, and follow it as soon as possible with the verb’.

Towards the end of the book he tries to ‘teach the unteachable’ – elegance and ‘good style’. This section requires quite a sophisticated level of literary experience, and strangely enough he ends on punctuation – but pitched at quite an advanced level.

This isn’t a book for beginners. It’s for people who want to improve their existing writing skills, who want to rid themselves of officialese and cloudy abstraction and garbled syntax so as to produce writing which is clear and efficient. If you follow his advice, read carefully what he’s got to say, and complete the exercises, I think you’ll find it money well spent.

© Roy Johnson 2000

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Joseph Williams, Style: ten lessons in clarity and grace, New York: Addison Wesley, (6th edn) 1999, pp.309, ISBN: 0321024087

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Subediting for Journalists

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the art and skills of subediting for publication

The best thing about Subediting for Journalists is that it is quite clearly based on practical experience in professional journalism. There are some interesting accounts from newspaper and magazine journalists describing exactly how they work. It’s all to do with rigour and attention to detail. They deal with the basics of house style – adhering to a set of standards in spelling and representation. This means taking care with punctuation and grammar, spotting cliché, and getting names right.

Subediting for JournalistsMost of what they have to say concerns correcting common mistakes – dangling participles, misused phrases, and unnecessary repetition. Anyone who wants to improve their writing skills could learn valuable lessons here. They also cover all those grammatical niceties such as that/which and who/whom which you look up then forget about by the next time you need to use them. The advice they give could not be more up to date:

your publication …. could be printed, it could be uploaded onto a website, it could be cannibalised for delivery to WAP or G3 mobile phones and it could also appear on television.

There are plenty of examples of re-written news items which illustrate the advice being given. They deal neatly with issues of names, dates, places, accuracy, and getting to the point. There are sections on writing headlines and photograph captions. These need to be snappy, but the advice is the same in both cases – make it accurate.

They outline the main legal and ethical problems confronting subeditors – issues of copyright, libel, slander, defamation, and contempt of court.

They also explain the print production process. This includes the use of computer software such as Quark Publishing System (QPS) to control what can become a very complex collection of documents. It’s like a peek behind the scenes for the uninitiated.

There’s also a chapter on print technology which won’t tell you much about subediting, but which is a fascinating sketch of the revolution which took place in 1983 when hot metal was replaced by digital typesetting.

They finish with a chapter on subediting web pages. They conclude with a glossary of journalism terms, a sample house style guide, and standard proof correction symbols in UK and US style.

This is a good book. It’s readable, written by people who are clearly well-informed, and just about as up-to-date as it’s possible to be in the old-ish world of print publication.

© Roy Johnson 2002

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Wynford Hicks and Tim Holmes, Subediting for Journalists, London: Routledge, 2002, pp.180, ISBN: 0415240859

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The Art and Science of Screenwriting

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creative writing guide for the cinema and television

This is a practical handbook on screenwriting, an explanation of what a screenplay is, a guide to getting your own ideas into the correct format, and an account of all the stages that follow the production of a first draft. Philip Parker starts off by explaining the key concepts of any dramatic narrative and showing their relationship to each other in what he calls a ‘creative matrix’. These are story, theme, form, plot, genre, and style. He explains how each of these is relevant, then takes you through what he calls ‘the tools of the trade’ – the original Proposal, the Outline, the Treatment, the Step Outline, and the Screenplay Layout.

The Art and Science of ScreenwritingThese are all progressively longer documents which specify exactly what the film is about and what happens in it. He shows you how to produce these documents, and even how to lay out their contents on the page. He also shows how to develop screen ideas out of novels and stories, contemporary events, historical happenings, even newspaper stories or your own life or dreams. There is also an explanation of the differences in writing for television and the cinema.

The most basic elements are how to establish credible characters and how to best arrange the sequence of events in a multi-strand narrative. To demonstrate this in practice, he offers examples and analyses of film scripts for both television and cinema, showing how scenes are paced and edited, and how narratives are controlled.

He also identifies what he calls the ‘ten basic stories’ and ‘eight basic themes’. I’m not sure that all narratives can be so reduced, but it leads to a lot of useful discussion of genres and stereotypes – and how to recognise them. He also goes on to show the different styles in which films can be shot appropriate to their genre.

He finishes with two important chapters. First, having written the initial draft of your screenplay, how to go about re-writing it to produce a sharper version. Second, how to get your work accepted, deal with agents, cope with rejections, and strike deals which lead to your getting paid.

It’s suitable for anyone who has an interest in screenwriting – from would-be first time writers, to experienced professionals such as directors, producers, and media teachers.

What he emphasises is that producing for the screen is an industry in which the screenwriter is only one part. It might be an important part, but you have to be prepared to co-operate with other people. There are useful suggestions for further reading, but one thing that’s missing is a glossary of technical jargon. That’s one for the next edition.

I still don’t know why screen scripts present their instructions in ugly continuous capitals, but he shows you exactly how to do it. If you want to get on in this business, you have to conform to its rules.

© Roy Johnson 2000

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Philip Parker, The Art and Science of Screenwriting, Exeter: Intellect, 2nd edn, 1999, pp.219, ISBN: 1841500003

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The First Five Pages

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a writer’s guide to staying out of the slush pile

Noah Lukeman is a New York literary agent with a number of top-ranking authors as his clients. He has also written a number of books on the craft of writing (see The Art of Punctuation for instance) so he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to the literary marketplace – in which it must be said so many people wish to make their mark. Publishers and literary agents receive hundreds and hundreds of manuscripts each month – almost all of which are rejected. The First Five Pages is his advice for staying out of the slush pile.

The First Five PagesIt’s the job of these publishing professionals to be discriminating, and it’s the job of the writer to produce a manuscript that stands out among the competition. Those outstanding qualities, Lukeman argues, have to be apparent from the first five pages – otherwise no agent or publisher will bother reading further. In fact he claims – and I believe him – that five sentences is enough. His advice when it comes is quite bracing. First of all he dismisses the supremacy of plot, and lets you in to a secret from the professional’s office:

Agents and editors often ignore synopses and plot outlines; instead, we skip right to the actual manuscript. If the writing is good, then we’ll go back and consider the synopsis

The other thing which creates an immediate impression on agents and publishers is the physical presentation of text. He takes a really strict line here.You should use clean, new A4 paper, and the text should be printed at high quality, double spaced with one inch margins and indented dialogue and paragraph first lines. The slightest falling off in these standards gives the reader every reason to chuck your work into the reject bin.

Next comes the surgical removal of excessive adjectives and adverbs – the most common mistake of would-be writers. This is followed by advice on the sound of language, and how to avoid unwanted alliteration, assonance, and verbal echoes. The same is true for any comparisons or metaphors you use. They should be fresh, original, and to the point – otherwise, leave them out.

On literary style his advice is to avoid mannerism and extremes, and he nails down two excellent examples of the ‘academic’ and ‘experimental’ style of writing.

There’s a section on dialogue and eradicating all that ‘he said … she retorted’ sort of thing. He warns specifically against the easy trap of using dialogue to fill in the back story. That is, having characters explicate matters they would both already know (for the benefit of the reader). The rule – as ever – is show, don’t tell.

The same sort of rigour is well-advised over point of view and narrative mode. Many amateur writers use the first person mode thinking it will allow them the chance to show off, but all they end up doing is littering their story with too much biographical dross, and failing to create a consistent and credible or interesting narrator.

Next comes the creation of character. This is a difficult topic on which to generalise. Some great novels have memorable characters about whose appearance we know very little (Kafka’s Joseph K for instance) and others are memorable merely for what they do – such as Catherine Earnshaw, who even dies half way through Wuthering Heights.

The later chapters deal with some of the more subtle points of being creative – knowing what to leave out, striking the right tone, how to stay focused on the main event, and how to deal with setting and pace.

Many aspiring writers will complain that their favourite authors ignore these guidelines – and Lukeman admits that great writers break all the rules. But what he’s offering here is a guide to common mistakes which should be avoided. As he says, would-be writers from California to England to Turkey to Japan … do exactly the same things wrong

To get into print in the first instance you have to obey the literary norms of the day. And that’s what this book The First Five Pages is doing in its own modest way. Noah Lukeman just wants to show you how to stand out from the also-rans in the slush pile, as something worthy of notice.

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© Roy Johnson 2010

Noah Lukeman, The First Five Pages, Oxford: Oxford University Press, revised edition, 2010, pp.191, ISBN: 0199575282

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The Forest for the Trees

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advice to writers – from an experienced editor

All authors, editors and publishers should read this book. Even those who think they know all about writing and the publishing process will find fresh ideas and perceptive insights. Betsy Lerner has a wealth of experience, from her youthful beginnings at Simon & Schuster to becoming executive editor at Doubleday and now as a literary agent. She writes with style, empathy, wit, realism, and above all humanity. In The Forest for the Trees she identifies five ‘writer types’, all of them familiar.

The Forest for the TreesThe Ambivalent Writer is one who can’t commit to a one idea for a story from the many possibles and who does not realise that writing is 90 per cent sheer sticking power. The Natural Writer is the one for whom writing appears to come easily. Or is that the myth of not realising that hard writing makes easy reading? Lerner’s definition of the ‘natural’ is one who is always writing. She cites Thurber who never quite knew when he was or wasn’t at it, ‘Sometimes my wife comes up to me at a party and says, “Dammit, Thurber, stop writing.”‘ For ‘natural’, maybe one should read ‘persistent’.

The Wicked Child relies on ‘kiss-and-tell’: someone who exposes family relationships, friends, acquaintances (or even, like Philip Roth, a whole tribe) in a more or less disguised fashion. personal relationships. The Self-promoter will do anything for fame – there are many such writers today, but it is a shock to realise that Walt Whitman shamelessly trumpeted himself from the roof-tops and sucked up to celebrity writers of the day. Emily Dickinson on the other hand died with 2000 poems unpublished .

The Neurotic makes a great fuss about the process itself – writing has to be done with an HB pencil, or on lined paper of exactly the right width. Few of these quirks are as eccentric as Dame Edith Sitwell who needed to start the day’s work by lying in an open coffin, but every reader will recognise such stalling techniques.

The second half of the book deals with the publishing process – everything from finding an agent to the book jacket and sales conference. Authors should be aware of what editors are looking for and what they can realistically expect from a publishing house. It would seem that a wad of rejection letters followed eventually by a book without a launch party and no reviews is completely the norm. And if authors turn up to read their books in local bookshops only to find they haven’t got any copies to sell, that’s par for the course too.

Naturally every author is looking for validation, but ten per cent of all titles earn ninety per cent of all revenues. Publishers are clearly going to concentrate on those at the top of their lists. Yet the truth seems to be that even the publishers don’t know which books are going to be in that top ten per cent. If they did, they probably wouldn’t print any of the others at all.

Lerner concludes: ‘Most of the disappointment that writers experience in having a book published can be traced back to their initial expectations – what most writers don’t understand … is that landing a contract and being published do not guarantee the fulfillment of all their hopes and dreams.’

Why do we do it?

© Jane Dorner 2004

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Betsy Learner, The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers, New York: Riverhead Books/Penguin Putnam, revised and updated edition 2010, pp.304, ISBN: 159448483X

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The Handbook of Good English

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guide to grammar, punctuation, usage, and style

Some writing guides are not much more than a list of grammatical rules, with illustrative examples and tips on what to avoid. Even though it uses grammatical elements as its structure, The Handbook of Good English is almost the opposite of that. Edward Johnson is an editor with a passion for language and the way it is used. What he seeks to explain is not just grammatical rules but the reasons why some forms of writing are more persuasive and elegant than others.

The Handbook of Good English And he does this in a very leisurely manner, which is what makes this book so long – and comprehensive. He starts with sentences, then works his way to parts of speech and punctuation. At best, the examples and explanations he gives are good for being so succinct – as in his discussion of the gerund:

I dislike that man’s wearing a mask and I dislike that man wearing a mask are different statements. In the first, the wearing of the mask is disliked; in the second, the man is disliked. In the first statement, wearing is a gerund – that is, a special verb form that functions as a noun.

He covers every possible combination of circumstances which can arise to create problems: how to show quotations within quotations, dashes within parentheses, foreign words, and the titles of newspapers, plays, and the parts of a book. His thoroughness is almost exhausting. There are twenty-seven pages on the comma and thirty-four on the hyphen alone.

He’s what might be called a liberal or tolerant prescriptivist, because whilst permitting occasional exceptions, he does ultimately seek to establish rules:

the functionless comma does no harm, but nevertheless, commas that have no function should be omitted, just as words that have no function should be omitted (see Rule 1-4).

He takes full account of the differences between American and UK use of English, and it is interesting to note that (contrary to what UK traditionalists imagine) changes and influences operate in both directions.

Grammar issues apart, the chapter most readers will enjoy is his last – where he gives excellent advice on writing style. This covers subtle matters such as tone, diction, pace, attitude, and construction.

But at times, his approach is not so felicitous. I found it slightly annoying that a lot of his topics started off with bad examples. There are so many reasons why writing can be clumsy and ill-formed, this leads him into lengthy discussions of all the possible corrections and alternatives, after which he is forced to say:

It must be admitted that the correct versions of these sentences are much harder on the ear or eye than the incorrect versions, and that rewriting them would be advisable.

It’s a book which will probably be of most use to those people who already have a reasonable command of basic English, but who would like to know why some common grammatical problems are wrong or unacceptable – as well as how to put them right. In this sense it can be used as both a book of instruction or reference.

© Roy Johnson 2000

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Edward D. Johnson, The Handbook of Good English, New York: Washington Square Press, 1991, pp.426, ISBN: 0671707973

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The Oxford Comma

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also known as the serial or the Harvard comma

What is the Oxford Comma?

the Oxford comma
The Oxford comma is a name given to the mark of punctuation used before the final and when listing a series of items. Here’s an example.

There were a number of items on the table: a handbag, a penknife, a clock, and a walking stick.

The Oxford comma is the comma which comes before the last item – , and a walking stick.

The Oxford comma gets its name from the fact that is has traditionally been recommended by the Oxford University Press in its instructions to typesetters and printers. The latest OUP style guide, New Hart’s Rules continues to urge its use. It’s also known as the ‘serial comma’, or the ‘Harvard comma’ in the USA.

When a number of items are listed in a sentence, the normal way to present them is separated by commas. However, there are two schools of thought about the need for the final comma.

The sentence above would still be understandable if it were written as follows:

There were a number of items on the table: a handbag, a penknife, a clock and a walking stick.

Some people argue that the final comma can be omitted in many cases because it breaks up the natural flow of the sentence. That’s true in this example – but only because all the items are quite distinct and carry equal weight. The comma in this case can be used or omitted. However, in other cases ambiguity can easily arise if the comma is omitted.

This is particularly true if the list includes things of a different kind.

cider, real ales, meat and vegetable pies and sandwiches

This example could mean that in addition to cider and real ales, the list includes meat, plus vegetable pies, plus sandwiches. But is more likely to mean meat and vegetable pies, plus sandwiches.

A famous instance of the same thing is that attributed to the American science fiction writer Teresa Hayden, who dedicated one of her books in the following way.

To my parents, Ayn Rand and God.

What she meant of course was ‘I am dedicating this book to my parents, to Ayn Rand, and to God’. Even that would have been pretentious enough, but the way she has expressed it, without the Oxford comma, the implication is that her parents were Ayn Rand and God.

A comma after the final and is not required when the last two items are a single expression or a ‘pair’

The menu offered us several options: roast beef, pasta bake, lamb chops, or fish and chips.

The comma should also be used if there is a grammatical extension to the list, as in this example.

brass, copper, bronze, and other non-ferrous materials

The need for the final comma become more acute when the list is a series of clauses in a single sentence.

The main points to consider are whether the competitors are skilful enough to complete the course, whether they have trained sufficiently for such a long race, and whether they are used to running at high altitude in these temperatures.

The commas in this example help the reader to understand a long statement made up of complex parts.

When the clauses in a complex sentence are themselves puctuated by commas, the separate clauses should be punctuated using the semicolon.

The outbreak of war was caused by a number of factors: Hitler’s determination to occupy Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland; the longstanding desire of Chamberlain and Daladier, as opposed to Winston Churchill, to avoid war at all costs; and Stalin’s cynical, last-minute pact with Hitler.

Even though the comma before the final ‘and’ is sometimes not required, it’s worth noting that it is never wrong. This is a good argument for always using it – to remove any possible ambiguity.

© Roy Johnson 2011

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The Psychology of Writing

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attitudes to writing amongst professional authors

Anyone who has attempted to produce a piece of half-way serious writing will know that the psychological states we go through can range from anxious anticipation, thoughtful cogitation, through anguished production, to teeth-gnashing editing and re-writes. Ronald Kellog’s excellent study The Psychology of Writing examines every one of these stages in the process. The structure of the book follows the development of writing from its (sometime) origin in thought, through pre-writing and planning [very thoroughly explored] to the varieties of text production and the psychological states which sometimes assist it (including trance and alcohol abuse).

Writing a letterHis method in each chapter is to launch the topic theoretically (Knowledge, Writing Strategies) then discuss empirical and anecdotal evidence, and finally inspect the scientific research. Some of the results are of the uninspiring ‘47% did, 53% didn’t’ variety, but the result is commendably thorough. He draws on many types of writing for his examples, yet keeps coming back (for understandable reasons) to creative writing. Why then in the attempts to ‘measure’ or explain quality in writing didn’t the exceptions to his claims not occur to him? Yes – most writers need long and hard-earned experience, and practice and skill development. But how does one explain the Rimbauds, Chattertons, and Keats of this world who were producing masterpieces at an age when the rest of us were struggling with our ‘A’ levels?

I would guess that those following this line of psychological research might profit from taking (for example) concepts such as the intentional and the affective fallacy into account. There also seemed to be an unspoken assumption that the writer and reader are part of what the literary critic Stanley Fish calls the same ‘interpretive community’. A quick dose of deconstruction might not go amiss in helping to shake this idea a little.

Some of the jargon might be accessible to psychologists, but I can’t help feeling that terms such as ‘relative automatization’ and ‘satisficing [sic] heuristic’ will deter many potential readers. On the other hand there were occasional inspired flashes which I wished could have been developed further – on plagiarism, ideas processors and ‘invisible writing’ for instance.

Even though the prose was rather dry and the argument occasionally sagged in ploughing its way through the data, everything perked up again with the concluding chapters. The scholarship throughout is exemplary, and the book is rounded off with a magnificent bibliography and a good index. Computer users may be interested to know that there are chapters dealing with word-processing packages and outliners – as well as programmes which cause the screen to flash if your writing slows down!

© Roy Johnson 2000

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Ronald T. Kellog, The Psychology of Writing, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994, pp.253, ISBN: 0195081390

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The Way We Write

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interviews with award-winning writers

There are any number of books on the theory of writing (Ron Kellogg, Mike Sharples, Naomi Baron) but we rarely hear from writers themselves about how they tackle this most personal of all expressive mediums and the writing techniques they use. Barbara Baker interviewed award-winning writers in a number of genres: writers of children’s fiction, novelists, play and screen writers, poets, and short story writers. And even though the interviews were conducted by phone, fax, or face to face, the editor is scrupulously absent, leaving the writers to talk for themselves. The most immediate and interesting thing is how unromantic most of them are about writing. They see the process of creation as a practical matter, and are much rooted in physical practicalities.

Writing techniquesRaymond Briggs for instance talks about how cartoon stories have to fit into thirty-two pages, because it has to be a multiple of eight because of the way paper is folded. It’s also interesting to note that the majority of the writers interviewed still write their first drafts by hand: “I write with a fountain pen and black ink. My fountain pens are very precious to me and I would never take them out of the house.” (Graham Swift). These might then be transferred to word-processors for editing, but there seems to still be a charm or intimacy about writing with pen on paper – a feeling I recognise, having just done that for this review.

Most of them like to be alone, and to write in their own workroom, no matter how cluttered or unprofessional it might be. However, the poet U.A.Fanthorpe doesn’t have a room, can write anywhere, and even uses the back of her hand if there’s no paper available. And people tempted by a puritanical ethic might keep in mind that writers as distinguished as Vladimir Nabokov, Marcel Proust, and Patrick White wrote in bed.

Julian Fellowes has some interesting things to say about writing for the screen – most notably how little directions are necessary:

One of the things I think is fatal is the film-school idea of writing the directions in very abrupt shorthand. It is impossible to read and puts off 99 people out of 100, and I cannot imagine why they tell students to do it!

Another feature which crops up amongst most of them is not knowing what the ending of a novel will be whilst they are writing it. Many just start with an idea, a character, or just an image – then work forwards.

And it’s amazing just how insecure even some of the most successful are. Margaret Dabble – Lady Holroyd – daughter of a novelist and wife of a famous biographer – speaks of “The insecurity of a writer’s position is extreme … With every [book] I think, ‘This is the one that will be turned down’.”

Some of the authors come across as incredibly smug: “Writing comes easily to me…I have a gift for language” but most of them are very modest – happy if they can find the time for writing and grateful for being published. And that majority also have one other thing in common – they find writing hard work; they go through several drafts before they are satisfied; and they are writing all the time.

Aspirant writers might take comfort from the fact that out of eighteen writers (and award-winners at that) only two had any formal training. Anyone who aspires to producing some published story, poem, novel, or screenplay will find interest and encouragement here.

© Roy Johnson 2008

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Barbara Baker (ed), The Way We Write: Interviews with Award-Winning Writers, London: Continuum, 2007, pp.234, ISBN: 0826491227

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The Weekend Novelist

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fundamental  techniques of novel-writing explained

The Weekend Novelist is a guide to novel-writing techniques which teaches by two principal features. The authors Robert J. Ray and Bret Norris (both experienced creative writing workshop tutors) first take you through the basics elements of novels by showing structure, character, and plot being created in the work of successful novelists. Then they set exercises which allow you to practise the techniques you have just learned. Actually, there’s a third strand too.

The Weekend Novelist Running through the chapters is a practical example of a novel in the process of being created – though Trophy Wives reads as if it’s going to be closer to a Jackie Collins novel rather than Nostromo or To the Lighthouse. Nevertheless, they are demonstrating for would-be novelists all the things they need to take into account. They start quite reasonably with the concept of structure, encouraging writers to sketch out diagrams of their stories.

This is backed up with some very useful analyses of novel plots, showing how they are built on standard models such as the journey, the quest, and the rise from rags to riches.

As points of reference they use contemporary fiction such as the Harry Potter novels, Ian McEwan’s Amsterdam and Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, as well as examples from classics such as Jane Eyre, Moby Dick, and The Great Gatsby.

Sometimes the advice is conveyed by emotive metaphors – “When your prose speeds up your brain catches fire. When your brain catches fire, ideas spark” – and at other times they draw heavily on a scene by scene construction technique which is drawn from the world of television and cinema.

In fact there is so much concentration on concepts such as ‘the back story’, ‘chain of events’, ‘climax’, and ‘the importance of carefully chosen objects’ that I suspect it will be just as much interest to screenwriters and dramatists.

There’s quite a lot of plot synopsis, and as a result of using the same plot lines in most of their exercises, there’s also a good deal of repetition and overlap. But the upside of this feature is that you get to consider these stories in depth, and they make you aware of the complexities and careful planning which goes into the development of a successful novel.

Given their title, I was surprised there wasn’t more advice on personal time management, but they are telling you how to write – not when. Besides which, I doubt if many people with serious designs on writing novels will limit themselves merely to free time at weekends.

The approach is very encouraging and hand-holding. You need to plan, plan, plan. Then write, stick at it, and be prepared to revise and edit.

It’s realistic, because it realises you don’t have all the time in the world. And it urges you repeatedly not to sit staring out of the window, but to get pen to paper, fingers to keyboard. Their advice is a mixture of writing techniques, warnings, and encouragement. All you need to do is follow it, and you could have a best-seller on your hands.

© Roy Johnson 2005

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Robert J. Ray and Bret Norris, The Weekend Novelist, London: A & C Black, 2005, pp.268, ISBN: 0713671432

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