as good as taking a writing class

books:


	• How to Write a Damn Good Novel, II: Advanced Techniques For Dramatic Storytelling James N. Frey St. Martin's Press, 1994 - 176 pages average customer review:based on 33 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Worth Many Times the Price

I've read many books that give advice on writing novels. None are as good as this one. "How To" are the operative words here. Frey deals in specifics, gives you a step-by-step approach to telling a story, and reinforces it all with entertaining examples and narrative.

This book is worth many times the price - packed with so much valuable information, I'm reading it for the third time.

Frank Allan Rogers

Hot Damn

Helpful, real advice on how to make your writing work and be Damn Good. Doesn't contain fuzzy generalizations that many other books on writing try to push on you. Loved it, and really took away some great guidelines for my writing.

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Review

When I realized that this is the guy who fooled the know-it-all Oprah with his book, I figured he must know about writing a "Damn" good novel!

Like a writing class

As I mentioned in my review for How to Write a Damn Good Novel I, this book transports you into a writing class. The way the author lays out the concepts and principles for writing fiction is very easy to understand, and it is backed up with examples that actually help to grasp the concepts even better.

I don't think this book is a repetition of his previous book. This book actually expands on previous concepts, and the author even rectifies one of his previous rules about point of view.

How to Write a Damn Good Novel I and II are a must have for any aspiring fiction writer.

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as good as taking a writing class

Can't believe the guy who posted a review 16 days ago and didn't know the difference between James n.Frey and jame frey the disgraced writer are two different writers. Didn't he read the info, didn't he see the photos. Too bad that Amazon is not reviewing reviews as this is damaging to James N. Frey whom I've just sent an email to alerting him to this situation.

Back to the reason for this review. What a great book on writing. I've a very long shelf of books on writing and the used book store is now getting 3/4 of them as James N. takes precedence and am I glad I read another great book, Write Away by Elizabeth George who mentioned James N. several times and was the reason why I checked N.Frey out and now two books later renewed in my efforts to write a damn good novel.

I have both Damn Good Novel book though the second one really gets to the heart and soul of writing the first one is good. I hit myself on the head so many times because I should have "known that' cropped up in my thinking so often. He doesn't exactly make it look easy but a heck of a lot easier and covers just about everything from really good characters to seven deadly mistakes and then along comes the gem Writing With Passion. I don't think there's much he misses. I've taken a couple of writing classes and they haven't begun to touch on Mr. James N.'s books. If you are at all interested in writing pick this one up, pay for it and start reading out the door.

I also read How to Write...Mystery not because I want to write a mystery but because I am so in awe of mystery writers and wanted to know how they thought and how they write. Got all the answers but still wouldn't try to write a mystery and even more in awe of them than ever.

Thanks Mr. James N.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

"Damn good" fiction is dramatic fiction, Frey insists, whether it is by Hemingway or Grisham, Le Carre or Ludlum, Austen or Dickens. Despite their differences, these authors' works share common elements: strong narrative lines, fascinating characters, steadily building conflicts, and satisfying conclusions. Frey's How to Write a Damn Good Novel is one of the most widely used guides ever published for aspiring authors. Here, in How to Write a Damn Good Novel, II, Frey offers powerful advanced techniques to build suspense, create fresher, more interesting characters, and achieve greater reader sympathy, empathy, and identification.

How to Write a Damn Good Novel, II also warns against the pseudo-rules often inflicted upon writers, rules such as "The author must always be invisible" and "You must stick to a single viewpoint in a scene," which cramp the imagination and deaden the narrative. Frey focuses instead on promises that the author makes to the reader?promises about character, narrative voice, story type, and so on, which must be kept if the reader is to be satisfied. This book is rich, instructive, honest, and often tellingly funny about the way writers sometimes fail their readers and themselves.

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