Writing Life Wednesday: Review of Jumpstart Your Novel
Synopsis from Goodreads: What’s the easiest thing about being a writer? Sitting in a chair! What’s the second easiest thing about being a writer? Putting your hands on a keyboard! What’s the hardest thing about being a writer? Making words come out of your brain! It doesn’t matter if you’ve just started thinking about writing a novel or have done a dozen of them; getting started on a new project is always the hardest part. That’s where Jumpstart Your Novel saves the day. Inside this book, you’ll discover a technique that will help you outline an entire novel in a little under two hours. That’s less time that it takes to sit through a movie (with previews), get across town in rush hour traffic, or vacuum your cat! Using a simple Nine Box Model, you’ll organize your thoughts so effectively that brainstorming a novel will seem as simple as following the directions on the back of a box of cake mix. Idea stacking, plot spinning, pants wearing: all of these tools will be at your disposal as you settle into that writing chair and start your brain fire!
My take: I think that one of the hardest things beginning novelists face is figuring how to take all their messy creative stuff — whether that means ideas inside their head or actual drafts and scenes — and shape it into a polished, finished piece of work. Learning and understanding the classic elements of plot structure can offer an author a roadmap to keep a story on track.
Overall, I though that Jumpstart Your Novel offered a good introduction (or, for more experienced readers and writers, a reminder) of the elements that underlie a solid story. There’s no earth shatteringly innovative stuff in here — the book explains elements that will be familiar to anyone who’s studied the basics of writing fiction or screenplays: protagonist, antagonist, hook, obstacles and setbacks — but it presents the information in a clear and entertaining way. The book does offer some innovation — using the Tarot to brainstorm your way out of plot dead ends and into compelling new characters.
I think Jumpstart Your Novel would be a good book for writers just starting out, but also a helpful resource for more experienced “pantsers” out there who don’t want to spend days and weeks plotting but need help setting a basic structure for their novel-to-be. Of course, the real work starts after that!
If you’re a writer, what books on writing have you found most helpful? If you’re an aspiring writer, what are your greatest challenges? And if you’re a reader, tell me what you thought of this feature!
I haven't read any books about writing so far. Maybe I should? I'll definitely keep this one in mind. Thanks for inspiring me to get some books on writing!
– Jen from The Bookavid
Hoping other people will chime in, but there's a book my friend Steph loves, but I will have to ask her the name.
I've never read a book on writing before, but I think it might be interesting. I am not writing novel or anything, but I think it'd also be cool to read as someone who just devours books.
Try one! Hoping we can get some recommendations — maybe in a future post.
I haven't read a book on writing before either, but maybe I should? Like a lot of other people I've had ideas floating around my brain for a long time that I wish I could write about. Are you writing a book Jen?
Ha – I have written many things, including a really bad romance about a woman who paints pet portraits who falls in love with … I think he was the police officer who was protecting her from … someone? I'll have to see if I can find it.
In my opinion, it's a great accomplishment just to finish a novel. It's a lot of words to write!!
Elements of Style is one of the books that helped me. Also Stephen King's memoire – what a delight, right? 🙂 And a few others, but hey, who's counting? Excellent feature, Jen 🙂
I've always wanted to try my hand at reading non-fictions. Particularly, books about writing. I used to do a bit of writing, myself. But am not particularly impressed by it that I would be brave enough to submit it to somebody. Anyway, this one sounds like a good place to start.
I always find books on writing that I want to read, and I like reading them, but for some reason it does not always translate for me. I understand and absorb the information the books tell me, but once I go to sit down and just write, I completely blank. I think I will try to read books on writing again though, since I have not been able to write as much as I would like to lately. Nice review, Jen! I'm looking forward to more Writing Life Wednesdays in the future 😀
Clear and entertaining, sounds fun to me! Like Jen The Bookavid, I haven't read any books on writing, but I'm also think I should possibly? I actually started a novel… uh… *checks* September 2013 and I still haven't finished the first draft! Yikes! I started off just writing it, having a vague idea where I wanted it to go, but in the middle of NaNo I realized that I was giving everything to my MC much too easily. And I know they say that you just need to push through and finish the first draft without tweaking it, but I just couldn't go on and decided to scrap most of it and start over. I then realized I was a planner, and without an outline I can't write.
Anyway, I went completely off topic, lol. This sounds like it would be super helpful! Love the new feature, by the way 🙂