John Reynolds (19)

This is a short book and an easy read with some useful information for somebody who was thinking of writing their first novel. But this book, is one of many on how to write a novel, and it is not even alone in being a book aimed at the novice writer. I do feel that it doesn't have anything special to make it stand out from the crowd.
Personally having never tried to write dialogue since school, the chapter entitled Your Dialogue was a useful primer for the subject. Also having never thought show more about writing sex scenes that chapter was fairly illuminating on the subject.
There are too many unnecessary examples from the authors own work, they seem a little like filler and also as if he is just trying to impress us with his writing to improve his own book sales. I skipped past most of them. More interesting where the examples from acclaimed works such as the colour purple .

Non fiction books, especially concise ones on any subject are greatly improved by having a further reading section at the back. What this book has instead are the books that he has taken examples from listed and the classic The Elements of Style by William Strunk mentioned in the grammar section. In my opinion this is not sufficient.

This is the first book I have read on this subject. I would have been naive to think that a 133 page booklet would give me all the information I needed to write a book, because it doesn’t. I would have been much happier with this book if it had provided the readers with recommendations for further reading. show less