How NOT to Write a Novel: 200 Mistakes to avoid at All Costs if You Ever Want to Get Published [Paperback]

There are many ways prospective authors routinely sabotage their own work. But why leave it to guesswork? Misstep by misstep, How Not to Write a Novel shows how you can ensure that your manuscript never rises above the level of unpublishable drivel; that your characters are unpleasant, dimensionless versions of yourself; that your plot is digressive, tedious and unconvincing; and that your style is reliant on mangled clichés and sesquipedalian malapropisms. Alternatively, you can use it to identify the most common mistakes, avoid them and actually write a book that works.

Guardian Award shortlisted novelist Sandra Newman and veteran editor Howard Mittelmark have distilled 30 years of teaching, editing, writing and reviewing fiction into a hilarious and liberating guide that is the perfect read for anyone who's ever laughed at a badly written piece of prose and for anyone who's ever penned one - and doesn't want to do it again.

Howard Mittelmark is the author of Age of Consent. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post and other publications.

Sandra Newman is the author of the novels Cake and The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done. Her writing has appeared in Harper's and Granta, amongst others.

From the Introduction:

'Unpublished authors often cite the case of John Kennedy Toole, who, unable to find a publisher for his novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, took his own life. Thereafter, his mother relentlessly championed the book, which was eventually published to great acclaim and earned him a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Yes, we say, that is a strategy, but it is a strategy that demands a remarkable level of commitment from the author's mother, and an even greater commitment from the author. And, of course, it puts a serious crimp in the book tour. But even more to the point, it will work only if you have in fact written a masterpiece that awaits only the further enlightenment of the publishing industry and the reading public to receive the treatment it deserves.

If this is the case, we are no good to you. If there is, however, any chance that your writing could stand some improvement, we can help'