Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is a practical, detailed, and up-to-date book., 6 Jan 1999
By A Customer
My copy of this book is rapidly becoming dog-eared, as my favorite reference books always do. It includes information aimed specifically toward writers of Christian novels, but any novelist could benefit from its detailed and clear instruction on basics such as point-of-view, dialogue, and intelligent marketing. If every Christian novelist took this book seriously, the shelves at Christian bookstores might be filled with novels of high literary quality instead of the mediocre, preachy pap that, unfortunately, gives inspirational fiction a bad name. Reading this book might raise your personal standards for writing. It's a worthwhile investment for any aspiring novelist.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very useful, common sense guide - the sort only a sympathetic and sensitive expert could write, 24 Jun 2008
Penelope Stokes' `The Complete Guide to Writing & Selling the Christian Novel' is `not a rule book - it is a... handbook [that] will be of service to you in your own quest for ... continued growth in your writing'.
The whole is divided into six parts:
Part One: Prayer, Planning and Preparation
Part Two: Stories, Sermons and Sunday School
Part Three: Can These Bones Live?
Part Four: Can These Bones Speak?
Part Five: Truth in the Inward Parts
Part Six: Humility and Exaltation
Appendices A-C and short index follows
There are many excellent books about novel writing in general, but very few aimed at the Christian writer. As the contents list shows, there are several key areas where the needs and requirements for a Christian writer differ markedly from his or her secular cousin.
Stokes offers a surprisingly good guide to writing fiction which would be hugely useful in all areas of fiction writing, including: helps on plot & character development, market research, the ticklish problem of characters' point-of-view, manuscript preparation and submission, etc. I was also surprised to find, therefore, that it is so thorough (for a book of less than 250 pages).
The guide is written and formatted in a crisp, comfortable way making it very easy to read: Stokes' style is professional but quite informal and the use of clear, bold-type headings, etc. make it easy to navigate.
I found two parts of this book especially interesting: Part One, focusing on planning and motivation, was an eye-opener if only because the question of `why' the reader is considering writing a Christian novel is addressed. I hadn't imagined that anyone would seriously consider Christian fiction writing unless they felt a specific calling from God. Surely Christian fiction writers (especially in the UK) would be very clear that they'd earn almost no income at all and (presumably) precious little in the way of adulation? Perhaps I am just being naive...
Part Six focuses on the other end of the line - planning for and coping with success! I certainly had been naive here because I'd assumed that planning for success was presumptuous. But no! Stokes carefully and sensitively explores and expounds the issues that success brings without assuming that that is what God will grant. It is a beautifully balanced, common sense section!
The area where I continue to get hugely frustrated is assumption that the whole English speaking world lives in North America. Argh! For instance, `Every year the CBA [Christian Bookseller's Association] holds a national convention...' and `Christian publishers can be found in almost every area of the country...' Naturally, `national' and `country' mean `USA'. Sally Stuart's excellent `Christian Writer's Market Guide' (published annually, like the `Writer's and Artist's Yearbook', etc.) is similarly biased, though there international markets do at least get a (very brief) look-in.
In the end, Penelope Stokes' book on writing Christina fiction is a `must have' title for the aspiring Christian fiction writer. I continue to gain much useful advice from her, but those writers living in the USA are bound to get considerably more benefit. Still, English speakers among the `other' six-and-a-half billion people of the world should not avoid this title because of it's (annoying) American bias: it's still a gem!
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