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A Novel in a Year: A Novelist's Guide to Being a Novelist
 
 
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A Novel in a Year: A Novelist's Guide to Being a Novelist (Hardcover)

by Louise Doughty (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 272 pages
  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd (4 Jun 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1847370705
  • ISBN-13: 978-1847370709
  • Product Dimensions: 22 x 14 x 3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 225,698 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Victoria Hislop

'A breathtakingly honest and down-to-earth guide to writing a
novel, encouraging and inspirational'


Jill Dawson

'Does for fiction writing what Lynne Truss did for punctuation. If
you only buy one book about the novel-writing process, make it this'
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Average Customer Review
4.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A loosely-structured approach, 7 Oct 2008
By black kat (Ireland) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A Novel in a Year: A Novelist's Guide to Being a Novelist (Paperback)
This book is a collection of weekly columns published in the Telegraph throughout 2006. At the time of writing this review the columns are still available to read on that newspaper's website. I was unaware of this when I bought the book and confess that I felt a bit grumpy at having shelled out for material I could have downloaded or printed off for free.
Anyway, leaving my chagrin aside, I began to read. The bones of the book are a series of exercises - 26 in all, one per fortnight. The intervening chapters contain advice from the author on the topic being covered, anecdotes from her own writing life and examples of the results of the exercises, selected from the many posted throughout 2006 to message boards (still viewable) on the website.
Exercises 1-8 are `idea-generating' and aim at simply assembling some material to work with. The writing subjects are unrelated to each other so you may end up with a random assemblage. The theory is that this should help you figure out roughly what you want to write about.
Exercise 9 asks you to summarise succinctly the plot of your novel.
Doughty then tells you to clear the decks for a ten-week intensive writing onslaught centred, in exercises 10-15, weeks 20 to 30, on your main character. You write a CV for her, create scenes where she is under stress, show what she wants from life and how she overcomes obstacles. I felt that this was the most focussed part of the book. It's also familiar territory if you've read these kinds of books before.
The later exercises cover technique. At this point, the author's sense of direction seemed to waver. `Some of the exercises that follow may prompt you to write episodes of your novel but it is important that you are also working on your book independently of the exercises...' she says, which I found rather confusing.
Doughty calls her own approach `disorganised' and `oblique'. If you dislike the idea of meticulous outlines or lengthy lists of character attributes you might find her approach refreshing. `Often, the only way to discover what happens next is to start writing and see what comes' she says.
For me, only time will tell whether this book will be useful in my quest to Finally Sit Down And Write the Novel. In the meantime I'll give it four stars and the benefit of the doubt. I also own 'the Weekend Novelist' by Robert J. Ray, which also uses the time-frame of a year but takes a much more meticulously structured approach. I'm hoping the two together may be a winning combination.
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8 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Great!, 30 Sep 2007
By Bj Lucas "saculnamron" (England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)      
filled with tips and excersies to get you started, this is the guide for any wannabe writer. I was bought this book being a ver amatauer writer myself, and found it so helpful.
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0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best, 2 Feb 2009
By Lee (UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A Novel in a Year: A Novelist's Guide to Being a Novelist (Paperback)
One of the very best books for writers that has been published recently. Louise Doughty is a professional who gives generously of her knowledge and knows how to inspire. Definitely one for the library of anyone seriously trying to write a novel.
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