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How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them--A Misstep-by-Misstep Guide | 
| Authors: Howard Mittelmark, Sandra Newman
Publisher: Collins
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
Buy New: $9.01
You Save: $6.94 (44%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 140301
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 0061357952
Dewey Decimal Number: 808.3
EAN: 9780061357954
ASIN: 0061357952
Publication Date: April 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20081010212127T
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Product Description
"What do you think of my fiction book writing?" the aspiring novelist extorted. "Darn," the editor hectored, in turn. "I can not publish your novel! It is full of what we in the business call 'really awful writing.'" "But how shall I absolve this dilemma? I have already read every tome available on how to write well and get published!" The writer tossed his head about, wildly. "It might help," opined the blonde editor, helpfully, "to ponder how NOT to write a novel, so you might avoid the very thing!" Many writing books offer sound advice on how to write well. This is not one of those books. On the contrary, this is a collection of terrible, awkward, and laughably unreadable excerpts that will teach you what to avoid—at all costs—if you ever want your novel published. In How Not to Write a Novel, authors Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman distill their 30 years combined experience in teaching, editing, writing, and reviewing fiction to bring you real advice from the other side of the query letter. Rather than telling you how or what to write, they identify the 200 most common mistakes unconsciously made by writers and teach you to recognize, avoid, and amend them. With hilarious "mis-examples" to demonstrate each manuscript-mangling error, they'll help you troubleshoot your beginnings and endings, bad guys, love interests, style, jokes, perspective, voice, and more. As funny as it is useful, this essential how-NOT-to guide will help you get your manuscript out of the slush pile and into the bookstore.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
Literally, Laugh Out Loud Funny October 9, 2008
I don't laugh very often when I'm reading. I'll smile at an amusing passage but I usually don't laugh outright. It takes special talent to do that to me, and this book hit the mark. I will say up front that I'm inclined to enjoy humor about bad writing or badly constructed sentences. I even enjoyed the examples of this in grammar handbooks. The fact that the book is very funny and also extremely helpful at the same time helps a lot.
Even if you're not writing a novel, I think readers in general will find a lot to enjoy in the book. If I had one minor complaint it is that some of the examples are a bit too silly for their own good. Having a ton of mistakes in one paragraph is fine, but when it's coupled with a lot of silly names and silly situations I think the humor is actually lessened. That being said, this is only really noticeable in a couple examples and it doesn't really weaken what the writers are trying to illustrate.
 Style Distracts from Substance October 7, 2008
O.K., we could all benefit from this book, and there are many great tips here. But 2/3 the way through, I realized that the authors are making some of the mistakes they warn against. When they draft a passage to describe, for example, how tedious it is to read about what every character has ordered at dinner, they invade the prose with so many ridiculous names, nonsequitors, etc., that I was asking myself -- what mistake were they trying to point out again?
And unfortunately, every time they pointed out a problem, an author, either one I like very much, or don't like at all, comes to mind. Interior monologue? Lack of scenes and too much In the Narrator's Head? Ever heard of a guy called Henry James? Kingsley Amis? Martin Amis? Too much food, ever heard of the mega million seller Maeve Binchey? The authors praise James Bond in the same breath that they warn against super-heroics.
I think the first two chapters here, dealing with set-up, offer the most useful advice. After that, their prose, over-loaded with jokes, gets wearisome and seems mean-spirited. The style of the book was so unpleasant, it took me two months' to get through -- hardly a page-turner. It would have served them better to intersperce, between their Bad Writing Parodies, examples of a Good, Published Writer carrying off with aplomb whatever technique they've highlighted in the parody. It takes no great skill to slam bad writing. As both are well published writers, I'm wondering why they didn't use examples of their own work?
This is geared towards genre writers, almost any literary novel out there breaks a good half of these rules, so if you're even vaguely literary, you're going to have to filter out a lot of this advice.
I'm a reader who doesn't like action, suspense, too much "snappy" dialogue, and welcomes interior life and philosophical tangents -- which the authors wrongly declare are a bore in literature and in life, using the cocktail party conversation as an example. O.K., I'm someone who gets bored when people tell me long detailed action stories at a party, but I'm often interested in hearing a stranger's inner thoughts, what makes them tick.
I'd say, take this with a grain of salt. They make declarations about what's good writing -- a page turner -- which are completely wrong for me. I like a book that makes me think, so I have to put it down for a few minutes,look out the train window and digest before I move on. Some of us read to learn something and deepen our life experience. This is for readers and writers whose goal is diversion, and nothing else.
tough love for budding writers September 23, 2008
I bought this book to help me re-read some of my writing with a more critical eye. It has a sarcastic tone overall, so it is a bit crushing to read, especially if you have a tendency to make those mistakes they so clearly illustrate. Each point is its own chapter, so they really isolate each issue clearly. Once I got through it, I think it helped me become much more aware of when I was making those mistakes. Not for those with less resilient sensibilites...reality is harsh in this book!
 The Best Approach is Sometimes Done Backwards July 24, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
How-To books tend to be tedious and boring. When you've been writing for a while, reading a How-To is like taking elementary English 101 all over again--okay, fine, you know a lot of the rules, but now what?
This was a much better approach. The writers poke fun at bad prose with sarcasm and wit. And to be honest, I've seen some people actually write as they do in the "not" examples, so they're not stretching the truth that much, if at all.
There's even an added bonus--How NOT To Write A Query Letter!
There is quite a bit of coarse language, but anyone old enough to form a coherent, legible paragraph is probably old (and hopefully mature) enough to handle it.
This is a fabulous guide to writing with a good, direct backwards approach from the norm. Whether you write short stories or novels, there are good lessons (and several laughs) to take away from this guide. Highly recommended to anyone seriously wanting to improve his or her craft.
very funny book June 25, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
If you are (like me) an unpublished novelist and avid reader, you may have two reactions to this book. One, you may blush at some of the mistakes you have made (and included in a submitted manuscript). Two, you may see at least a few of the errors listed occur in novels you've read, and you'll indignantly wonder why those authors get a pass and you don't. The answer is, that somehow they've found an audience, and you haven't, so you'd do well to pay attention to the "missteps." Although, the book's authors are careful to point out that there are exceptions to each rule.
Some of the advice is rather crude, as someone here as already pointed out, clearly the book is intended for an adult audience, not a young writer, unless they have a colorful vocabulary already. In addition to the 200 mistakes, the author's helpfully describe how not to write a query letter and where not to send your novel, at least if you want to avoid paying someone a large sum of money to publish your book.
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