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How to Write a Bestseller: A Review of Some Writing Books for Experienced Authors

© Deborah Cannon

For those of you who have been writing for awhile and want to take your writing to the next level, I recommend the following books:

Donald Maass's book WRITING THE BREAKOUT NOVEL is at the top of my list. Great novels, says Maass, are ones in which lighting seems to strike on every page. They result from an author's refusal to settle for being "good." Great novelists have fine-tuned critical eyes. They are dissatisfied with sentences that are adequate and scenes that merely do the job. They push themselves to find original turns of phrase, extra levels of feeling, unusual depths of character, plots that go in unexpected directions They are driven to work on a breakout level all the time. How is this done? Maass shows you how to establish a powerful and sweeping sense of time and place, how to weave subplots into the main action for a complex, engrossing story, and how to create larger-than-life characters. You'll also learn to explore universal themes, sustain high tension on every page and develop an inspired premise that will make your novel stand out.

WRITING THE BLOCKBUSTER NOVEL by Albert Zuckerman emphasizes the importance of outlining your story before you write it. He uses best selling author Ken Follett as an example. I'd recommend this book only to writers who prefer to write from lengthy outlines. There are many best selling authors who do not write this way. Stephen King for example is an organic writer, who starts with a situation, and develops his story by trying to get his character out of this "sticky situation." This is a perfectly valid way of writing, but for most of us it is probably advisable to write some sort of outline. Zuckerman shows you how to write your story before you write it so that you invest less time in repeated drafts. If you start with a good solid outline, most of the kinks, inconsistencies and flaws will be worked out of the story before you begin the prose.

James N. Frey's HOW TO WRITE DAMN GOOD FICTION is a damn good guide to writing popular novels. It was written with the notion that the reader is already familiar with writing techniques and wants to advance into writing more powerful, saleable stuff. This book differs from other books in that it doesn't lay down a set of "rules" which must be applied. In fact, Frey says that most books on fictional techniques were written by creative writing teachers who found that their students couldn't control viewpoint, so they made up a rule that "you can't change viewpoint within the scene." They also tell students that first person narrative is more limited than third person and that the former is more intimate than the latter. According to James N. Frey, such rules are "total bunkum and following such rules is like trying to be an Olympic swimmer with an anchor tied to your foot." This book shows how these rules can and should be broken.