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asparagusisreading's review
5.0
I only needed to read one section for class and I read the entire thing in two sittings and heavily annotated my copy. This is probably the most interesting and user friendly book for me as a writer that I've ever read.
erikbergstrom's review
4.0
Enjoyed this unique take on a writing craft book. I was beginning to enter that solitary realm of writing where everything I put down looks like garbage and that nobody's ever had to deal with this amount of self pressure or disappointment before. Matt Bell reminds me how normal it is, and how easy it can be to overcome. He doesn't write as a smarty pants professor (even though he is one) but as a fellow writer, like he's sitting with you at the pub telling you what secrets have worked for him and sounding casually excited about it.
Nothing really groundbreaking here... write the scenes you want to first and rearrange later, write without a plot in mind and see where your characters feel like going, revise on paper instead of a word processor, etc. But it's laid out for a quick read (pick up and set down when the inspiration strikes) and it has the reinforcement most writers need from a unique voice in the craft writing genre.
Nothing really groundbreaking here... write the scenes you want to first and rearrange later, write without a plot in mind and see where your characters feel like going, revise on paper instead of a word processor, etc. But it's laid out for a quick read (pick up and set down when the inspiration strikes) and it has the reinforcement most writers need from a unique voice in the craft writing genre.
pastryghost's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
4.5
This was my favorite book I read last year (I was so surprised my reading gauntlet ended with a nonfiction writing help book as my top read of the year! 😂) - and I wanted to read it again but on audiobook.
I think the book is more successful in physical copy, especially if you're like me and you wanna pause and go back to absorb the advice.
The audiobook narrator did a great job, but I found it more tricky to follow along due to the format.
I think the book is more successful in physical copy, especially if you're like me and you wanna pause and go back to absorb the advice.
The audiobook narrator did a great job, but I found it more tricky to follow along due to the format.
witzelsucht's review against another edition
4.0
A great book about writing: to the point, well written, actionable, and with some compelling advice I hadn't heard before. I enjoyed how Bell laid out his process from the big picture right down to word-level detailing (going as far as making hit-lists of hackneyed words/descriptions that he avoids, e.g. "chiseled features" and "manicured lawn"). Motivating and engaging.
nicovreeland's review
3.0
Sometimes I learn from a writing book because I agree with it. Sometimes I learn because, in disagreeing, I find myself having to articulate and crystallize opinions that I might not have thought about otherwise. This book was a disagreement-learning situation.
The book is extremely extremely process-oriented. As in, it’s very much about the process of writing and not about what makes a good story. There's a lot about these little tricks that Bell likes to use—widen your margins! change your font!—not very much at all about constructing plots or building characters. And woefully little about the frame of mind he’s in as he forces himself through what sounds like an excruciating, arduous process.
Even outside of the main three-draft strategy—which never takes a bridge when there’s a perfectly good ten-mile detour available—Bell also recommends a lot of EXTREMELY time-consuming revision strategies. There’s one exercise where he recommends highlighting five types of passages in your book in five colors of highlighter, and he suggests rereading it five different times to do this. Another passage makes it clear that Bell expects you to write at least twice the amount of words your book will contain, then cut half out. The entire third section is about spending months If not years painstakingly going over every word to get the phrasing just right.
This all makes it clear that Bell expects to spend the better part of a decade on each of his novels, and probably half that time fine-tuning sentences until they bleed. Which is fine, if that’s the kind of writer you want to be. But if it’s not, this is probably not the book for you.
I did find some nuggets that I really agreed with, especially in the first draft section, but I just can't get down with the MFA-workshop model of reworking prose endlessly, or these shopworn exercises that want you to cut and cut and cut words. To me there is a limit, and saying things like "cut a sentence from every paragraph" either means: you have a shitload of fluff in your paragraphs, or else you will have cut away all the fat you can, and you will begin cutting meat. (But, this is the kind of thing I have realized I believe thanks to disagreeing with Bell.)
The book is extremely extremely process-oriented. As in, it’s very much about the process of writing and not about what makes a good story. There's a lot about these little tricks that Bell likes to use—widen your margins! change your font!—not very much at all about constructing plots or building characters. And woefully little about the frame of mind he’s in as he forces himself through what sounds like an excruciating, arduous process.
Even outside of the main three-draft strategy—which never takes a bridge when there’s a perfectly good ten-mile detour available—Bell also recommends a lot of EXTREMELY time-consuming revision strategies. There’s one exercise where he recommends highlighting five types of passages in your book in five colors of highlighter, and he suggests rereading it five different times to do this. Another passage makes it clear that Bell expects you to write at least twice the amount of words your book will contain, then cut half out. The entire third section is about spending months If not years painstakingly going over every word to get the phrasing just right.
This all makes it clear that Bell expects to spend the better part of a decade on each of his novels, and probably half that time fine-tuning sentences until they bleed. Which is fine, if that’s the kind of writer you want to be. But if it’s not, this is probably not the book for you.
I did find some nuggets that I really agreed with, especially in the first draft section, but I just can't get down with the MFA-workshop model of reworking prose endlessly, or these shopworn exercises that want you to cut and cut and cut words. To me there is a limit, and saying things like "cut a sentence from every paragraph" either means: you have a shitload of fluff in your paragraphs, or else you will have cut away all the fat you can, and you will begin cutting meat. (But, this is the kind of thing I have realized I believe thanks to disagreeing with Bell.)