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stringdom 's review for:
The Story Grid: What Good Editors Know
by Shawn Coyne
The book contains really good information. This alone grants at least three stars. The best sections are about the breakdown of genre classification and comments on the publishing industry. The section about Free indirect style is also very informative.
Unfortunately, while Coyne might be a great literary editor, he is pretty bad at technical writing. The book is a complete mess, with little to no logical structure. The book lacks introductions, summaries and thematic focus. It reads like it was written in a train of thought fever then left untouched on it's way to printing, or what others have pointed out, like it was ripped from a WordPress blog straight to ebook without human intervention. This makes the good info contained inside difficult to find and analyze. For example, information about the foolscap method can be found in three different parts and over half a dozen chapters. The description of genres is intermittent with info spread all over the book and only a single illustration trying to summarize. Some chapters are almost literal repetitions of info in previous chapters.
There's also an entire chapter using the stages of grief as a metaphor and taking it as a psychological theory which is patently false. The stages of grief are widely disregarded as pop-psy in the academic world. Something dismissed by sciences that only lives-on in popular culture where is abused despite having no scientific support.
Overall poorly written book that contains good info that is hard to find somewhere else.
Unfortunately, while Coyne might be a great literary editor, he is pretty bad at technical writing. The book is a complete mess, with little to no logical structure. The book lacks introductions, summaries and thematic focus. It reads like it was written in a train of thought fever then left untouched on it's way to printing, or what others have pointed out, like it was ripped from a WordPress blog straight to ebook without human intervention. This makes the good info contained inside difficult to find and analyze. For example, information about the foolscap method can be found in three different parts and over half a dozen chapters. The description of genres is intermittent with info spread all over the book and only a single illustration trying to summarize. Some chapters are almost literal repetitions of info in previous chapters.
There's also an entire chapter using the stages of grief as a metaphor and taking it as a psychological theory which is patently false. The stages of grief are widely disregarded as pop-psy in the academic world. Something dismissed by sciences that only lives-on in popular culture where is abused despite having no scientific support.
Overall poorly written book that contains good info that is hard to find somewhere else.