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justareadingmama_charly 's review for:
I was really looking forward to this book, and I did get some good from it, but overall it was a big disappointment.
Like I said, I learned some things and there were other good reminders. I like how explicitly she explains the concept of character arc being the driving force of the book. I also picked up a few other things throughout.
For the most part, this book was simply a reminder to me of the concepts laid out. It felt very repetitive to me, all throughout the book, but that may have been because I already understood the concepts explained.
The thing I had the hardest time with was the way she talked about other methods. In order to make her method or knowledge seem better or more credible, she would bring up similar methods (including pantsing, outlining, story structure, and index card outlining) and proceed to tell you why their method was SO WRONG and why hers was SO RIGHT. I don't mind when people think they have a good method or when a different method doesn't work for them, but did she really have to put them down so much?
Here's one small example. She talks about your character's fatal flaw, but labels it their misbelief. I actually like this label (my personal favorite is "the lie your character believes"), but instead of just telling us why she chose this label to describe it, she sits and tells the reader why using the label "fatal flaw" is so terrible, and then why misbelief is so much better. She can think that, and even tell us in a non-negative way the downsides of the label, instead of attacking it. There are pluses to the term (that's why it's popular) and it might help someone understand the concept in a different way than the term she prefers.
On top of that, the entire tone of the book felt ... Elitist. If you don't do it her way, you're wrong. She knows best. Everyone else has been doing it wrong and I have this new way that has never been done (which is so wrong, like I said before, there wasn't really anything knew to me in the book, just small insights). And that's on top of the fact that she hasn't even written a book! She says she hasn't finished a draft yet
Like I said, I learned some things and there were other good reminders. I like how explicitly she explains the concept of character arc being the driving force of the book. I also picked up a few other things throughout.
For the most part, this book was simply a reminder to me of the concepts laid out. It felt very repetitive to me, all throughout the book, but that may have been because I already understood the concepts explained.
The thing I had the hardest time with was the way she talked about other methods. In order to make her method or knowledge seem better or more credible, she would bring up similar methods (including pantsing, outlining, story structure, and index card outlining) and proceed to tell you why their method was SO WRONG and why hers was SO RIGHT. I don't mind when people think they have a good method or when a different method doesn't work for them, but did she really have to put them down so much?
Here's one small example. She talks about your character's fatal flaw, but labels it their misbelief. I actually like this label (my personal favorite is "the lie your character believes"), but instead of just telling us why she chose this label to describe it, she sits and tells the reader why using the label "fatal flaw" is so terrible, and then why misbelief is so much better. She can think that, and even tell us in a non-negative way the downsides of the label, instead of attacking it. There are pluses to the term (that's why it's popular) and it might help someone understand the concept in a different way than the term she prefers.
On top of that, the entire tone of the book felt ... Elitist. If you don't do it her way, you're wrong. She knows best. Everyone else has been doing it wrong and I have this new way that has never been done (which is so wrong, like I said before, there wasn't really anything knew to me in the book, just small insights). And that's on top of the fact that she hasn't even written a book! She says she hasn't finished a draft yet