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A review by lilifane
Howdunit: A Masterclass in Crime Writing by Members of the Detection Club by Martin Edwards
informative
reflective
medium-paced
2.0
Not really what I had expected, and kind of boring for the most part.
It's basically a book full of short essays about writing crime fiction (or thrillers, or action... or adventure... or writing in general) by a lot of crime and thriller authors. Although it covered many aspects of the writing process, most of it was superficial (due to the shortness of the texts) and very repetitive. So there were texts about constructing plot, crating characters, choosing a setting, topic, etc... but the advice can be summarized to: Research, observe, talk with experts/locals/humans and write it down. Wow. The authors referred a lot to their own books, but didn't usually go into details. I think I would have enjoyed more of the essays if I had read books from these authors. But... I haven't heard from most of them before.
There were a few essays I really really liked. Especially towards the end with topics like imposter syndrome, writer's block or publishing. It's really cool that these were also included in this collection. Although, the section about using social media as an author made me chuckle a lot.
It's basically a book full of short essays about writing crime fiction (or thrillers, or action... or adventure... or writing in general) by a lot of crime and thriller authors. Although it covered many aspects of the writing process, most of it was superficial (due to the shortness of the texts) and very repetitive. So there were texts about constructing plot, crating characters, choosing a setting, topic, etc... but the advice can be summarized to: Research, observe, talk with experts/locals/humans and write it down. Wow. The authors referred a lot to their own books, but didn't usually go into details. I think I would have enjoyed more of the essays if I had read books from these authors. But... I haven't heard from most of them before.
There were a few essays I really really liked. Especially towards the end with topics like imposter syndrome, writer's block or publishing. It's really cool that these were also included in this collection. Although, the section about using social media as an author made me chuckle a lot.