Scan barcode
A review by nicovreeland
Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts by Matt Bell
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.)