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    How to Write a Damn Good Novel: A Step-by-Step No Nonsense Guide to Dramatic Storytelling
    How to Write a Damn Good Novel: A Step-by-Step No Nonsense Guide to Dramatic Storytelling
    How to Write a Damn Good Novel: A Step-by-Step No Nonsense Guide to Dramatic Storytelling
    Ebook220 pages3 hours

    How to Write a Damn Good Novel: A Step-by-Step No Nonsense Guide to Dramatic Storytelling

    By James N. Frey

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Written in a clear, crisp, accessible style, this book is perfect for beginners as well as professional writers who need a crash course in the down-to-earth basics of storytelling. Talent and inspiration can't be taught, but Frey does provide scores of helpful suggestions and sensible rules and principles.

    An international bestseller, How to Write a Damn Good Novel will enable all writers to face that intimidating first page, keep them on track when they falter, and help them recognize, analyze, and correct the problems in their own work.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateApr 1, 2010
    ISBN9781429997850
    How to Write a Damn Good Novel: A Step-by-Step No Nonsense Guide to Dramatic Storytelling
    Author

    James N. Frey

    James N. Frey is the author of the internationally bestselling How to Write a Damn Good Novel and How to Write a Damn Good Novel, II, as well as nine novels. He has taught and lectured on creative writing at several different schools and conferences throughout the U.S. and Europe.

    Read more from James N. Frey

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    Reviews for How to Write a Damn Good Novel

    4.5/5

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    • 5/5
      Despite many tepid reviews, this book gave me a lot of practical advice on writing a novel. The author usually had good examples to illustrate his points.
    • 4/5
      VERY INFORMATIVE
    • 4/5
      Het boek geeft duidelijk structuur aan; hoe begin je, welke stappen moet je nemen en wat doe je bij problemen. Het stuk over het schrijven en herschrijven van dialogen vond ik zelf erg goed. Duidelijk met veel voorbeelden. Aanrader! Benieuwd naar deel 2.
    • 2/5
      Formulae are for math class and baby feeding, not for writing. Still, it does point out a few things useful to a writer wannabe. Curiously, I've never run across any of James Frey's novels.
    • 4/5
      I can't think how many years I have had this book and only read up to the first chapter. I have several writerly books that tell you how to do it. This is just one, and the credentials of the author are not as great as some others on the craft.That being said (written) does this book add to my path in becoming a better writer and working on my craft? Frey does give some solid guidelines that should not be ignored but he as so many want to do is tell a writer the formula that has been working for them and that their path is the way.Read three books on the craft by three authors and you will find three paths. And should you meticulously follow the path of the best selling amongst them, you will not find your way to emulating that success necessarily.So take in context that Frey can add to the journey. Work on character, work on premise. Work on what else Frey has provided. He fails in that he describes some useful tools, such as his stepsheet, but does not give a visual representation of one, where he easily could. Or when working on characters, a list of examples to get one started when you wish to 'interview' your character would have added to the work.It is a slim piece, at 170 pages and then he followed this up with a second book, and then some genre specific work as well. It leads me to believe that he knew he had more to write, but cut it. A couple evenings reading and what he shares is added to the melting pot.For those who are honing their craft it is a good addition. Not the be all and end all of what you need. You do need more than Frey has, but it would be a good first book, or third, or tenth book to add to your own lesson plan on becoming a better writer.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I buy a lot of "how to write" books and never read them. It's a way to appear professional about my writing without actually having to DO any.So the other day I pulled this one out of my shelf because I am having trouble with a character in my novel who just will NOT behave interestingly, and Mr. Frey gave me the answer right away, set my grey cells to pumping and got me back in the seat. Best writing book I've read in a long time - unlike Sol Stein's books, it isn't all about the author. James Frey puts it on the line in clear, elegant, fast reading and fast thinking prose. Now I'm a total fan. If you haven't read it, get it and READ it.
    • 4/5
      Advice from a professional writer, directed to a specific type of novel, dramatic fiction, but embracing all genres.Good practical suggestions, but heavy on his own style.
    • 5/5
      Audio version Excellent information backed up by illustrations.
    • 3/5
      The novel offers helpful suggestions for aspiring writers. It is clear and concise. I have a few quibbles with the book. I prefer a how-to book to offer suggestions in a friendly collegial manner. However, this book gave me the feeling the author was more of a professor lecturing students. The second reason I disliked the book is that the author used only a few books to represent all of the different points he made. I had only read two of the books, A Christmas Carol and The Old Man in the Sea, neither of which I particularly care for. The other books that he used were The Godfather, Lolita and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Every time an example would come up from one of these books, I felt rather disappointed. I DID enjoy the examples that the author wrote himself. He has a great command of language and I wish he had not overly relied on outside authors. Finally, I think the book could be tremendously improved had the author offered a few exercises for the aspiring author. I would like to have worked through his suggestions slowly. Of course, all of my dislikes are highly personal. One thing I disliked might be a selling point for another reader. To conclude, the book was not a winner for me personally, however it does offer great advice, clearly written.
    • 4/5
      An excellent introduction to writing fiction.

    Book preview

    How to Write a Damn Good Novel - James N. Frey

    Introduction

    A DAMN GOOD NOVEL is intense, and to be intense, a novel must be dramatic. A dramatic novel embodies the following characteristics: it focuses on a central character, the protagonist, who is faced with a dilemma; the dilemma develops into a crisis; the crisis builds through a series of complications to a climax; in the climax the crisis is resolved. Novels such as Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, John Le Carre’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Ken Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, and Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary are all written in the dramatic form and are all damn good novels.

    Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is a classic novel, a finely crafted work of art, well worth reading. It is not, however, in the form of the dramatic novel. Neither is James Joyce’s Ulysses, a hallmark of twentieth-century English literature. If you wish to write like James Joyce or Virginia Woolf and create experimental, symbolic, philosophical, or psychological novels that eschew the dramatic form, this book is not for you. Nor is it for you if you’re looking for an academic critique of the traditional dramatic novel. This is a how-to book on the art of the dramatic novel and does not claim to be anything else.

    1.

    WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT IS WHO

    WHAT’S THE WHO?

    IF YOU can’t create characters that are vivid in the reader’s imagination, you can’t create a damn good novel. Characters are to a novelist what lumber is to a carpenter and what bricks are to a bricklayer. Characters are the stuff out of which a novel is constructed.

    Fictional characters—homo fictus—are not, however, identical to flesh-and-blood human beings—homo sapiens. One reason for this is that readers wish to read about the exceptional rather than the mundane. Readers demand that homo fictus be more handsome or ugly, ruthless or noble, vengeful or forgiving, brave or cowardly, and so on, than real people are. Homo fictus has hotter passions and colder anger; he travels more, fights more, loves more, changes more, has more sex. Lots more sex. Homo fictus has more of everything. Even if he is plain, dull, and boring, he’ll be more extraordinary in his plainness, dullness, and boringness than his real-life counterparts.

    Real human beings are fickle, contrary, wrong-headed—happy one minute, despairing the next, at times changing emotions as often as they take a breath. Homo fictus, on the other hand, may be complex, may be volatile, even mysterious, but he’s always fathomable. When he isn’t, the reader closes the book, and that’s that.

    Another reason the two species are not identical is that, because of space limitations, homo fictus is simpler, just as life is more simple in a story than it is in the real world.

    If you were to write down everything that went on with you while you were, say, eating breakfast this morning, you could fill a fat volume—if you included all the millions of sensory impressions, thoughts, and images bouncing around in your head. When depicting the life of a fictional character, a novelist must choose to include only those impressions, thoughts, reflections, sensations, feelings, desires, and so on, that bear on the character’s motivations, development, and decision-making faculties—those aspects of character that will affect the way in which the character copes with the dilemmas he will face in the story.

    The result of this selection process is the formation of characters who, although they are lifelike, are not whole human beings. Homo fictus is an abstraction meant to project the essence, but not the totality, of homo sapiens.

    SUBSPECIES OF HOMO FICTUS

    There are two types of homo fictus. The simpler type is called flat, cardboard, or uni-dimensional. These characters are used for the walk-on parts. They walk on, say a line or two, and that’s that. They are the waiters, newspaper carriers, doormen, bartenders, bellhops. They may be colorful or nondescript; at a high emotional pitch or placid. But they are always peripheral, never central; the reader’s interest in them is fleeting. They are easily labeled characters who seem to have only one trait: they are greedy, or pious, or cowardly, or servile, or horny, and so on. They may startle, enlighten, or amuse for a moment, but they have no power to engage the reader’s interest for a protracted period of time. They have no depth; the writer does not explore their motives or inner conflicts—their doubts, misgivings, feelings of guilt. As long as uni-dimensional characters are used only for the minor roles in your novel, okay. But when they are used for major roles, such as the principal villain, dramatic writing turns into melodrama.

    The other broad type of character is called rounded, fullbodied, or three-dimensional, All the major characters in your novel should be of this type, even the villains. Rounded characters are harder to label. They have complex motives and conflicting desires and are alive with passions and ambitions. They have committed great sins and have borne agonizing sufferings; they are full of worries, woes, and unresolved grievances. The reader has a strong sense that they existed long before the novel began, having lived rich and full lives. Readers desire intimacy with such characters because they are worth knowing.

    CREATING WONDERFULLY ROUNDED CHARACTERS, OR, HOW TO PLAY GOD

    George Baker, in Dramatic Technique (1919), claims that great drama depends on a firm grasp and sure presentation of complicated character … thus the old statement ‘Know Thyself becomes for the dramatist ’know your characters as intimately as possible.’

    Now then, how do you go about getting to know your character as intimately as possible?

    Lajos Egri, in his essential and remarkable book, The Art of Dramatic Writing (1946), describes a rounded character as being three-dimensional. The first dimension he calls the physiological; the second, the sociological; the third, the psychological.

    The physiological dimension of a character includes a character’s height, weight, age, sex, race, health, and so on. Where would Jim Thorpe have been, for example, had he been born with a club foot? or Marilyn Monroe, had she turned out flatchested? Or Hank Aaron, had he had a withered arm? Or Barbra Streisand, a small voice? Obviously, not only would their choices of profession have been affected, but their personalities would have been shaped differently as well. A small man cannot throw his weight around as a large man can. Pretty or ugly, short or tall, thin or fat—all of these physical traits affect the way a character would have developed, just as such physical traits affect real people.

    Society shapes our character based on our appearance, size, sex, build, skin color, scars, deformities, abnormalities, allergies, posture, bearing, lilt in the voice, sweetness of breath, tendency to sweat, nervous ticks and gestures, and so on. A petite, delicate, golden-haired girl with big blue eyes grows up with a completely different set of expectations about what she’s going to get out of life than her needle-nosed, bug-eyed sister. To develop a fully rounded character, you must understand the character’s physiology completely.

    The second of Egri’s three dimensions of character is the sociological. What is the character’s social class? What kind of a neighborhood did he grow up in? What kind of schools did he attend? What kind of politics did he acquire? Which church nourished his spirit, if any? What were his parents’ attitudes about sex, money, getting ahead? Was he given a lot of freedom or none? Was discipline lax or harsh, or somewhere in between? Did the character have lots of friends or few; what kind were they? A Missouri farm boy has grown up in another country from a kid in New York’s Spanish Harlem. To understand a character completely you must be able to trace the source of his traits to their roots. Human character is forged by the sociological climate in which an individual is nurtured, whether it’s a real human being or a fictional character. Unless the novelist understands the dynamics of the character’s development, the character’s motivations cannot be fully understood. It is the characters’ motivations that produce the conflicts and generate the narrative tension that your novel must have if it is to succeed in holding the reader’s attention.

    The psychological, Egri’s third dimension of character, is the product of the physiological and the sociological dimensions. Within the psychological dimension we find phobias and manias, complexes, fears, inhibitions, patterns of guilt and longing, fantasies, and so on. The psychological dimension includes such things as IQ, aptitudes, special abilities, soundness of reasoning, habits, irritability, sensibility, talents, and the like.

    To write a novel you need not be a psychologist. You do not have to have read Freud or Jung or Dear Abby, nor must you be able to discern the difference between a psychopath and a schizophrenic. But you must be a student of human nature and acquire an understanding of why people do what they do and say what they say. Try making the world your laboratory. When the secretary in your office quits, ask her why. Your friend wants a divorce; listen to her complaints. Why did your dentist take up a profession that inflicts pain on others and requires him to be nosing around in people’s mouths all day? Mine thought he could get rich that way, but so far he can’t keep ahead of the payments on his drilling equipment. It’s amazing what people will tell you if you ask politely and listen sympathetically. Many novelists keep journals or make character sketches of people they meet, which is a good idea. Grace Metalious, it’s been said, peopled Peyton Place with friends and neighbors in her hometown, and everybody she knew had no trouble figuring out who all those rakish, bed-hopping characters were. She lost a few friends, got the cold shoulder from a few neighbors, but wrote a damn good novel.

    MAKING CHARACTERS SIZZLE

    If your novel is not only to succeed, but to be electric, you need to people it with dynamic rather than static characters. A character can be fully-rounded yet be too passive, too mamby-pamby. Characters who can’t act in the face of their dilemmas, who run away from conflict, who retreat and suffer without struggling, are not useful to you. They are static, and most of them should meet an untimely death before they ever appear in the pages of your novel and ruin everything. Dramatic novels require dynamic characters, alive with great passions and strong emotions: lust, envy, greed, ambition, love, hate, vengefulness, malice, and the like. Make your characters, at least your major characters, emotional

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