In How To Write a Novel, author John Braine presents a number of techniques that are at once sensical and well-presented. I enjoyed reading this book, and found it quite useful. It's full of good, straight-forward advice, and I recommend it. It's full of tips and opinions from the long-time author, ranging from:
- never writing until the age of 30 years old
- word-counting is an important task for a writer
- how to hook a reader into moving from chapter to chapter
- the relative unimportance of life-experience in writers
Braine also paints some broad strokes of what he considers to be the writer's 'type', and comments at some length about the relative merit of hanging out with other writers, writer's classes, etc.
Readers may find the older (and quite English) style a little odd, but the book's tone and clarity - as well as its content - made it an excellent, informative read full of ideas. This is one of the most dog-eared books I own.
