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Title: Write Away: One Novelist's Approach to Fiction and the Writing Life
ISBN: 0340832088
Author:
Elizabeth George
Publicate Date: 2004-02-02
Publish: 2004-02-02
List Price: $39.25
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $22.44
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $9.75
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1: A wonderful resource.
Elizabeth George is highly successful with her own novels, and truly helps other writers evaluate their work. Each section brings her knowledge and encouragement to the belabored novelist, whether novice or not. I came away from reading this with new eyes to see my own writing, and insights to bring to my critique group. A wonderful read, and a great resource.
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2: Write Away helps
As a writer, I appreciate any advice from a known author. I've spoken to Elizabeth George at a reading in Manchester, Vermont and she gave me good feedback on my writing. I loved reading about place and interior landscape of characters and how important that was before the plot and story line.
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3: A practical guide to the art and science of writing fiction
Write Away -- by bestselling novelist Elizabeth George -- explains the science as well as the art involved in crafting fiction. Topics covered include mapping out a story structure that will keep the reader engaged, creating fascinating yet believable characters (people who are slightly larger than life, but neither so perfect that your reader will hate them nor so loathsome that your reader won't want anything to do with them), researching potential settings (and then altering them to make them your own), and the hard work involved in completing a book-length piece of writing. This is one of the most practical guides to writing fiction I've read yet. Highly recommended.
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4: Probably the best guide on the subject by a really talented author.
I've read many books on craft, some by supposed big name writers. Many have been disappointments. This one was finally what I'd been looking for, not merely a guide to what fiction is and how it works, but also how to put it all together. There is nothing vague about her approach to craft. And being a teacher as well as practitioner allows her to explain it with a clarity lacking in other guides.
If I had a choice of keeping one writing guide, this would be the one I'd choose.
After reading this, I started reading her novels and Ms. George is not merely good, she's one of the best. So her advice is definitely worth heeding.
Definitely get this book.
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5: a stimulating guide to novel-writing
Elizabeth George is one of my favorite authors. I've read all of her Thomas Lynley and Barbara Havers novels, and marveled at the way a native Californian has been able to capture the nuances of life and police procedure in the UK. I was very excited when I found "Write Away" and was able to learn how she did it.
"Write Away" describes how George goes about the daily task of getting words on paper, and also a variety of techniques that she has found useful. But, for me, the most valuable aspects of the book were her observations about creating character and settings.
Stating that analysis of character is the highest human entertainment, George admonishes authors not to bring a character to a book unless he or she is fully alive before the book begins. Create an analysis of each character, including biographical facts and a full psychological profile. Know each character well enough to understand how he or she will react in the situations which the novel will then pose. Only then can you begin to write your story.
George tells us to reveal characters slowly, allowing the character to effect events and be effected. Show flaws, mistakes, lapses of judgment, and weaknesses. Characters, she says, are interesting in their conflict, misery, unhappiness, and confusion, not in their joy and security. Obvious, perhaps, but so easy to forget when you're writing.
George's approach to setting is just as rigorous as her approach to character. Her goal is that each separate location should create an atmosphere and trigger a mood, but cautions that descriptions of place should be part of the narrative and should never interrupt the flow of the story. She visits each place that she will represent, camera and tape recorder in hand, seeing the land, sky, climate, sounds and scents, seeking to feel the emotions evoked by the setting. She works quite hard to describe settings which stimulate the reader's senses and imagination.
Having now published two novels --- A Good Conviction, a NYC-based legal thriller which tells the story of a young man wrongly imprisoned in Sing Sing for a murder he did not commit by a Manhattan ADA who may have known he was innocent ... and The Heretic (Library of American Fiction), a historical novel describing the persecution of a family of secret Jews by the Catholic Church on the eve of the Spanish Inquisition --- I have devised a self-education project to help me become more attuned to the techniques and styles of other authors, and thus (hopefully) become a better novelist myself.
"Write Away" is one of the books about writing I've read as part of this self-education project. Others are Sol Stein's Stein on Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies, Donald Maass' Writing the Breakout Novel, Norman Mailer's The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing, and the George Plimpton edited The Writer's Chapbook: A Compendium of Fact, Opinion, Wit, and Advice from the Twentieth Century's Preeminent Writers (Modern Library).
I'm sorting my notes and thoughts into various categories relevant to writing, such as ... "beginnings" ... "conflict" ... "characters" ... and others, and I've posted my observations as a blog, which turns out to be a wonderful way for me to organize and retrieve my observations.
This also puts my thinking in the public domain, so if you'd like to see my evolving comments about writing novels, I invite you to visit my "Education of a Novelist" blog.
You can reach my blog by searching the web for "weinstein education of a novelist."
LEW WEINSTEIN
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