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The Nighttime Novelist: Finish Your Novel In Your Spare Time (2010)

by Joseph Bates(Favorite Author)

3.97 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1582978468 (ISBN13: 9781582978468)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Writer's Digest Books

review 1: The Nighttime Novelist is attractive to look at and is filled with lots of useful information for the aspiring novelist. Beneath its hardback cover I was surprised to discover its pages are actually spiral-bound. The information inside is organized in a tabbed format. Each page is filled with colorful text, decorative sidebars, and comment-style supplemental footnotes. In essence, the book is really designed very much like a scrapbook.And that's the problem.No one actually "reads" a scrapbook. People flip through them. They admire the artistic way the scrapper put the pages together or they way they've arranged the various photos, captions, clippings and the like. But no one picks up a scrapbook when they want to learn or understand something.To be fair, I tried on ... moreseveral occasions to just sit down and read it. I even tried picking out specific pages based on the table of contents so I could use it like a reference. Every time the "busy-ness" of its layout distracted me and I found myself absently flipping through the pages again and again. (Like a scrapbook.) This format may be quite engaging and even useful for some, but when I want to read a book on writing craft I want a book that reads more like, well, like a book.
review 2: Many writers have full-time jobs, take care of a household and children, and usually write in their spare time—such as early in the morning or late at night. I have done both. When I had the chance to review The Nighttime Novelist, I was curious if it would be different from the slew of writing resource books I've read in the past two years since I've published my first book.The first thing I noticed was the gorgeous layout. This book has a spiral-bound binder format and contains colourful pages, charts, and worksheets. It's divided into three parts, Beginnings, Middles, and Endings, with a Coffee Break section after each part (which I thought cute and practical) that helps you to check how you're doing thus far. It's a book that covers all the basics—developing ideas, character development, plot planning, narration, description and setting, pacing, building suspense, climax and good endings.All the chapters focus on the “technique”, “hurdle”, and “going deeper” of each topic introduced. And it's all colour-coded. Some may find this distracting but I liked it. Most of the content was not new to me. However, I liked the author's voice and his explanations: simple, to the point, told with good and appropriate humour. Whether we are new or more experienced writers, reminders of the basics and their deeper points is never a bad idea. All writers have their strengths and weaknesses. But for some it may still be too basic.Bates makes good use of questions to get the writer thinking. Whatever the topic, these questions had me thinking about my current novel in progress. This was good. I learned a few things I could work on. I particularly appreciated the chapter on Narration where the author explains well the various POV options and how to find one's voice. This is by far one of the most confusing things for new writers and I get asked about this constantly when I give workshops. Bates' experience as an editor shines through in this book, although he himself has not written a novel.If you dream of writing a novel or are struggling with the one in process, know that you can do it even if your time is limited. Bates keeps with the theme of the nighttime novelist, who steals time to write, by offering a book that is easy and quick to read, to reference, and from which to learn. less

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