Reddit reviews Write Your Novel From The Middle: A New Approach for Plotters, Pantsers and Everyone in Between

If you have the good fortune to take a class in fiction writing, they talk about the mechanics of storyform, how stories are composed, what sort of structures they have, what the parts are and how they are related. It can be invaluable information.

Out here in the world, there's no one to tell you how to write a novel. You're supposed to just try doing it until you can somehow teach yourself how to do it, I guess. But that could take 20 years...

So one of the best things you can do to help yourself is to read a couple good books on storywriting.

Write Your Novel from the Middle by James Scott Bell is $4 and 100 pages. Put it on your phone and you can read it in a couple afternoons. Bell's premise is that most great stories have a special type of scene, and that if you can nail that scene, the rest of the story, forward and back, will practically fall into place. It's an inspirational book that will get you pumped.

And if you find that helpful, you should get Bell's Plot and Structure. I've read a lot of books on writing, and this has been one of the most helpful.

Beyond that, How to Write a Damn Good Novel by James Frey is great.

Writing Active Hooks by Mary Buckham is indispensable. No one tells you how to manage hooks, but they're a critical part of a story.

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Beyond that, you just have to write shit. Your writing ability is a muscle; you need to exercise it to make it grow stronger. Every day, seven days a week, sit down and force yourself to pound out 1000 words of...whatever; nonsense, dreams, freeform imagery, snippets of scenes or ideas. Type it all into one big file, and make a new file every time you get above 100K.

You need to train yourself not to write awkward phrases. In order to do this, you first need to write all those awkward phrases.

Write 1000 words, every day, for 3 months.

Then look at the results. You'll see a tangible difference between when you started and when you finished. It really does work.

For me, it always comes back to character. A story is about your main character and the transformation they undergo over the course of the story.

I don't know if you're interested in reading about writing, but I'd suggest James Scott Bell's Write Your Novel from the Middle. It's a $4 ebook and it's short, only 100 pages; you can download it and read it on your phone in an afternoon or two.

Bell's idea here is that there's a point in a book where your main character takes a good long look at himself. Usually he's tried over and over to solve the "story problem" without success, and finally he has a decision to make. Once your figure this point out, you finally know who your main character is. This point balances the story, as on a fulcrum. Once you nail this down, the rest of the book practically falls into place. ;) I've found this very helpful.

Write Your Novel from the Middle by James Scott Bell.

How to Write a Damn Good Novel by James Frey.

That's pretty good. I like Write Your Novel from the Middle by James Scott Bell. It's short, $4; you can download it onto your phone and read it in an afternoon. There's a certain point in the middle of a book where the hero takes a good, hard look at himself, then decides what he needs to do. Figure out that point, and the rest of the book falls in place.

I also like How to Write a Damn Good Novel by James Frey.