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Has anyone read this book? I ordered it because it sounded interesting. Anyone tried his technique?
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Write Your Novel From the Middle [by James Scott Bell]
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I read it and enjoyed it. To me, it made sense. My current WIP was started from the middle. I knew what I wanted to happen at the middle point and wrote up to it. I am currently on the down slope. I checked through books I own, and they fit Bell's golden triangle rule too.
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I have read it and enjoyed it. Also, I'm a huge JSB fan.
It gave me some things to think about in regards to the sagging middle, of which I currently have a pathological fear and it keeps me up at night. Seriously. And it keeps me from sitting down to write.
So, it's sort of booted me in the butt, given me tools to use which usually helps me get past my fear.
It gave me some things to think about in regards to the sagging middle, of which I currently have a pathological fear and it keeps me up at night. Seriously. And it keeps me from sitting down to write.
So, it's sort of booted me in the butt, given me tools to use which usually helps me get past my fear.
Read it the other day and was quite pleased with it. I'm giving it a go at the moment, but if nothing else it's made me think of and approach the middle in a different way than usual.
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Me too. I don't think I can follow his method but it has made me stop and analyze what I'm doing with my middle and helped me give my novel a bit more structure from a different angle.
I haven't read that one, but I did read his book 'Plot and Structure' which I found to be well worth the time. He wrote about a plotting formula that he called the LOCK system; I summarised it in a blog post if you want to check it out http://endofthegame.net/2011/10/20/plotconstruction/
Will check out the book you mentioned.
Will check out the book you mentioned.
I bought this book based on this thread. Thank you to everyone for the recommendations!
I bought the paperback, for £7.19 (from Amazon UK). It's a small book; 84 pages. I found the first 51 to be excellent. Bell got straight to the point about his method, describing it efficiently, and I found this first section very helpful and inspiring. I definitely recommend it.
From page 52 onwards, the book is made up of what read to me as relatively generic tips for writers. I didn't mind this, as any piece of advice can spark something when worded a particular way, despite having heard it a hundred times before. For me, though, this section felt like quickly-written filler, intended to pad out the book. I didn't experience the excitement, motivation and the sense of ideas bubbling up that I did while reading the first section.
It also felt curiously personal to Bell in places, which added to my impression that it was written quickly, and without much thought to giving it a widely-applicable, coherent purpose: the section titled, "A love triangle" stood out, reading to me as a slightly patronising scolding along the lines of, "Now, I hope you see why we don't need to put in those icky body parts in a sex scene", as if it were always gratuitous, without any acknowledgement that an author might deliberately make that writing choice because it was the absolute best thing for their story.
As a physical object, the paperback was disappointing. It looked and felt cheap. I noticed a lot of incorrect words in the text, and an inconsistency in the formatting of the section headers.
This book is in a different league to Plot and Structure. Compendium Press describes itself as an independent publisher. Their entire list appears to be books written or co-written by Bell. For me, at £7.19, this paperback book was poor value for money. I noticed the Kindle price was £1.84. I actually think that price is too low for how helpful the first section of the book was to me, and is a bargain price for what we get.
I bought the paperback, for £7.19 (from Amazon UK). It's a small book; 84 pages. I found the first 51 to be excellent. Bell got straight to the point about his method, describing it efficiently, and I found this first section very helpful and inspiring. I definitely recommend it.
From page 52 onwards, the book is made up of what read to me as relatively generic tips for writers. I didn't mind this, as any piece of advice can spark something when worded a particular way, despite having heard it a hundred times before. For me, though, this section felt like quickly-written filler, intended to pad out the book. I didn't experience the excitement, motivation and the sense of ideas bubbling up that I did while reading the first section.
It also felt curiously personal to Bell in places, which added to my impression that it was written quickly, and without much thought to giving it a widely-applicable, coherent purpose: the section titled, "A love triangle" stood out, reading to me as a slightly patronising scolding along the lines of, "Now, I hope you see why we don't need to put in those icky body parts in a sex scene", as if it were always gratuitous, without any acknowledgement that an author might deliberately make that writing choice because it was the absolute best thing for their story.
As a physical object, the paperback was disappointing. It looked and felt cheap. I noticed a lot of incorrect words in the text, and an inconsistency in the formatting of the section headers.
This book is in a different league to Plot and Structure. Compendium Press describes itself as an independent publisher. Their entire list appears to be books written or co-written by Bell. For me, at £7.19, this paperback book was poor value for money. I noticed the Kindle price was £1.84. I actually think that price is too low for how helpful the first section of the book was to me, and is a bargain price for what we get.
I also haven't read the book the OP asks about, but as quoted above, I have read -- am currently reading -- "Plot and Structure" by the same author. I'm finding it thought provoking and useful, and having read it through once, am going through it again. I'd never heard of Bell before. It was a search for his name that turned up this thread.
I think more highly of Bell's Plot and Structure than Sophia thinks of his Write Your Novel From the Middle (at least its last portion.) But I had a similarly "personal" reaction to Bell. It was subtle at first, but while I appreciated what he was saying re: the book's subject, there was at times an attitudinal something that I could have done without. It wasn't only in his all but exclusive use of "he" as a generic pronoun, and the non-generic character of his few conspicuous exceptions, where he used "she," well after the rule had been established.
In a short section of genre tips for Romance plots, his final tip says, in its entirely: "Graphic sex scenes are passe." Patronizing scolding. Yep.
But it's not just a kind of prudery, which I suppose he's entitled to.
The graphic content of sex scenes wants to be carefully calibrated to context and purpose. And his reduction of that to a 5-word dismissal of "graphic sex scenes," based on their fashionableness, in the context of Romance, betrays a blindspot in his imagination, in an area where he offers expertise. But my reactions to him are all curiously of a piece. It doesn't quite entice me to one of his novels, even as I'll take (and recommend) his thoughts on how story as such is developed.
Semi aside: I found the Bell book by looking to see what books Amazon has associated with The Modern Literary Writer's Workshop: A Guide to the Craft of Fiction, by Stephen Koch, which I enjoyed and found interesting, less in a how-to than a meditative mode, though still with insights on process.
Interestingly, Koch's essays, also from 2004, use "he and she" where the generic default would conventionally go, just as consistently, just as conspicuously.
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