Buying the Blue-Covered Beauty: How I Fell in Love with The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing

A true blue reader falls in love with the book they want to read.

Here’s how I fell in love with The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing, by the Editors of Writer’s Digest.

Essay #2 – Buying the Book

Hello again, my lovelies. I’ve received such a great response for posting my first Essay on The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing! So for today, I thought I’d share with you how I came to buy it.

Especially since the last book I bought prior to The Handbook was Tom Clancy’s Debt of Honor when it first came out.

In hardback.

In 1994.

So… yeah.

Hunting for a Writing Guide

I was desperate back then to figure out how to write a novel, and as such, I skimmed through ‘How to Write’ books from time to time, mostly when I took my young’uns to Barnes & Noble so they could play with the trains while I shopped for games and toys and other what-nots, to hand out to them as Birthday and Christmas presents.

I very nearly bought a yellow covered writer’s guide that seemed to be written by a lady who may or may not have made her kids write theses… to Santa…

in lieu of writing letters.

But then I spied this blue-covered beauty.

Enter Erin Latimer & the Word Nerds

Now, prior to this memorable day, there was a video posted by a darling and talented phenom I know whose name is Erin Latimer. She has a YouTube account that she co-hosts with a group of friends who call themselves The Word Nerds.

She also used to host a site with a group she called The Wattpad4.

Check ‘em out!

Word Nerds YouTube

Wattpad4

EL (as some people like to call her) and her delightful author-friends often post quips and clips on their YouTube accounts about How to Be a Successful Writer. One such clip was a trip to the bookstore with her good friend, Rebecca Sky—another dear and sweet author I know.

While at the store, EL would show books to Becca (as Ms. Sky is more often referred to) who was doing most of the filming.

EL talked about how the title and bookcover of a novel are important steps toward getting someone to pick your book up from off the shelf, which of course is the first step towards getting them to buy it.

She also talked about the importance of the first sentence, the first paragraph, and the first chapter. She and Becca chummed around the store, acting giddy, pulling random books and reading the openings aloud, commenting on what they liked and disliked.

They must have looked at about twenty books. EL chose to buy the one whose first sentence struck her as being the best:

“Why is there a handprint high up on the closet wall?”

That’s what I believe the sentence read.

She also read out loud the first page of this book, fawning quite captivatingly about why she liked the author’s play on words.

EL is such a Word Nerd. Oh my gosh. 🙂

My Way of Choosing a Book

Now as I said, EL is both talented and successful, and her skill at writing is beyond my capability at the present.

(But I’m catching up, EL! Oh, I am coming!)

However, I have to admit, the way she chose the book she bought isn’t how I decide which one I want to buy.

You see, I almost always have a real good idea of what sort of book I’m after before I even step foot in the store—which is how I came to buy Tom Clancy’s Debt of Honor.

I also like to speed read the book I’m contemplating, skimming through it like crazy so as to discover two things:

1. Can I understand what it is that I’m reading when I’m thumbing through the pages so fast that it seems like I’m perusing the animation in a flip-book?

(P.S. moment here—I just love flip books! They are so kawaii!)

Ahem:

2. Do I like the style?

If the book passes the Skim Test, I then turn to a spot somewhere around page fifty, and more closely speed read what it is that I find there.

If I’m still hanging onto the book, the next stop is another fifty pages later, where, you guessed it, I’ll go ahead and speed read that.

As it turns out, this mirrors advice from another dear writer friend, Eileen Gormley (aka Ctyolene), who once told me most novels actually start somewhere around Chapter Three.

Apparently, this is why I like to skip to that area in a book when I’m trying to decide whether or not I’m going to read it and/or buy it.

Why I Hate Blurbs

I also like to skim the blurb, but I do this for a different reason…

I hate most blurbs!

I really do!

I know, I know—I tell everyone that I’m good at writing them, but perhaps that’s also why I hate them so much.

You see, most blurbs come in one of three distasteful forms:

• Useless blather that fawns over the writer rather than describing the story.
• Tortured English that begs me to go Grammar Nazi with a red pen. Or,
• Precise and succinct prose that tells me exactly what the book is about.

Of all those types, I hate the last one the most. And why, you may ask? (Go ahead! Ask!)

I hate them for the very same reason why I hate movie trailers and ‘Next Week on Your Favorite TV Show’ advertisements.

I don’t want to know all the Sparks and ‘Aha!’ crisis moments of the story.

I want to discover them for myself, and thereby be surprised.

I often cite M. Knight Shyamalan as an example of the reason for my distaste of blurbs and trailers. M. Knight creates fantastic stories that are very linear.

They follow one plot line.

And—not to brag, except maybe a little—I managed to see Signs, Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Trap without knowing a single thing about any one of them; neither their structure nor their story.

Nothing. Zero. Zilch.

It made the ‘Aha!’ moments M. Knight arranged a true delight. That wouldn’t have been possible if I had watched the trailers, thus learning what the movies were about.

Why The Handbook Won Me Over

Anyway, I digress. Let’s get back to the reasons for why I bought The Handbook.

To the blurb!

* psst… psst… let’s pretend I am speed reading now *

“…The Complete Book of Novel Writing … you’ll learn … invaluable advice … established writers … Discover … ways to generate ideas, implement … techniques … find inspiration … TO FINISH YOUR WORK” (caps are all mine)

That was enough.

I was sold.

I’d been trying to finish a novel since the last episode of The Flintstones aired on my black-and-white, rabbit-ear TV.

Let’s skip ahead a bit then, shall we? Since this is a handbook, and not a novel, it has a Bullet List of high points.

* still speed reading here *

. Master the elements of fiction …

. Develop a unique voice …

. Manage … practical aspects …

. Determine … elements …

. FIND AN AGENT (again, caps are mine)

Okay, so this book was still in my hands, and that yellow jacketed tome I’d put back on the shelf earlier in the day was starting to look drier than the toast my kids left on the table after breakfast.

Next, I see a list of contributing authors featured in this mighty monster, and I pick out a few I recognize:

Margaret Atwood

Tom Clancy

Cory Doctorow (who I also know! * vaguely *)

Dave Eggers

Stephen King

Megan McCarthy

Joyce Carol Oates

James Patterson

Anne Tyler

John Updike

Kurt Vonnegut

You’ll be happy to learn that MS Word recognizes each one of these fine writers’ name as a valid word—even when my fat, ten-thumbed fingers try to type them within cogent prose.

Structure, Table of Contents, and… Ray Bradbury

Okay. Like my friends EL and Becca, I’m diving into this book. So I find a chair and sit down. Next for me is a speed read through the Table of Contents—which is onerous.

I find that The Handbook is divided into Parts, then Sections, and then Chapters.

Very scholarly!

Part One is THE ART AND CRAFT OF A STRONG NARRATIVE

( this time, the caps are theirs!)

The Sections for this part are “Inspiration & Ideas,” “Plot & Structure”, and “Characters.”

Round about now, I’m checking out how much this book costs, (and whether or not my kids have wandered off, or are still playing with the trains) because I’m loving The Handbook so much!

Part Two is THE WRITING PROCESS

Part Three is EXPLORING NOVEL GENRES

Part Four is FINDING & CULTIVATING A MARKET FOR YOUR WORK, and

Part Five is INTERVIEWS WITH NOVELISTS.

Ooh! Interviews! I love interviews! There are some fifteen-odd interviews at the end of The Handbook, along with hundreds of paragraph-long quotes. From everybody, almost, it seems!

Now I start more closely speed reading the book itself. And here is what I glean:

– The first paragraph in The Handbook is a Ray Bradbury quote!

I love Ray the best of all! And here is what he says:

“If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake up early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed quickly, to trap them before they escape.”

Omigosh! I am fan-girling more than a Taylor Swift teenybopper.

Oh! To write like Ray! If I were a girl, I would want to kiss him.

And also, of course, if he weren’t dead.

Maybe I am a girl.

And wouldn’t it be nice if maybe Ray weren’t dead? Wink.

Closing

Those are the very first words in The Handbook, EL! And just like you with your Handprint-on-the-Wall horror story, I am SO buying this book!

So! Until next time,

Most sincerely yours,

R.D.Burger

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