Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20966 in Books
• Published on: 2001-03-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 218 pages

Synopsis
The core dramatic unit of any novel is the scene. Writers use scenes to contain the novel's action and explore its characters. In this book, novelist and collegiate writing instructor Raymond Obstfeld vibrantly explains every aspect of constructing these vital elements and shows how to apply those techniques to create specific types - action scenes, comic scenes, sex scenes and more. He then reveals how to link these scenes to form powerful novels. Obstfeld delivers advice born from years of writing and teaching experience in a fresh, witty voice perfectly suited to today's busy reader. Writers of any type of fiction will find quick remedies to their prose woes with his unique exercises and gorgeous use of examples from contemporary novels and films. Accessible to beginning writers, yet also appealing to more seasoned authors, The Novelist's Essential Guide to Crafting Scenes will be the next classic writing manual all novelists will want on their shelves.

Customer Reviews

Lives up to it's name...
As a beginner writer i found this book an invaluable guide to all aspects of creating the most appropriate, exciting and suspensive scenes. Obstfeld has covered every aspect from choosing scene purpose to determining point of view, scene length and getting the right feel to starting and ending each section of your writing. A variety of examples, quotes, techniques and tips are given, which are all easy to understand and use with the intention of making your writing more captivating for the reader. I strongly recommend this book to all beginner writers as Obstfeld not only covers scene structure but goes into detail about the conventions of scene genre, whether it be an action, comic or a sex scene you are trying to compose.
This really is a novelists essential guide to crafting scenes.

The third book you'll need
Your first how to-book should be any of the many generic How to Write a Novel -books out there. I won't recommend any, because most of them are fairly good and none of them contains everything you need to know.
Your second book should be Self Editing for Ficiton Writers. Excellent advice, with lots of examples. Better that The First Five pages.
Your third book should be on whatever aspect of novel writing you are struggling with. Plot, characters, dialog... If you are interested in writing better scenes, this book should be your third one.
It goes deep into how a good scene is crafted. The author explains how you misdirect the reader to think the scene is about one thing and then sneak in a piece of exposition without being caught. Or how you make sure that you always have a setup and a payoff in every scene. How you always should carefully choose where the scene takes place. As an example, if there is a dialog taking place in the airport, why not change the setup so that the dialog takes place in a traffic jam on the way to the airport, with the added suspense, will they arrive on time? The author advices how to locate the hotspot in each scene and then work backwards from that to build anticipation.
This is by no means the only book you'll need, but definitely one of the better ones.