Product Description

Can you write a novel in a year? If you simply sit back and think about the enormity of writing a book, it will seem like a vast and unconquerable task, impossibly daunting. The way to make it less daunting is to break it down into its constituent parts, to do it bit by bit. Over the chapters herein, different aspects of technique are divided up into bite size chunks, the better to aid digestion. The book will look at different aspects of writing, with set exercises to help the reader along in their confidence and technique. It is designed to be read a chapter a week, with the aim of the fledgling writer having a body of material at the year's end which should form a solid start to their novel. Deeply practical, with sound advice at every stage, A NOVEL IN A YEAR is essential reading for any would-be novelist.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #91855 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Victoria Hislop
'A breathtakingly honest and down-to-earth guide to writing a
novel, encouraging and inspirational'

Jill Dawson
'Does for fiction writing what Lynne Truss did for punctuation. If
you only buy one book about the novel-writing process, make it this'

About the Author
Louise Doughty is the author of five novels, CRAZY PAVING, DANCE WITH ME, HONEY-DEW, FIRES IN THE DARK and STONE CRADLE. CRAZY PAVING was shortlisted for four awards including the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize and FIRES IN THE DARK won awards from the Arts Council of England and the K.Blundell Trust. She is also a recipient of an Ian St. James prize and a Radio Times Drama Award. She has written five plays for radio and worked widely as a journalist and broadcaster in London, where she lives.

Customer Reviews

A loosely-structured approach
This book is a collection of weekly columns published in the Telegraph throughout 2006. At the time of writing this review the columns are still available to read on that newspaper's website. I was unaware of this when I bought the book and confess that I felt a bit grumpy at having shelled out for material I could have downloaded or printed off for free.
Anyway, leaving my chagrin aside, I began to read. The bones of the book are a series of exercises - 26 in all, one per fortnight. The intervening chapters contain advice from the author on the topic being covered, anecdotes from her own writing life and examples of the results of the exercises, selected from the many posted throughout 2006 to message boards (still viewable) on the website.
Exercises 1-8 are `idea-generating' and aim at simply assembling some material to work with. The writing subjects are unrelated to each other so you may end up with a random assemblage. The theory is that this should help you figure out roughly what you want to write about.
Exercise 9 asks you to summarise succinctly the plot of your novel.
Doughty then tells you to clear the decks for a ten-week intensive writing onslaught centred, in exercises 10-15, weeks 20 to 30, on your main character. You write a CV for her, create scenes where she is under stress, show what she wants from life and how she overcomes obstacles. I felt that this was the most focussed part of the book. It's also familiar territory if you've read these kinds of books before.
The later exercises cover technique. At this point, the author's sense of direction seemed to waver. `Some of the exercises that follow may prompt you to write episodes of your novel but it is important that you are also working on your book independently of the exercises...' she says, which I found rather confusing.
Doughty calls her own approach `disorganised' and `oblique'. If you dislike the idea of meticulous outlines or lengthy lists of character attributes you might find her approach refreshing. `Often, the only way to discover what happens next is to start writing and see what comes' she says.
For me, only time will tell whether this book will be useful in my quest to Finally Sit Down And Write the Novel. In the meantime I'll give it four stars and the benefit of the doubt. I also own 'the Weekend Novelist' by Robert J. Ray, which also uses the time-frame of a year but takes a much more meticulously structured approach. I'm hoping the two together may be a winning combination.

Great!
filled with tips and excersies to get you started, this is the guide for any wannabe writer. I was bought this book being a ver amatauer writer myself, and found it so helpful.

One of the best
One of the very best books for writers that has been published recently. Louise Doughty is a professional who gives generously of her knowledge and knows how to inspire. Definitely one for the library of anyone seriously trying to write a novel.