[SKRIVA] How not to write a novel...

En recension av boken How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Mistakes to Avoid at All 
Costs if You Ever Want to Get Published av Sandra Newman och Howard Mittelmark:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article5565968.ece

Utdrag:
  Some words of wisdom for prospective novelists
On plot: ?A great many plot problems that show up in unpublished manuscripts 
can be resolved with a single strategy. Know what the chase is, and cut to it.' 
On character: ?While it is your job to know a great deal about your characters, 
it is seldom necessary to share it all with the reader, and by ?seldom?, we 
mean ?never?.' 
On style: ?If you're serious about staying unpublished - for the love of God, 
misuse long vocabulary words. A single well-misplaced ?erogenous? or 
?funicular? can annihilate all threat of publication.' 

Dying to get published
"Unpublished authors often cite the case of John Kennedy Toole, who, unable to 
find a publisher for his novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, took his own life. 
Thereafter, his mother relentlessly championed the book, which was eventually 
published to great acclaim and earned him a posthumous Pulitzer prize for 
fiction.
Yes, we say, that is a strategy, but it is a strategy that demands a remarkable 
level of commitment from the author's mother, and an even greater commitment 
from the author. And, of course, it puts a serious crimp in the book tour. But 
even more to the point, it will work only if you have in fact written a 
masterpiece that awaits only the further enlightenment of the publishing 
industry and the reading public to receive the treatment it deserves.
If this is the case, we are no good to you. If there is, however, any chance 
that your writing could stand some improvement, we can help."

--Ahrvid





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