Patience and commitment, this useful guide reveals, are a writer’s strongest assets.
An award-winning fiction writer and teacher shares hard-won advice.
Novelist and memoirist Scofield (Creative Writing/Pine Manor Coll.; Swim: Stories of the Sixties, 2017, etc.) brings her experience as a writer and teacher to a practical, encouraging manual focused on revision. Although addressing novices as well as advanced writers, the author assumes that her audience is fairly sophisticated and well-read: she includes examples from canonical fiction (The Scarlet Letter, The Great Gatsby, Madame Bovary) as well as lesser-known works, such as Maisie Dobbs’ Leaving Everything Most Loved and Rebecca Rasmussen’s Evergreen. Often, Scofield reflects on the challenges of writing and revision that she faces in her own work. She distinguishes between revising a first draft and rewriting, which is a process of “total immersion.” She advises working from two printed copies of the draft—“a real object with weight and a smell, a size and a color”—along with pens and index cards in several colors, which come in handy for several exercises, including creating a storyboard, an illustrative analysis of a novel’s chapters and scenes as they unfold. “Be very wary of cut-and-paste,” she cautions; retyping, even if only a few words have been changed, “will help you to maintain coherence and flow.” Scofield also suggests keeping a revision journal to record questions, reflections, and self-evaluation; as revision progresses, she suggests writing “a document that describes your love of your story.” The book is filled with exercises that focus intensely on reading as well as writing. These include making a stack of admired novels “to identify qualities you might aspire to,” writing taglines for a recently read novel, and choosing six “noncontiguous” scenes from the manuscript under revision to assess how they connect across the plot. Appendices offer a list of recommended books on craft, lessons from model novels, and examples of scenarios, storyboarding, and scene templates.
Patience and commitment, this useful guide reveals, are a writer’s strongest assets.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-14-313135-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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