![]() ![]() In the late 1990s, I was asked to contribute an essay about dialogue to a guidebook called Writing Horror. “David Morrell’s not just a fine writer he’s also a great and generous teacher. The Successful Novelist is the vehicle you want if you plan to drive your way to successful fiction." "If this book had been available when I started writing, I could have saved myself some miles, some heartache, and a lot of typewriters ribbons. I found the acute observations and his narrative philosophy more valuable for the new writer than the contents of any 100 other texts." “This is the best guidebook to both writing and the business of writing that I’ve ever read.” 'There are no inferior types of fiction,' Morrell implores, 'only inferior practitioners of them.'" But this is less a how-to book than a written rendition of an intimate university writing workshop. With chapters devoted to plot, character, research, structure, viewpoint, and dialogue, Morrell covers all the basics. Toward the end, he reveals the secret to bribing the dispatchers and drivers who supply airport bookstores (a hint rarely, if ever before, reported in a writing book). Toward the beginning of the book, he discusses Hemingway's bizarre upbringing, wartime experiences, and post-traumatic stress disorder. To read it is to put oneself in the company of a writerly raconteur. The Successful Novelist is a lovely examination of writing and the writing life. Forster as he is Lawrence Block Steve McQueen appears on the same page as Henry James. But Morrell was also a longtime literature professor. Morrell writes thrillers-lots of them-including First Blood, which gave the world Rambo. The two seem to come together in David Morrell, author of The Successful Novelist. "Distinctions are often made between writers of 'literature' and writers of popular fiction. Along with extremely practical advice about how to make fiction instantly better, this book powerfully motivates authors to find what Morrell calls ”the ferret” in them and to satisfy the reasons they wanted to be authors in the first place. Its central theme is that writers should be first-rate versions of themselves rather than second-rate imitators of other writers. ![]() Buy the Book: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, iTunes, Audibleĭavid Morrell, bestselling author of First Blood, The Brotherhood of the Rose and The Fifth Profession, distills forty years of writing and publishing experience into this single masterwork of advice and instruction that has been praised by authors as famed as Peter Straub and Dean Koontz. ![]()
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