If you look at books on advice for writing, everyone has their set of suggestions. A lot of the books share the same advice with nothing new or innovative to offer to the newbie writer. That is not how Richard Skinner approached teaching his audience about novel writing in Writing a Novel.

He broke up each chapter by essential components of novels to cover the intricacies of each element. He covers topics such as plotting your novel to creating your characters. Each of these sections contain not only his advice, but reference the advice of other writers. He even uses the writings published by famous authors to give literary examples to the techniques he discusses. This gives evidence to support his strategy and advice in writing. I also really like the 30 key scenes writing sheet to help plan the novel you are going to write. However, there are flaws in the book.

I wished the work writing sheet include more than a line on the type of scene that the box should be. For example, one of the boxes is labeled “be patient, remain empty”. What is that suppose to mean or even be? I also wish that the creative process was discussed more instead of the technical aspects of writing that a editor would look at. Though, the book is still a good read if you are interested in improving your writing or have aspirations to write a novel.

So if you need help with your writing of the next great novel to take the world by storm, why not pick up Writing a Novel by Richard Skinner?