abigcoffeedragon's review against another edition
3.0
A bulk of the good information is in the front half of this, while the back half over-extends some explanations. Some readers will appreciate the extra detail, but I could have done with about 60% less book. Overall, not a bad point of view on writing.
jennyrbaker's review against another edition
4.0
This is a great book to add to your writing advice library. Review to come.
ephemerily's review against another edition
4.0
I didn't get much out of this book. It seemed to contain a lot of potentially worthwhile content, so it may be that it simply did not help me as a writer or did not help me at this point in my writing career. Maybe other writers would value it, or maybe I will come back to it someday and get more out of it.
The information seemed complicated; the book presents three types of material (action, emotion, dialogue), various stages a book goes through along with four "energetic markers," and a slew of "scene types." It contains specifics, like the length of this section must be about twice the length of that section, and this marker must occur at this point in the book, and things must get better and then worse until we reach the such-and-such point. (I'm paraphrasing; I don't want to take the time to provide actual quotes.) The book also uses a concept of "shadows and light" that I could not follow.
I tried to apply the ideas to my work-in-progress and could not fit them at all. So either my writing is not very advanced, or this book's ideas are not the end-all-be-all of writing books. Overall, it felt like a very complicated system that left me confounded; about a third of the way through, I started skimming, and ultimately it became a DNF.
Two final complaints: (1) The book explains that it uses the term "demonstrate don't lecture" instead of the well-used "show don't tell"; but then it's not clear that the new term differs from the old, and to me, the new term actually seems less appropriate, so it's not clear why it was even introduced. (2) The book uses "comprised of" several times when "composed of" would be correct. (Misuse of "comprise" is a pet peeve of mine. Assuming I understand the word correctly, which I may not.)
I'm glad to have the book on my shelf of writing craft books, and maybe a day will come when the material will make more sense to me. I struggled with a rating and erred on the high side, because the book was recommended and seems to help other writers.
The information seemed complicated; the book presents three types of material (action, emotion, dialogue), various stages a book goes through along with four "energetic markers," and a slew of "scene types." It contains specifics, like the length of this section must be about twice the length of that section, and this marker must occur at this point in the book, and things must get better and then worse until we reach the such-and-such point. (I'm paraphrasing; I don't want to take the time to provide actual quotes.) The book also uses a concept of "shadows and light" that I could not follow.
I tried to apply the ideas to my work-in-progress and could not fit them at all. So either my writing is not very advanced, or this book's ideas are not the end-all-be-all of writing books. Overall, it felt like a very complicated system that left me confounded; about a third of the way through, I started skimming, and ultimately it became a DNF.
Two final complaints: (1) The book explains that it uses the term "demonstrate don't lecture" instead of the well-used "show don't tell"; but then it's not clear that the new term differs from the old, and to me, the new term actually seems less appropriate, so it's not clear why it was even introduced. (2) The book uses "comprised of" several times when "composed of" would be correct. (Misuse of "comprise" is a pet peeve of mine. Assuming I understand the word correctly, which I may not.)
I'm glad to have the book on my shelf of writing craft books, and maybe a day will come when the material will make more sense to me. I struggled with a rating and erred on the high side, because the book was recommended and seems to help other writers.
rachel_menard's review against another edition
3.0
Let me start by saying this is probably the first non-fiction book I've read since college, and even back then, I did my best to skim. Non-fiction just isn't really my thing, and this book has a very technical voice.
Plot is how the dramatic events (action) in a story change and/or transform the main character (emotion) over time in a meaningful way (theme.) The degree of character change or transformation can vary dramatically depending on the genre.
I can't even read that without hearing a professor voice in my head. That being said, I'm glad I read this. Once you pick through the technical jargon, there is a lot of good advice, and while reading through it from front to end, I was able to highlight my favorites, which turned out to be 38 pieces of note.
I found the types of scenes and developing the theme of your novel especially helpful and I'm sure I'll be going back to read those again. I think, though, this book would be better in that sense. To just pick through the parts you need and not read the entire thing. But then again, how do you know what you'll need until you read through it?
Plot is how the dramatic events (action) in a story change and/or transform the main character (emotion) over time in a meaningful way (theme.) The degree of character change or transformation can vary dramatically depending on the genre.
I can't even read that without hearing a professor voice in my head. That being said, I'm glad I read this. Once you pick through the technical jargon, there is a lot of good advice, and while reading through it from front to end, I was able to highlight my favorites, which turned out to be 38 pieces of note.
I found the types of scenes and developing the theme of your novel especially helpful and I'm sure I'll be going back to read those again. I think, though, this book would be better in that sense. To just pick through the parts you need and not read the entire thing. But then again, how do you know what you'll need until you read through it?
errantdreams's review against another edition
4.0
I have mildly mixed feelings about Writing Deep Scenes: Plotting Your Story Through Action, Emotion, and Theme (by Martha Alderson and Jordan Rosenfeld). It feels very mechanical at first, with terms like “Energetic Markers” and “thematic significance statement”. Maybe those are helpful things, but I suspect it’ll turn some writers off. Which is a shame, because there’s a lot of good stuff in this book. If nothing else, going back and reading it after you’ve written your first draft could be very helpful.
One of my favorite themes that wends through the book is the idea that everything starts and ends with the characters and their emotions. I wish I could hand out copies of this book to all the writers whose books I’ve given negative ratings to. Particularly the author who told me that you don’t need characters with depth in a thriller. This book amply demonstrates that its concepts apply to everything from literary novels to thrillers, and even memoir. It does a great job of showing how flexible its suggestions are and how they can change to accomplish what’s necessary.
The authors talk about layering certain things into a scene in a way that made it much easier to see how scenes can do several jobs at once. One of my favorite things about this book is its division of scenes into various types, and which types are best for addressing different portions of your plot.
Toward the end I developed one or two pet peeves. One is that there’s no real talk of what happens if your book does not end in a “Triumph”. Most of the rest of their material is very flexible for multiple genres, but this is not as much so. Also, their sole treatment of the romance genre boils down to the ridiculous idea that as long as there's a goal in a book other than romance, it isn't a romance. What?!
My overall take on the book is that it’s extremely helpful, especially for people new to the writing world, who might not have stopped to learn any hard skills before going the self-published route. I also loved some of the extracts the book used as examples, so I now have a list of books to go read!
Original review on my site: http://www.errantdreams.com/2016/07/review-writing-deep-scenes-alderson-and-rosenfeld/
One of my favorite themes that wends through the book is the idea that everything starts and ends with the characters and their emotions. I wish I could hand out copies of this book to all the writers whose books I’ve given negative ratings to. Particularly the author who told me that you don’t need characters with depth in a thriller. This book amply demonstrates that its concepts apply to everything from literary novels to thrillers, and even memoir. It does a great job of showing how flexible its suggestions are and how they can change to accomplish what’s necessary.
The authors talk about layering certain things into a scene in a way that made it much easier to see how scenes can do several jobs at once. One of my favorite things about this book is its division of scenes into various types, and which types are best for addressing different portions of your plot.
Toward the end I developed one or two pet peeves. One is that there’s no real talk of what happens if your book does not end in a “Triumph”. Most of the rest of their material is very flexible for multiple genres, but this is not as much so. Also, their sole treatment of the romance genre boils down to the ridiculous idea that as long as there's a goal in a book other than romance, it isn't a romance. What?!
My overall take on the book is that it’s extremely helpful, especially for people new to the writing world, who might not have stopped to learn any hard skills before going the self-published route. I also loved some of the extracts the book used as examples, so I now have a list of books to go read!
Original review on my site: http://www.errantdreams.com/2016/07/review-writing-deep-scenes-alderson-and-rosenfeld/
fredsphere's review
This is a fine book, but I've read a lot of how-to books on writing fiction, and this one simply does not have enough new to say for me to finish it. Those who have not read many of these might find it very helpful. Unfinished; no rating.
moonpetrie's review
3.0
The content was good enough, but it was organized very oddly, which made it hard to follow and not as useful for reference as I’d hoped. Instead of addressing action in the beginning, emotion in the beginning, and theme in the beginning before moving on to emotion in the middle and so on, it addressed action in each section before going back to the beginning to address emotion and so on. If you want to know what the authors recommend for the beginning of a book, you have to find three separate sections!
bjsikes's review
5.0
Took me a long time to read because I wanted to digest it. Now I want to start reading it again. It gets a bit repetitious but so much food for thought.
marrije's review
3.0
Very dry at times, but the examples from novels to illustrate what they mean make up for it and help make the book quite useful after all. But definitely don't read this one if you're starting out on your first novel - that way despair lies.