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A review by londonmabel
The Plot Thickens: 8 Ways to Bring Fiction to Life by Noah Lukeman
3.0
As others have said, the first few chapters are a bit too "list-ee" to be useful. And not all writers agree you need to know your characters to the degree he's suggesting. And given his talent is as an agent, not as a writer, I had trouble seeing him as an authority on that end of things (the stuff that doesn't make it to the page.)
But after that he has lots of useful ideas. If you're looking to generate ideas for increasing suspense, conflict, etc., then you'll probably get something out of it.
I found sometimes he lacked examples, though. For example in describing multidimensional characters, he talked about how difficult it is to achieve and gave examples of successful one-dimentional characters, without giving successful examples of multi. (He gave one example, Serpico, but didn't say why/how.) As I took notes I was often just taking a moment to come up with my own.
But after that he has lots of useful ideas. If you're looking to generate ideas for increasing suspense, conflict, etc., then you'll probably get something out of it.
I found sometimes he lacked examples, though. For example in describing multidimensional characters, he talked about how difficult it is to achieve and gave examples of successful one-dimentional characters, without giving successful examples of multi. (He gave one example, Serpico, but didn't say why/how.) As I took notes I was often just taking a moment to come up with my own.