Structuring Your Novel by K.M. Weiland
NOTE: I normally have a link to my Goodreads review, but the site is down as I post this. I'll remove this note once it's back up and the links can be put in.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I’ll be honest, I read this book for two reasons: because it’s short, and I was curious what a more nuts and bolts approach to novel writing would look like (I got it with a big book bundle that I was looking through after finishing my last read). I have read many books about writing novels, so by this point it takes something with a little extra to make my socks really roll up and down.
Structuring Your Novel doesn’t really have that, but it is a perfectly cromulent introduction to novel structure for a new author. The book is divided broadly into three parts:
- Breaking down the classic three act structure
- Breaking down scene structure, specifically the scene/sequel duo
- A final section, curiously, on sentence structure
Initially I found the book overly restrictive in how it demands a novel must be written, but for new writers, this is probably a good thing–learn the rules before setting a blowtorch to them. Weiland even notes that some well-known authors don’t use the three-act structure–but actually do! They just do it without realizing it, because it’s the natural way people tell stories: a beginning, a middle, an end. This seems entirely logical.
The scene/sequel thing is also very fundamental: stuff happens, then the characters react, or more broadly, ACTION and then THOUGHT. Logical!
Really, everything in the first two-thirds of the book is fine, if not revelatory for anyone who has been writing for a while. But I question the necessity of the section at the end on how to write sentences. None of the advice is bad or wrong, but it feels out of place in a book about structuring your novel, as if Weiland cribbed from a book on grammar to make this book a little heftier. It’s easily skipped, and I’d suggest any writer who struggles with grammar might want to read an entire book on the subject before trying to crank out a novel. Rewiring is hard enough without having to correct a bunch of grammatical errors as well.
Overall, this is a perfectly fine book for new writers.
