THE ICE PICK

Dare to Be a Great Writer : 329 Keys to Powerful Fiction, by Leonard Bishop. Cincinnati : Writer’s Digest Books, 1988. ISBN 0-89879-312-2. $15.95.

Do you know how "to enter into the mind of another character" when you are using first person viewpoint? When to stop foreshadowing? How to create a "double story"? When dialogue between different characters should be put in the same paragraph? How to pick up a dragging story with "flash incidents"? When to "show" and when to "tell"? How to handle a battle scene? What to do when you don’t know what’s going to happen next in your story? How introspective transitions can bridge time and space or be used to change viewpoints? How to create and use nested flashbacks? Or "describe the indescribable"?

There’s so much terrific advice in here. If you can find it.

You’re not supposed read this book straight through like a novel. It is divided into small sections, about a page long, and you are expected to dip in and out using the index and choose the areas you need advice on. To do that, a book either has to be well-organized or have a great index.

If there is any order at all in the way this book is set up, I couldn’t find it. It looks as if someone tossed the sections down the stairs and cobbled them together as they lay. If, for example, you are interested in foreshadowing, the subject is split into nine sections scattered from page 27 to page 275. Flashbacks are in twenty-one different sections, similarly scattered.

And the topic index is woefully inadequate. I scribbled in an additional six sections to "Flashbacks" alone.

I read the book straight through because I wanted to review it, and I’m glad I did, since I found things I never would have otherwise and was able to add my notes to the index.

I suggest that you do read the book straight through. If you even read one section a day, you’ll have it done in less than a year and will have learned some super tips for all kinds of fiction writing. And you’ll find answers to things you might not have known you had a problem with, or ways to improve your writing that you might never stumble across otherwise. Don’t be afraid to annotate the existing index or even add your own topics. (I added fourteen, ranging from "Endings" to "Transitions.") This is one book that needs your personalization. It’s not a book to check out of the library, anyway, but one to own and refer back to as your writing ability matures.

A book with as much for the advanced writer as for beginners (and maybe more), it really is wonderful and provocative for all its annoying lack of organization. Bishop challenges many (all?) of the "rules" and gives plenty of examples to show what he is getting at. His message is, that once we know and understand the rules, we too, can move beyond amateur to professional and beyond professional to great--if we are willing to work and dare to break the rules. Well, if not great, at least better than we are!

{Published in GPIC, the Oklahoma Science Fiction Writers Newsletter. July 1998. Reprinted in SF & Fantasy Workshop Newsletter, Oct. 1999.}