Synopses & Reviews
An essential guide for every aspiring novelist!
The thought of writing a full-length novel can be daunting. But in A Novel in a Year, Louise Doughty makes a seemingly vast and unconquerable task manageable by walking aspiring authors through the different aspects of writing technique in eminently accessible bite-size chunks. Here are fifty-two chapters offering useful advice on all the facets of writing and exercises designed to help writers of all levels develop confidence and style. Read a chapter a week, and by year's end, you will have accomplished your goal and made it to "the End."
Review
"[Doughty's] voice throughout is warm and encouraging, with an engaging line in self-deprecation. I loved the bit where she advised someone working on a novel about dragons to 'go to the local woods and find the sort of tree his dragon liked to sit on, or rock, or whatever.' She can afford that comically dismissive 'or rock, or whatever' because she has already dispensed a very wise hint about what she nicely calls 'lateral 'research'." The Guardian
Review
"This book does for fiction-writing what Lynne Truss did for punctuation. If you only buy one book about the novel-writing process, make it this." Jill Dawson
Review
"Doughty is a successful novelist with experience of writing and teaching, and she offers many words of wisdom... spend an enjoyable hour or two with this book, then get on with some writing." Scotland on Sunday
Synopsis
The thought of writing a full-length novel can be daunting. But in A Novel in a Year, Louise Doughty makes a seemingly vast and unconquerable task manageable by walking aspiring authors through the different aspects of writing technique in eminently accessible bite-size chunks. Here are fifty-two chapters offering useful advice on all the facets of writing and exercises designed to help writers of all levels develop confidence and style. Read a chapter a week, and by year's end, you will have accomplished your goal and made it to "the End."
About the Author
Louise Doughty is the author of five novels, including the internationally acclaimed Fires in the Dark, which won awards from the Arts Council of Great Britain and the K Blundell Trust. She has also written five plays for radio and is a well-known columnist and radio presenter in the United Kingdom. She lives in London.