extremely dated instructional manual on freelance fiction writing, but still okay as a general explanation of modern fiction writing, Anything technical about submission, typing manuscripts, etc, has long been replaced by the age of automation where manuscripts are emailed as MS Word attachments, but reading the formulas Koontz still uses to this day was enjoyable because, for the most part, they're the formulas ALL fiction writers use.
This isn't to say you can read this and write a bestseller because as always, it's about "story," but it is an interesting look behind the scenes.
EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Writer's Digest Hardcover,nd printing withpgs, size:/" x/approx. Fan of popular fiction, professional writer, new writer looking for marketswhoever you are, you'll enjoy this book, It takes you behind the publishing scene and shows you how popular novelsscience fiction, mysteries, suspense thrillers, Gothicromances, adult fantasy, Westerns, and erotica are created and how you can write them too.
This book offers you, whatever you write, the chance to perfect your craft while earning income, building your reputation, and experiencing the encouragement of seeing your work in print.
Dean Koontz has sold since, over twentyfour copyright of this bookpopular novels, Before becoming a fulltime freelance writer, he worked as a supermarket check out clerk, a drummer in a rock band, a foredt ranger, a tutor for underprivileged children with the Appalachian Poverty Program, and as a suburban school English teacher, among other things.
This may be a little dated but the advice is still sound, A learned quite a few new tricks to improve my writing and marketing, including the fact that Koontz recommends a specific page count everyday in order to release more novels within a years time frame.
Not half as good as King's On Writing, but I suppose that koontz isn't quite the writer that King is anyway, Not at all what I had expected either, Where King's book was informative And entertaining, Writing Popular Fiction just came off as being forced and obtuse,
/Stars A lot has changed since the mids, especially if one is writing about that period while still cognizant of the lingering impact of the lates.
It would be wrong to think that the market for fiction is anywhere near the same, While the shift is likely less jarring than the pre to postHemingway era of American literature, genre fiction the subject of Dean R, Koontz's Writing Popular Fictionone must consider how different the world is the more recent now,
Koontz was writing about a world where Peter Benchley's Jaws was just released as a book and had not become the first modern blockbuster.
George Lucas had made two films at that point, THXand American Graffitithere was no such thing as Star Wars, Star Trekwas a show that had a decent run on network television and had not yet emerged as a presence in syndication, The use of vampires in successful fiction wouldn't emerge until Stephen King penned 'Salem's Lot in, and it would not be until Anne Rice brought the sexy vampire back with Interview with a Vampirethat the undead got to be in something more than a subcategory of the horror genre.
Cable television had been around foryears but was still something more common in remote rural areas than the sameness of suburbia, Satellite television existed it had its first single purpose satellite launched in ', The personal computer was effectively unknown, The VCR existed, but was extremely expensive, It wouldn't be untilthat Betamax came on the scene and allowed for the average person to record broadcast television or watch movies at home at one's leisure.
Hell, print magazines were still a major and viable outlet for a writer to submit fiction,
Koontz lists seven categories of genre fiction: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Suspense, Mysteries, GothicRomance, Westerns, and Erotica, I would argue that SciFi wildly expanded over what it was by the mids, for better or worse, Fantasy, Suspense still very strong, Mystery Koontz writes about the more traditional, Agatha Christie style mystery, which has been superseded by a more active plot structure since the earlys at least, GothicRomance this is a chaste kind of romance, part Brontë sisters' young girl sent off to live in a strange house and long for the unobtainable man, part supernatural mystery my understanding is that this market died before thes were over, Westerns another genre that has widely gone by the wayside it takes a very wellwritten book to garner any attention beyond people who go purposely looking for a Western however, the more modern Western follows a much different plot structure where a man can be
a man instead of a slave to the modern world, and Erotica Koontz divides this category into the Big Sexy Novel and the Rough Sexy Novel the former category includes everything from the bodiceripper romance novels of thes ands to the sexfilled stories of Jacquelin Suzanne or Harold Robbins, and even more, while Rough Sexy is effectively porn.
To his credit, I think that Koontz did a fantastic job of delineating the categories and his understanding of them, I could not think of a kind of genre fiction that would not fit in these groups though as noted, I believe the Gothic Romance is dead.
More to the point, Koontz, who was not yetwhen he wrote Writing Popular Fiction, clearly understood all of the genres and the necessary elements to make one acceptable to a publisher.
Koontz is a little too eager to go to numbered lists this is more of a personal complaint, because if one is keeping the book handy as a resource then this tactic is fine, but it gets cumbersome if one is just reading through the book as a book.
Then, when doing so would make the most sense, he avoids the tactic and just lists the information with paragraph breaks, It feels a little odd, but once I understood that he was going to change it up whenever he felt like it, I became much less concerned about it.
One of the better parts of any book on writing is how many forgotten or at least unknown to me if they have remained popular books the author mentions as good examples of the genres.
For the most part, Koontz rattles off wellknown and renowned titles and authors, though in some instances he seems to be well ahead of his time.
He praises Lucas' THXas being one of the two worthwhile meaning not derivative science fiction movies, which is impressive mostly because nobody saw THXwhen it was released.
Still, it became quite clear that not only was Koontz very well read, he also had no problem throwing other writers under the bus when it came to their abilities and works.
This stood in odd contrast to his straightout advice that a writer is better served by writing substandard, by the numbers genre fiction to earn a paycheck than in taking atojob and neglecting writing for even a few short months.
Koontz also gives great insight into why the authors of the era were so eager to use pen names, This always confused me, but apparently there was a prevailing belief that an author could compete with himself or herself instead of a loyal following buying more books by the same author.
Likewise, there were genres this may still be the case where the audience was thought to only endorse on gender of author Westerns needed to be written by men, Gothic Romances only by women and an author often took a name for each genre in which he or she worked.
It still seems crazy to me, but Koontz does an excellent job of explaining that when the publisher tells you to use a different name if you want the advance check, do it.
According to Koontz, a good story needs:
A Strong Plot
A Hero or Heroine
Clear, Believable Motivation
A Great Deal of Action
A Colorful Background
That all seems superobvious, doesn't it Yet there are several stories I'd love to develop that I have have yet to figure out how to move the plot to the forefront of the tale.
I have been known to try to force weak or unlikeable characters into the main role, I cannot remember I time I did not try to hide the characters motivations, I love restricting action for no reason, And I am weak at describing the alien Science Fiction or Fantasy settings, or in bringing out the particulars of an environment and making the story come alive because of them.
It is all simple advice, but sometimes I need to be clobbered over the head with it,
My overall reaction to this book is positive, I think I would enjoy a conversation with Koontz more than his books and nonfiction to his fiction, but he clearly has mastered the craft of getting the readable, serviceable story in print quickly.
Dated, sure, but worthwhile. Previously, I talked about how Tell Lies for Fun and Profit taught me a bit about writing, Well, after that, I went to hunt down more books about writing and found Writing Popular Fiction by Dean Koontz, And you know what It taught me a lot about plot,
Basically, the book deals with category fiction, and then in each category, discusses the basic plottypes, plot pitfalls and things that are absolutely necessary to include if you want your book to sell.
In fact, compared to Manual for Fiction Writers, Writing Popular Fiction is mercenary in terms of how it assumes that the whole point of writing or being an author is to sell something.
The category fiction discussed in the book is: Science Fiction and Fantasy, Suspense, Mysteries, GothicRomance, Westerns and Erotica, If your future novel is going to be in any of the above categories, you should definitely take a look at this book, But anyway, there are quite a few chapters on writing in general, which make it worth looking at even if you don't think you are writing in any of these categories.
My biggest takeaway from this book was that it made me realise that my NaNoWriMo novel is going to be very close to if not actually ScienceFiction.
I don't have any new technologies or such, but I'm definitely writing a "In The Near Future" story, And from that section alone, I have a lot more things to consider about the background of the world I'm creating, I may not include all the information, but I have to consider them if I want my novel to feel realistic,
Towards the end, some of the advice gets very dated, especially when he talks about submitting your manuscript and typewriters, In the age of epublishing, you can completely bypass the traditional gatekeepers if you're so desperate to get your book out, Even if you want to be a traditional published author, I have a feeling that the submissions method/getting an agent process if different.
But then again, I don't work in the publishing industry so I don't know,
If you're stuck on plot, this is definitely the book to read!
First posted at sitelinkWith love from Japan, Eustacia While it has some very good information in it, a lot of it is out of date.
Still worth reading though. Very practical. While some of it is very basic, I think Koontz did a good job of trying to explain things to amatures as well as people trying to branch out in their writing.
Much of what he wrote in this book reminded me of things I learned in my creative writing class in high school and from all the books I've read over the years.
I think this book is a very good source for people who are looking at trying to start in the business,
The reason I give itthough has more to do with the fact that I trust where Koontz is coming from.
He seems to know his stuff and I trust any of his tips he gives, There were a couple pages I noticed, in the book, where it talks about the types of questions people need to ask themselves as writers, which I found rather impressive.
Ie He states that people could be wearing masks around in public just to get by, due to pollution issues, This, a book written back in, I feel if Koontz is that good at seeing a problem like pollution, and correctly guessing what might be inyears, then he's probably pointing us in the right direction, as far as tips go.
I would recommend this book for anyone who either needs a reminder of the basics or is just beginning to dabble in writing.
You cant argue against Dean R, Koontzs success as an author, with over two dozen titles reaching number one on the NY Times Bestseller List through the years,
Writing Popular Fiction was first published in, in a very different publishing era than today, When this book came out, paperback scifi and fantasy novels cost less than a dollar, Writers in Koontzs vein published multiple novels per year, and according to Koontz, the most prolific and successful of these hacks yes, hacks followed a formula that worked.
Koontz reviews the characteristics of six kinds of genre fiction: science fiction and fantasy, suspense, mysteries, Gothicromance, Westerns, and erotica presumably all genres in which he has written.
I hesitate to use the word analyze in his treatment of each genre, as his tone and treatment reveal a sense of selfconfidence that his way is the best way for a writer to churn out manuscripts for sale.
And for its time, it probably was, At least it was for him,
I confess here that of the genre chapters, I read only the one on science fiction and fantasy, though I did read the remainder of the book that dealt with nongenre specific advice.
However, this isnt really a useful book, For someone wanting to learn about the creative process, Koontzs advice is basic and based on the fact that he is or was already writing for publication.
For an active writer, there is little sophistication in his later discussion of mechanics and style,
He uses excerpts of his own to illustrate essential elements, but his study seems more of a selffulfilling afterthought than a discussion of craft: “We have now learned that the hero is apparently not of human parents, but an experiment of as yet unexplained Artificial Wombs.
” Yes, we do see that, but there is no real analysis of the elements of character introduction, or developing an effective opening hook,
A onepage chapter entitled “The Most Important Chapter in This Book” exhorts the writer to learn the formula and get a few books published before attempting to “break the rules.
”
Its easy enough to get past the dated culture of the time Koontz speaks of using carbon paper in his typewriter to create copies of his drafts but it becomes clear to the interested reader presumably an aspiring writer like myself that writing has changed.
Id like to think for the better,
No longer the days of browsing the fiction shelves of a corner bookstore for thecent pulp fiction of the Seventies and Eighties.
The internet has killed the hack, It has certainly driven hordes of aspiring professionals into the electronic ghetto of blogging and selfpublishing,
Or maybe its simply made the hack a more creative storyteller, because the rules no longer apply,
Bottom Line: Not worth adding to your writers bookshelf,
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Unlock Now Writing Popular Fiction Authored By Dean Koontz Released Through Publication
Dean Koontz