This Year You Write Your Novel by Walter Mosley is a book on fiction novel writing. It’s aimed at inspiring writers looking to complete their novel within a span of a year.
In my last article I reviewed Elements of Fiction by Walter Mosley. It is the second book in Walter Mosley’s two writing novels. As I am currently on own my writing journey. I have decided to share with you which books are helping me develop my creative writing abilities.
Summary
This Year You Write Your Novel is for aspiring fiction writers. The author does not make any promises he can’t keep – such as:
- You’ll write a bestseller
- You’ll become rich
- You’ll be a famous author
Instead, he gives it to you straight. You’ll have all the tools you need to know in order to write a book. If you work hard and consistently and stick to the project, you may even write a good book. As an aspiring fiction writer myself, this is the perfect start. In the next section I’ll mention all the elements of fiction that you’ll learn in the book.
What You’ll Learn
Here are the elements of fiction outline in This Year You Write Your Novel:
- Narrative Voice
- First person
- Third Person
- Omniscient Narrator
- Showing and Telling
- Active and metaphorical
- Events, active characters, vivid images, real dialogue
- Crafting a pedestrian style of writing
- Metaphor and Simile
- Character and Character development
- Central event/ plot
- On character
- Character transitions
- traits, attributes
- conflict
- Poetry – “the fount of all writing,” as Mosley refers to it.
- How to begin
- How to overcome the midlands of the novel
- Research
- Dialogue
- Music, Genre, Advice for Writers
What I loved
The format and length of this book. If you want to get started on writing your novel as soon as possible this book is great. It gives you all the resources you’ll need to get started as soon as possible. In other words, you’ll gain an understanding of each element that composes a novel.
The length of this novel is incredible short. You can probably complete this book in one sitting even if you’re a busy person. On audible you can find the audiobook. It’s less than 3 hours at 1X speed listening. Walter Mosley’s two books on writing combined make up less than six hours of listening time.
My next favorite component of this book is how Mosley weaves his fiction writing with the nonfiction instruction. When discussing an element of fiction writing such as character or dialogue the other weaves his own fiction writing examples so that the reader gets a taste of how good creative writing should sound.
What I didn’t enjoy
Mosley is a very talented writer. He weaves his narrative fiction into the text to demonstrated how he crafts his stories. Yet, the subject matters he writes about in these examples are not G rated. I must note here that I have never read any of his fiction novels. I have only read his two nonfiction books on the topic of writing fiction.
I can imagine that the subjects he writes about in his novels are not family-friendly. That’s completely fine. It’s just not my taste of fiction – that’s all.
I have an issue with recommending this book to friends and relatives interested in writing a novel. In order for me to give this book as a recommendation to someone I have to include an asterisk statement.
This book has help me understand what is fiction made of and it’s helped me to structure my fiction writing. This book has been a source of invaluable insight. Since reading it, I feel more capable of beginning my fiction writing journey.
However…
The authors views are not my own. This book is not for anyone unwilling to read touchy subjects or anything above G rated content. I could not tell someone to skip the parts where the author shows his fiction. The examples assist the reader in understanding how fiction is crafted.
The author’s sample fiction writing throughout the book deals with heavy subjects. Still, I can say that this book has been foundational and formative for my work going forward. I recommend it for anyone wanting to get into fiction writing.
If you enjoyed this summary of be sure to check out Elements of Fiction by the same author. It’s the second installment in this short series.
Best,
Ana
