Review: `I hope this book carries the torch.'
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 4, 2014
Daniel Raynes - we should hear more about this writer as he has shared writing tips to create a successful book as well as anyone who has addressed this subject. Hopefully one of his own novels will appear soon. Raynes is a young, handsome lad born in Baltimore, Maryland.  His own writing to date has resulted in multiple awards and helped earn a scholarship to Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland where he studied poetry, short stories, plays, screenplays, and novels. Apparently screenplays are his forte but writing novels is his passion. This excellent book feels very much like a deep breath on his part to open the door to writing serious novels again.Not only is this book bound to become a bible for writers of all stages of their careers, it is a very accessible seminar on writing. As he states in his opening remarks, `By using many examples from great authors and looking at what their prose is supposed to achieve within their story, I aim to show you how and why they did it, and hopefully their success can help you as well. I have chosen select passages from classic novels to illustrate their techniques, and I will compliment the published examples with some of my own, which I created just to highlight and expand upon the lessons.'What follows is a step by step approach to offering advice on how to avoid pitfalls, overcome tendencies that may indicate failure, and in general how to go about writing  - from the beginning idea to the finished product. It seems his flow is best defined by simply outlining the names of his chapters with a few excerpts dotting the landscape:Chapter 1 Getting Started, Chapter 2 The Importance of Writing Quickly, Chapter 3 Writing in Layers, Chapter 4 How to Develop a Style (The way an author expresses their story, with word choice, grammar, sentence structure, and how they use many types of literary devices.), Chapter 5 How to Find Your Voice (The culmination of style, tone, themes, and morals that the author presents in a work of fiction.), Chapter 6 Writing a Setting, Chapter 7 Writing Action (In many ways the mood of the action is more important than the action itself.), Chapter 8 Writing Description, Chapter 9 Writing Dialogue (All the poetic prose in the world isn't going to cover up a lousy story.), Chapter 10 Dialogue or Description? (In the end, people are all people, and the differences are subtle at best.), Chapter 11 Writing Emotional Prose (You can break the rules whenever you feel you need to. Whenever you feel your story needs it. Break the rules while keeping your prose readable and don't apologize for it.), Chapter 12 Writing to an Audience (Something has to happen early in the story to get the reader to commit to finishing the novel.), Chapter 13 Doing Research, Chapter 14 To Prewrite or Not to Prewrite?, Chapter 15 The Importance of Murphy's Law (They don't want crisis averted. They want crisis overcome.), Chapter 16 Choosing Your Narrator, Chapter 17 Pacing a Story, Chapter 18 Writing an Ending, Chapter 19 Read with Your Ears!, Chapter 20 Genre Novels vs. Literary Novels, Chapter 21 Where Ideas Come From, Chapter 22 Should You Write What You Know?, Chapter 23 Writing Other Formats As Well, Chapter 24 Writing and Videogames, Chapter 25 Writing Classes and Groups, Chapter 26 Why We Write, Chapter 27 Breaking Through Writer's Block, Chapter 28 General Writing Tips, and Chapter 29 Final Thoughts.This is considerable information well related and the aspect that helps the `student' buy into Raynes' flow of ideas is his personalization and his very wise reference examples from the great authors of our time and the past. This is an excellent book that may just help writing dreams be realized!Grady Harp, June 14