I picked up this book thinking it would be a specialist book for genre writers, with advice on beginning and sustaining a career in this type of writing. It has a few chapters relevant to genre writers, but unfortunately, Writing the Popular Novel is generally yet another beginners' guide on "how to write".
First the good bits, because there aren’t many of them. Estleman offers a sketchy background on some of the different genres in Chapter 2, along with discussion on issues surrounding these, such as the market expectations and avoiding clichés. Chapter 6 discusses some options you can use if the book you’re working on suddenly becomes dated by current events. Many writers had a head scratching moment with thrillers that were released, or still being written, following September 11. Chapter 11 also contains very useful advice on how to decide whether your story is a standalone or part of a series. Finally, Chapter 24, which is Estleman’s perspective on writing in two or more different genres, is the only other chapter that is entirely relevant to what this book claims to be about. Those four chapters aside, the title of this book is misleading. Writing the Popular Novel is not a book for a writer who has already begun to practice the craft of writing a novel and has made the decision to specialise as a genre writer (ie, where certain genres are known as “popular” or “mass-market” novels). Neither is this a book on how to write a novel that will be “popular” with readers. Finally, this is not even a book that focuses on how to write a novel, as Estleman includes a chapter each on short stories and poetry, in addition to writing (fiction and non-fiction) in general. Another chapter is on coping with the fact that an editor might get hold of your work and suggest corrections and changes.
There’s even a chapter on improving your grammar and errors to avoid, and regional variations, but this is stuff a writer should know already (or research in depth if they are writing for a region they are unfamiliar with), and Estleman’s presumptuousness rankles: while “different than” is certainly incorrect in almost every form except one, “different from” is only accepted usage in the US. In some other countries one thing usually differs from another, but it is different to something else. And when I lived in Britain I wore jumpers, not “pullovers”, as Estleman believes.
The grammar chapter was the first clue: Why would you include a grammar guide in a book for specialist writers (that is, writers who probably already have a grammar tome or two to refer to)? Answer: Because this is really a book for absolute beginners who wouldn’t yet know what they were picking up if the book had “genre” in the title. This is a book on “how to write something”, and it’s an arrogant, rambling, contradictory “On Writing” wannabe. Estleman would have produced a much better book if he’d expanded on those chapters that deal with specific advice about crafting and maintaining a career as a genre writer, and left the “how to write” details to beginners’ guides and creative writing teachers.
Estleman stresses accuracy and the value of research and yet his very first trivia fact is incorrect – Ian Fleming took the name “James Bond” for his main character from the name of an author of a birding book called “Birds of the West Indies”. The book happened to be in front of him while he was coming up with a name and he felt it fitted. Estleman believes he used the name of a friend. The real James Bond didn’t know of Ian Fleming or his borrowing until eight years later.1 This wasn’t the only time I caught myself saying “What?!” out loud.
Estleman has some strange opinions and seems to believe that his way is the only way to achieve success in writing. He says, “…the only type of fiction that shows definite signs of fading from our culture is the traditional, unclassifiable story variously identified as literary, academic, and mainstream.”2 I’ll just pause here while Zadie Smith, John Banville, Kiran Desai, et al, clean up the coffee they just spluttered over their keyboards.
Finally, I have to comment on the foreword by John Lescroart, which left me fuming at his insinuation that only men have what it takes to make a livelihood from writing fiction; women dream about writing something so that they can tell their friends they are writers. Do I really have to make a list of successful female authors here?
All that ranting done, the chapters I mentioned in the second paragraph, on determining which genre to specialise in and on balancing a career that covers more than one genre, are actually very interesting and thought-provoking. My recommendation is to flip through to these chapters and see if this book might be of use to you. But don’t read the foreword unless you feel like breaking your favourite mug when you slam it down on the table.
1 Page 719, The Auk: Journal of the American Ornithologists' Union, Vol. 106, "In Memoriam: James Bond" by Kenneth C. Parkes
2 Page 2, Writing the Popular Novel by Loren D. Estleman, Writer’s Digest Books, 2004
Writing the Popular Novel by Loren D. Estleman is available from Amazon.com
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