The concept behind The Weekend Novelist is very interesting - if you're working full time and only have the weekends free to write your novel, this is supposedly the plan to work from to produce a novel in 52 weekends. Unfortunately, The Weekend Novelist achieves something quite different.

For a beginner, this book would be very useful as it is packed with good advice on how to create characters and develop a plot, and how to work on improving your writing craft. For a serious novelist intending to knuckle down and write a book over a year of weekends, attempting to follow the advice and schedule of this book will eat away six months of your precious time.

I find it interesting to hear about the different methods other authors use to create their books. But if you've read many of my reviews, you'll know that I can get a little tense when someone insists that their way of doing something is the only right way to do it. I found Robert Ray's tone too patronising for my liking.

Ray advocates starting each writing session with a period of timed writing, or warming up with mind-maps and lists. This is something I've long since given up doing, but I know many writers who do enjoy writing exercises, prompts, or "getting the rubbish out" first. However, I feel this should be up to the individual writer, not something that is touted as a warming up "habit" you must get into. If your writing time is limited (as is suggested by the concept of this book) then you are unlikely to benefit from spending a portion of that time on unrelated writing exercises, unless that is a core method that you require for yourself.

Likewise, I found the schedule that Ray presents to be far too longwinded. It's better suited to a beginner's class on creative writing than a busy novelist. Ray sets aside the first two weekends for "linear plotting", and then requires the reader to redo the whole process (over weekends 3 and 4) using a cyclical plotting method. Eight weekends are spent on character development, and a total of twelve on plotting. To my mind, that's far too much time not being spent on writing - and this is the opinion of a serious plotter, so I would hate to know what the reactions of a freewriter would be.

For the actual writing part of producing the novel, Ray believes that the writer must know the ending up front, and start the writing process with the important scenes (the first encounters between characters, the climax, and the midpoint), rather than writing from beginning to end. Ray's reasoning is interesting, and worth exploring, but there are many different ways to write a novel and this particular way may not work for everyone.

If you're an established writer but you're struggling with plotting and characterisation, The Weekend Novelist could help you with some strong exercises to redevelop these skills. If you're a beginner with plenty of time to spend on exploring your writing craft, this book is ideal as a workbook and you'll probably end up with a dozen usable plots and characters, and perhaps a synopsis and rough draft of one of them by the end of a year. This book is unlikely to help a busy writer complete a novel in 52 weeks unless you're very selective of which parts of this book you use.

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The Weekend Novelist by Robert J. Ray and Bret Norris is available from Amazon.com.