Immediate Fiction: A Complete Writing Course

I usually do not write reviews, and I could because I have read TONS of writing books, but I had to on this one. I have to say that I have passed this book over numerous times in the bookstore and purchased others instead. Maybe the cover was plain and unappealing, I'm not really sure why I have never given it a chance before. I have read well over 100 books on writing, and I can honestly say that THIS IS ABSOLUTELY THE BEST BOOK ON THE SUBJECT I HAVE EVER FOUND!!!!!!!!!

Cleaver is absolutely a GENIUS on the subject!! He struggled with learning the craft himself, but when he met his mentor it all came together for him, he UNDERSTOOD the craft. I've been waiting a long time, searching for what he had been searching for and I have found my mentor in him. I really can't believe I've never bought this book before. I wish I could take a picture of my three shelves of writing books and put on here so everyone could see how many books I am comparing this book to. IT IS IN A LEAGUE OF ITS OWN---BY FAR!!!!!

This book, at first I was going to give it a 1 star, but then as I read, I really learned some valuable things from it. Jerry Cleaver was describing why people read fiction. A fiction is really about experience, the experience of the character we write about. But he asks, don't we have enough experience of our own? Why do we need to read the experiences of other characters? The reason he gave for this was because during fiction , if written correctly, we identify so much with the character, that in essence, we become the character and are able to experience ourselves in ways we could never. Also, why people read fiction is because it allows them to go through the worlds they would never encounter.

This is why the author emphasized emotions. Emotions are key. One thing I got out of this book which helped my writing was that we always should have emotion every step of the way. We always must know why our character is feeling each step of the way, or we lose the story since we identify so much with the character. This has helped my book so much because sometimes it was flat was because I was lacking character emotion, character reaction, which is key.

So this book helped me in terms of that. Otherwise, the book was not that good. It's definitely not a stand alone book. But each of these fictions books contribute. My favorites are The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing, You Can Write a Novel, and Self-editing for fiction writers. These are going to get me on the market.

I don't know why I keep reading these books. It's as if I'm looking for some sort of Holy Grail that's going to magically make the creative process fall into place for me. Well, this book certainly didn't fit the bill. After this build-up in the introduction about how one of his writing teachers gave him a secret formula that turned his life and his writing around, I was actually naive enough to think that this guy really had something useful to say. And what did his big revelation turn out to be? What was his Earth-shattering secret? Conflict. Wah-wah-wahhhhh. Yep, that's it. A writer uses conflict to generate action in a story. Well, imagine that. No kidding. Stop the press. (No really, stop the press that's printing this book, please.) That's it? That was the big advice that turned his life around. Every beginning writer knows that you need conflict to have a story. I don't think that this is news to anyone. A story about a family spending a great day at the park isn't interesting unless one of the kids gets kidnapped or something. That's obvious. If a book on writing has nothing more to tell you than that, then it's a waste of paper. Yes, there's the usual business about showing vs. telling and a few other things. But it's all pretty much the same standard stuff I've seen a 1,000 times. The people who are giving this book glowing reviews are either plants, or they've never picked up another book on writing in their life. And that writing style. Yuck. It's like having a motivational speaker in a cheap suit yell at you about personal empowerment in a dumpy hotel conference room. Someone here was wondering why they couldn't find any novels written by Jerry Cleaver, because, oh gee, they'd sure love to read some of the guy's fiction. Hmm, I wonder why they couldn't find anything. Could it be that this guy is a complete hack and a fraud who hasn't published a word of fiction in his life. In fact, from now on, I'm going to see if someone's actually published something before I read their sage advice on writing.

This is a short book that provides a great introduction to writing fiction. It presents the central point of what makes compelling prose--conflict--and hammers it down time and time again, in every chapter.
The style in which it's presented makes it easy to understand and to follow, and the author makes no bones about the fact that the number one thing that any aspiring writer needs to do is: write.
I'd suggest also to read a lot. If a day or two you can't/don't want to write, then read a book and silently analyze it to find the elements that you have learnt.
I suggest Plot & Structure, by James Scott Bell for the same concepts given in a different format.
Plot & Structure: (Techniques And Exercises For Crafting A Plot That Grips Readers From Start To Finish) (Write Great Fiction)

As a published writer of a guide to writing not to mention dozens of other books for both children and adults, as well as an editor and leader of writing workshops, I am pretty careful about recommending books about writing. Jerry Cleaver's is the first one I've read in a long time that I not only recommend to my writers, I also purchase myself and give to those in my workshops! Mr. Cleaver takes the basic elements of what constitutes good writing out of the realm of literary theory and grad school philosophy, explains the terminology (what is plot? what is a strong character? what is showing versus telling?) AND THEN SHOWS WRITERS HOW TO MAKE THEM HAPPEN. It's this latter point that most writing manuals lack. It's all well and good to explain to writers what a character arc is, but showing writers how to create one is an altogether different challenge. Cleaver's book is a welcome addition to any aspiring writer's shelf.