Author: Elizabeth George
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pages: 288
My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
I have read only one novel by Elizabeth George, and that was the 20th in her famous Inspector Lynley series, The Punishment She Deserves. I came away from it deeply charmed by Inspector Lynley and Barbara Havers. The book had convinced me that the author was British. She does such a fabulous job of invoking the British flavour. It was on reading Write Away that I learned that she is American.
In Write Away, a book she wrote publishing
the first 12 Lynley books (talk about expertise proven without a doubt), the author
describes her approach to writing. The key to writing, she says, is character,
not story.
The book is divided into 5 parts. Part I is An Overview of the Craft, Part II
is Basics, Part III is Technique, Part IV is Process, Part V is Examples and
Guides.
The book is peppered with extracts from good
books. Here I’m listing them all, as a sort of Recommended Books List. The list
includes Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Michael
Dorris and Louise Erdrich’s The Crown of Columbus, T Jefferson Parker’s Laguna
Heat, Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees, Martin Cruz Smith’s Rose as well as
Havana Bay, Michael Dorris’ A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, Robert Ferrigno’s The
Horse Latitudes, PD James’ A Taste for Death, Ken Follett’s The Key to Rebecca,
Ernest Hemingway’s Indian Camp, Stephen King’s The Dead Zone, Alice Hoffman’s
Second Nature, Susan Isaacs’ Shining Through, Barbara Kingsolver’s Poisonwood
Bible, Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River, William Faulkner’s Light in August, EM
Forster’s A Passage to India, Jim Harrison’s Revenge, and William Golding’s
Lord of the Flies.
She also references Stephen King’s Misery,
The Shining and Cujo, Evan Connell’s Mrs Bridge, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of
Wrath, William Faulkner’s Absalom! Absalom!, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little
House books, LM Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables books, Frank Herbert’s Dune,
John le Carre’s Singer and Singer, James Clavell’s Shogun and King Rat, Manuel Puig’s Kiss
of the Spider Woman, Pat Conroy’s The Lords of Discipline, Ayn Rand’s Atlas
Shrugged, James Frey’s How to Write a Damn Good Novel, Agatha Christie’s Ten Little
Indians and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Peter Benchley’s Jaws, Jon Krakauer’s
Into Thin Air, Janette Turner Hospital’s Oyster, Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect
Storm, Jay Anson’s The Amityville Horror, William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist,
Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda, even Shakespeare’s Richard III and Macbeth,
Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado,
Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, Charles Dickens’ A
Tale of Two Cities, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Craig
Lesley’s The Sky Fisherman, John Irving’s The Cider House Rules, Dorothy L
Sayers’ Five Red Herrings, Frederick Forsyth’s The Fourth Protocol, Dean
Koontz’s Twilight Eyes, Bryce Courtenay’s The Power of One, William Goldman’s
The Princess Bride, and naturally her own novels as
well.
Her own books also find rich mention here. She
quotes from For the sake of Elena, Well-schooled in murder, A great
deliverance, A traitor to memory, Payment in Blood, In the presence of the
enemy, Deception on his mind, and references Missing Joseph, Playing for
the Ashes, Remember, I’ll always love you, In pursuit of the proper sinner and A suitable vengeance.
There are spoilers with reference to
Missing Joseph and For the Sake of Elena.
Each chapter begins with a quote from her Journal
of a Novel from 1994, 1995, 1997, 1998 and 2001.
At first, I thought these were published
books. A Google search brought up John Steinbeck’s Journal of a Novel, which he
wrote while writing East of Eden. It was only in Chapter 5 that I figured out
that this was her own Journal of a Novel, a practice she began with the third
in her Inspector Lynley series. Since then she has been writing the Journal
concurrently with every novel she embarks on.
The author shares the step outline that she
developed for her novel, A Place of Hiding and the running plot outline of In
the presence of the enemy.
In an attempt to prove her point that
anyone can write, provided they have a tight handle on the art and craft, and
can string sentences together for maximum effect, she gives us a run-down on
basic grammar as well. This includes a brief lesson on simple, compound and
complex sentences, and other variations, complex-compound, deliberately
fragmented and deliberately run-on.
This section was unnecessary and seemed too patronising.
The highlight for me was how she took us
through her entire process from the moment she has an idea to the expansion of
that idea and then to the writing and editing. She gives us a taste of her
writing journey, how she gravitated to books, how she began writing, and how
her love for books and writing grew.
She also answers a few of the questions
that she is often asked by agents and readers alike. These relate to how she
got her first agent, to who her favourite authors are, what her schedule looks
like, her opinion about writing critique groups and the big one, why she writes
British novels.
This one is a good addition to all the
literature on the art and craft of writing.
