Jackie Collins and I
How To. Write A Damn Good Novel. By James N. Frey. Macmillan 1988. 175 pp. $19.95 (paperback). (Reviewed by Diane Prout)
At last, a foolproof formula for writing a blockbuster novel with paperback royalities and Hollywood screen rights! James N. Frey, having artfully distilled the essence of his courses in novel-writing and suspense fiction at Berkley, California, seduces the would-be scribe into thinking that there is nothing to the fiction game. He even gets it down to a chemical formula. M plus G plus O equals C. (Main character, his Goal, plus Opposition equals Conflict). We never knew it was that easy.
His literary techniques read like an auto-mechanic’s manual. “Maximum Capacity and the ‘Would-He-Really’
Test,” “Equalising the Forces of Opposition,” “Patterns of Dramatic Conflict: Static, Jumping and Slowly Rising,” and “The Bonding Principle —or Keeping Your Characters in the Crucible.” My characters, it seems, must be strong, powerful, passionate, but not invulnerable. They must contend with forces which are equal and opposite, but not inherently wicked. They may not leap from one emotional extreme to another (unlike real people), and they must be rooted in a physiological, sociological and psychological framework. My little old lady detective may have a homosexual nephew which causes her to hunt down ruthless drug dealers, but she may not persecute solo mothers who are ripping off Social Security. My ambitious young secretary, with designs of being Managing Director, may sleep her way to the top, but only because she is secretly supporting her widowed mother living in Gore. Frey sets up one scenario after another and explains how it can flare or flop. “The Fine Art of Dialogue” and “Sensuous Dramatic Prose — Viewpoint and Flashback — and Other Nifty Gadgets in the Novelist’s Bag of Tricks” will have the compulsive scribbler rummaging in her (his) toolkit. Beware the final chapter, “The ZEN of Novel Writing,” however. Just when you think you have this best-seller recipe sussed, Frey has the last word. “Being an unpublished writer has as much social acceptability as a shopping-bag lady.” Never tell anyone you are a writer. You may be palpitating over black domestic comedy in Merivale, but tell your nosy friends and anxious family that you are studying middle-class mores and the sexual angst induced by Rogernomics. You may come clean only when you are flying out of Christchurch on the way to a script-writer’s conference with Woody Allen. Move over, Jackie Collins. Here I come.
Jackie Collins and I
Press, 12 November 1988, Page 23
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