The Writer's Advantage: A Toolkit for Mastering Your Genre
Ratings1
Average rating1
There are many books that assist writers with their craft, structure, and formatting, all of which are important. However, there does not exist a guide for writers to understand the evolution of their genre. In order to effectively write within a transmedia environment -- a marketplace that includes different groups of consumers with short attention spans across various platforms -- today's writer must master the history of their genre. By understanding where and how their genre has emerged they develop their own authentic texts and these fresh, genuine concepts will stand apart in a media landscape that is muddied with copycat material.
Tags
Genre
Reviews
Popular Reviews
Reviews with the most likes.
I'm breaking my own rule on not rating DNFs usually. Why?
For one this was lent to me by a friend. I read it on her kindle. The formatting is unreadable. I thought the reviewer on Amazon was being an a** about that but he wasn't. This is all blocks of text with no paragraphs, editing was needed and not used, and the TOC was indeed messed up. This was on my friend's kindle which she had not updated in a long time so maybe this was fixed in later editions, I don't know.
Two, this immediately read as a self-important Boomer telling the kids what's wrong with media nowadays. Evidently, “no one” finishes books or movies anymore.
Three AND worse yet, her “unique qualifications” have nothing to do with writing fiction or being in publishing. She was in TV and then much later an “editor” which is surprising considering some of the obvious style issues.
Did I mention self-importance? She immediately goes in on how important her book is, how it's basically already a seminal work. But then each “chapter” is just a page of text. Usually with little actual value IMO.
It is a huge pet peeve of mine how many people decide to write books on writing and only use examples from TV and movies. The storytelling of novels is the same in many ways and just as different in many more and to really nail fiction novels you should be using fiction novels as examples. And maybe when she said Writer's advantage she meant screenwriters. But that should have been said!
I did not finish as I skimmed many chapters and saw very little reason to punish myself trying to read one of the worst formatted ebooks I've ever seen. Save your eyes and read something by actual writers. I'd recommend the Trope Thesaurus by Jennifer Hilt, 7 figure fiction by T. Taylor, and John Truby for people that don't talk down to you and are far more qualified to speak on genres in writing fiction novels.