Friday, December 7, 2012

102 SOLUTIONS TO COMMON WRITING MISTAKES (Bob Mayer)

102 SOLUTIONS TO COMMON WRITING MISTAKES
Bob Mayer
Who Dares Wins Publishing
Nonfiction, Writing
*** (Okay)


DESCRIPTION: A successful author offers some advice for dealing with the many pitfalls and problems between writers and their dreams.
A Kindle-exclusive title.

REVIEW: As indicated by the title, Mayer tackles 102 issues that trip up newcomers (and some more seasoned authors, from time to time.) Overall, his advice seems sensible and sound, backed by his own experiences and those of others. A few of his mistakes seemed to overlap, and might have been condensed. The problem that cost it a star in the ratings, though, was the formatting. Misplaced paragraph breaks split sentences in half, while elsewhere sections ran together without eye-friendly hard return spaces between them. There were also several spots where the author intended to cross-link to other mistakes/solutions, yet apparently never got around to actually adding them, leaving generic "??" tags in the text. Also, writing the title in all-caps makes me feel like I'm being yelled at; I know the author has a military background, but I didn't expect a drill sergeant to be shouting writing advice at me. In addition to making this eBook look unpolished, these formatting errors run counter to his own advice on being sure to properly format your work. Aside from that, it's not a bad little read. I just found myself getting too distracted by the poor presentation.

You Might Also Enjoy:
The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them) (Jack M. Bickham) - My Review
Slow Your Prose (James W. Lewis) - My Review
Writing the Breakout Novel (Donald Maass) - My Review

No comments:

Post a Comment