
On Becoming a Novelist
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Narrated by:
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Anthony Haden Salerno
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By:
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John Gardner
About this listen
On Becoming a Novelist contains the wisdom accumulated during John Gardner's distinguished twenty-year career as a fiction writer and creative writing teacher. With elegance, humor, and sophistication, Gardner describes the life of a working novelist; warns what needs to be guarded against, both from within the writer and from without; and predicts what the writer can reasonably expect and what, in general, he or she cannot. "For a certain kind of person," Gardner writes, "nothing is more joyful or satisfying than the life of a novelist." But no other vocation, he is quick to add, is so fraught with professional and spiritual difficulties. Whether discussing the supposed value of writer's workshops, explaining the role of the novelist's agent and editor, or railing against the seductive fruits of literary elitism, On Becoming a Novelist is an indispensable, life-affirming audiobook for anyone authentically called to the profession.
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No one comes out of a movie talking about structure. What audiences love and remember about a movie are great scenes. Marlon Brando in the back seat in On the Waterfront giving his "I could'a been a contender" speech. Meg Ryan's fake orgasm in Katz's Deli in When Harry Met Sally with the climactic punch line: "I'll have what she's having." In Superbad, Jonah Hill professing "I love you" to his friend Michael Cera by touching his nose with a "boop".
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Abridged and censored- not the full book!
- By Jonathan on 10-02-20
By: Jim Mercurio
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Elements of Fiction
- By: Walter Mosley
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 2 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In his essential writing guide, This Year You Write Your Novel, Walter Mosley supplied aspiring writers with the basic tools to write a novel in one year. In this complementary follow up, Mosley guides the writer through the elements of not just any fiction writing, but the kind of writing that transcends convention and truly stands out. How does one approach the genius of writers like Melville, Dickens, or Twain? In Elements of Fiction, Walter Mosley contemplates the answer.
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An organic way of storytelling
- By Amazon Customer on 12-18-19
By: Walter Mosley
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The Seven Basic Plots
- Why We Tell Stories
- By: Christopher Booker
- Narrated by: Liam Gerrard
- Length: 38 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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This remarkable and monumental book at last provides a comprehensive answer to the age-old riddle of whether there are only a small number of "basic stories" in the world. Using a wealth of examples, from ancient myths and folk tales via the plays and novels of great literature to the popular movies and TV soap operas of today, it reveals that there are seven archetypal themes which recur throughout every kind of storytelling.
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Save your time and money, the book is worthless
- By Kindle Customer on 08-20-20
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Write Great Scenes
- Master Techniques to Create Scenes That Keep Readers Enthralled
- By: Meg Leader
- Narrated by: Virtual Voice
- Length: 1 hr and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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DO YOU want readers to find your stories un-put-downable?DO YOU want to create stories readers love? WRITE GREAT SCENES gives you a key set of tools to becoming a writer whose works readers can't stop reading. The most fundamental building block of any novel isn't the character or the plot or anything except the scenes. If you learn how to write great scenes you'll be well on your way to creating novels readers can't put down. This book breaks down what makes a great scene, the four critical elements every great scene needs, and provides you with an entire toolkit of Page-Turner Techniques ...
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Perfect solutions to what I needed.
- By Liz E. Sanders on 04-12-25
By: Meg Leader
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On Writers & Writing
- By: John Gardner, Stewart O'Nan - Edited by
- Narrated by: Graham Rowat
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In this posthumously published collection of his essays and reviews, acclaimed novelist John Gardner discusses the craft of fiction writing, taking to task some of his best-known contemporaries in the process.
By: John Gardner, and others
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Words Are My Matter
- Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016, with a Journal of a Writer’s Week
- By: Ursula K. Le Guin
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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A must-listen collection, Words Are My Matter is a manual for investigating the depth and breadth of contemporary fiction - and, through the lens of deep considerations of contemporary writing, a way of exploring the world we are all living in. "We need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximize corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship."
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One of Le Guin's best collections
- By Cameron on 05-11-19
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Telling Lies for Fun and Profit
- A Manual for Fiction Writers
- By: Lawrence Block
- Narrated by: Lawrence Block
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Lawrence Block is a best-selling author of popular mystery fiction. With over 30 of his works in print, he is as prolific as he is skilled. This collection of essays and articlesfrom his Writer’s Digest columns has been in print for over 20 years. Here he provides invaluable advice to the aspiring writer and the established author. Featuring a witty and honest narration from the author himself, Block presents an illuminating look into the world of the professional writer.
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inspirational
- By Victoria Evangelina on 02-27-13
By: Lawrence Block
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The Writer's Practice
- Building Confidence in Your Nonfiction Writing
- By: John Warner
- Narrated by: Gary Bennett
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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After a decade of teaching writing using the same methods he'd experienced as a student many years before, writer, editor, and educator John Warner realized he could do better. Drawing on his classroom experience and the most persuasive research in contemporary composition studies, he devised an innovative new framework: a step-by-step method that moves the student through a series of writing problems, an organic, bottom-up writing process that exposes and acculturates them to the ways writers work in the world.
By: John Warner
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Write The Damn Book!
- Steps For Overcoming Your Fear Of Writing
- By: Stefanie Newell
- Narrated by: Virtual Voice
- Length: 1 hr and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Soothe your inner critic and start writing. So, you want to write a book... Maybe being a published author is your lifelong dream. Or maybe you’ve recently been inspired to put pen to paper (or fingers to your keyboard). But when it comes time to sit down and actually do the writing, you freeze. What if my idea isn’t any good? What if I’m a terrible writer? What if no one wants to read what I put out there? What if I get nothing but one-star reviews on Amazon? And just like that, the notebook is closed, and writing a book is nothing more than a distant fantasy. Sound familiar? Well, ...
By: Stefanie Newell
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Help! For Writers
- 210 Solutions to the Problems Every Writer Faces
- By: Roy Peter Clark
- Narrated by: Roy Peter Clark
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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The craft of writing offers countless potential problems: The story is too long; the story's too short; revising presents a huge hurdle; writer's block is rearing its ugly head. In Help! For Writers, Roy Peter Clark presents an "owner's manual" for writers, outlining the seven steps of the writing process, and addressing the 21 most urgent problems that writers face. In his trademark engaging and entertaining style, Clark offers 10 short solutions to each problem.
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Good advice, but novelists beware
- By Robert Jason on 06-17-20
By: Roy Peter Clark
What listeners say about On Becoming a Novelist
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- mahoneko
- 06-06-15
Great book, slightly irritating narration.
Actual text is excellent of course. Narrator had a very irritating voice, but admittedly did a competent job.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Joshua
- 03-10-15
Entertaining Mixture Of Insight And Opinion
The thing that makes this book so much fun to listen to is also it's greatest flaw: John Gardner was a something of crank. I found myself cycling between thoughts of "Brilliant!" and "Oh, John..." He comes up with such gems as: "It's a law of the universe that eighty-seven percent of all people in all professions are incompetent." "Fools, maniacs, and jabberers are everywhere." and "One should fight like the devil the temptation to think well of editors." Anthony Haden Salerno is pitch perfect in his reading; he gets Gardner's snarky, self-assured tone exactly right. I can't imagine how anyone else could have done it better.
The book itself isn't a writing manual so much as Gardner's thoughts on what makes a writer. What personalities are suited for it, what the aspiring writer will need, how the aspiring writer can get what he or she needs, etc.. Despite his tone and his probably outdated advice on writing classes and publishing, I feel he makes a lot of good points. I don't think that most people would object to the idea that deep art rarely comes from superficial people, or that going into the craft with certain motivations can lead to disappointment. Some of his ideas are strange, and his standards are quite high, but I thought the book overall had an encouraging message. If the reader is seriously inclined to writing, Gardner suggests they give it a shot. As he says: "More people fail at becoming successful businessmen, than fail at becoming artists."
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2 people found this helpful
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- Marlene Woods
- 12-12-24
The truths we want and don’t want go hear as writers.
These truths will either make you quit or push forward until you achieve your goal.
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- Joel Jenkins
- 08-15-17
Compelling
Gardner has a dry and engaging humor. Most writers will find at least some of his opinions offensive even while wholeheartedly agreeing with others.
I'm not certain why I find Gardener's books on writing so compelling even while being somewhat ambivalent toward his actual novels.
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1 person found this helpful
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- S. Cambria Engstrom
- 02-03-21
insightful and engaging
it is truly a pleasure to listen to John Gardner and his pieces his incorporation of humor while imbuing wisdom and knowledge on the young writer is truly a gift in and of itself.
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- Beachy Booky
- 08-18-15
Too intellectual for my pea brain
Would you try another book from John Gardner and/or Anthony Haden Salerno?
I'm sure there's gold in there somewhere, but after three hours of existential meanderings about 'the novelist' as if he were a unique species - a person who allegedly and oft-times turned out to be a people hating misogynists with bad cases of verbal diarrhea, or more unforgivably, word and language obsessed and thus non-connected with the human race and deemed incapable of grasping the essence of a character, blah, blah, blah.... YAWN. The book reads as a professorial diatribe - a slippery exploration of the meaning of becoming a novelist.The elitist intellectual snobbery and constant jabs at the inadequacy and wrongness of woman's writing (mentioned women's magazines, but the sub-text was a slap on romance - IMHO,) I couldn't take anymore. After three hours of this - I quit listening. Sorry Professor Gardner, I'm dropping your boring class.
What about Anthony Haden Salerno’s performance did you like?
Any additional comments?
Narrator: excellent.
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- Tyner Gillies
- 04-28-23
Not great
My biggest problem with the book was Gardners hypocrisy. He speaks numerous times about how a person who does certain things is a snob, but constantly speaks poorly of commercial fiction (unless it was Bradbury or Heinlein).
He also descibed bees as "nasty". I cannot trust someone who hates bees.
This book may have been relevant when it was written, but currently it has little bearing on the publishing industry.
This title can be skipped.
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- Eleanor
- 01-14-14
John Gardner on Becoming John Gardner
What would have made On Becoming a Novelist better?
This book (like its author) is very much the product of one particular epoch in literary fiction. There may be some helpful information for the aspiring author in it, if she is equipped to stomach the author's narrow, sexist, and dated opinions on the nature of good fiction. None of its useful bits are so original, however, that a reader couldn't gather them from Stephen King or Sol Stein's much more palatable books on this subject. Die-hard Gardner fans will appreciate this book, but for anyone looking for advice on how to weather the literary climate of this century, I'd recommend picking something else.
What do you think your next listen will be?
The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World.
What about Anthony Haden Salerno’s performance did you like?
Anthony Haden Salerno made this a delightful hate-listen, as the subtle edge in his voice while he read the author's reductive and pretentious diatribes on True Writers Who Suffer and Why Most Fiction is Useless Tripe Written By Cowards made me wonder if the narrator shared my opinion that Gardner was totally that pompous college professor who tries to get into the pants of his clever female students by negging on their short stories.
What character would you cut from On Becoming a Novelist?
John Gardner.
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2 people found this helpful