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A review by lkmreads
90 Days to Your Novel: A Day-By-Day Plan for Outlining & Writing Your Book by Sarah Domet
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
3.75
This is a bit of a difficult book to rate.
On the one hand, I really liked that it was set up as a step-by-step, day-by-day guide. She does go over a few different types of outlining methods and encourages you to find the one that works best for you. She also gives you pros and cons for each. The advice is interesting and the exercises provided can be very useful, even if they're fairly typical of writing prompts or writing classes.
If you know nothing about writing, have no ideas on what to write, etc, this would likely be a 5-star for you.
On the other hand, though she goes through several types of outlining, including some that aren't as in depth, her books tosses you into a day by day in-depth outline making journey and provides no examples for anything less. As such, almost a whole month is taking by the outlining alone.
Also, the exercises suggested imply you have no ideas of your own to work with.
There is nothing I detest more than to be told "Write a memory from your childhood." Look, unless my childhood memory involves elves and vampires (spoilers: it doesn't, unless you count watching Interview With the Vampire or reading LOTR), I don't really care to write about it in any way, shape or form.
Could you adapt that to your own ideas? Yes, probably. But it would take a lot of tweaking as the following exercises build up on the previous ones.
So, overall, I think it's a great book; but sadly, it ended up not seeming very useful to me in particular beyond random bits of advice here and there.
On the one hand, I really liked that it was set up as a step-by-step, day-by-day guide. She does go over a few different types of outlining methods and encourages you to find the one that works best for you. She also gives you pros and cons for each. The advice is interesting and the exercises provided can be very useful, even if they're fairly typical of writing prompts or writing classes.
If you know nothing about writing, have no ideas on what to write, etc, this would likely be a 5-star for you.
On the other hand, though she goes through several types of outlining, including some that aren't as in depth, her books tosses you into a day by day in-depth outline making journey and provides no examples for anything less. As such, almost a whole month is taking by the outlining alone.
Also, the exercises suggested imply you have no ideas of your own to work with.
There is nothing I detest more than to be told "Write a memory from your childhood." Look, unless my childhood memory involves elves and vampires (spoilers: it doesn't, unless you count watching Interview With the Vampire or reading LOTR), I don't really care to write about it in any way, shape or form.
Could you adapt that to your own ideas? Yes, probably. But it would take a lot of tweaking as the following exercises build up on the previous ones.
So, overall, I think it's a great book; but sadly, it ended up not seeming very useful to me in particular beyond random bits of advice here and there.