I, like many of my peers, approached Franklin's book with much skepticism, as having had read many similar types of guidebooks to only be left disappointed and, frankly, annoyed. With the exception of William Zinsser’s, On Writing Well, I find these guidebooks to be more contradictory of each other, and thus more confusing for me to establish a comprehensive approach to writing, than helpful and enlightening. Sadly, Franklin’s guidebook, at least for me, falls under the category of useless.
Outside of grammar, I believe that trying to teach someone how to write well, in one singular approach, is almost an impossible task – there are just too many legitimate approaches to creating a “good” piece of writing. My issue with Franklin – besides the issue that befalls many of these established writers who, in their infinite wisdom, decide to write self-ego-stroking guidebooks – is that he loses me too many times with his grandiose analogies and convoluted methods/definitions.
This is really apparent in Chapter 5: Structure, where the reader must wade through Franklin’s physics analogy and then try to decipher all of the “focuses”, “sub-focuses”, “sub-sub-focuses”, etc. I found myself skipping over this section as it was becoming too hard for me to follow without taking detailed notes – which I wasn’t going to do because of my already stated predisposition towards these types of books.
Franklin does have some, albeit very few, pieces of advice throughout his book – like when he talks about developing a story over always choosing the right words – but for the most part it is a book I could do without.
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John, I had a very different reaction to reading Franklin's book than you did. However, I have not read a lot of "how to" guides, and the ones that I have, I thought were useful. That being said, you are right about the author; he was kind of ego-stroking. There is no end all "rule" for creative writing, and I think often times people (I am obviously including myself in this generalization), crave for such a guide. However, every author has a different approach to writing. There is no universal law, thank you for reminding me of this (I think I referred to Writing For Story as a bible in my review?). That being said, I do think there is something universal in outlining and organization when writing. Franklin provides a fairly good approach to doing this (albeit not the only approach), and I do think the importance of structure is crucial to any form of creative writing.
ReplyDeleteFranklin is egotistical. At the same time, he is an accomplished writer. I haven't read many "how to" books either, but I did appreciate Franklin's attempt.
ReplyDeleteAs for universal laws, there have to be a few... maybe(?). I liked Franklin's comments on conflict - how story needs conflict, and consequently resolution. I feel conflict is necessary to story. Perhaps this is a universal law... maybe. Seems like there are a lot of maybes in this situation.