Book In a Month: The Fool-Proof System for Writing a Novel in 30 Days

by Victoria Lynn Schmidt

What can you accomplish in 30 days?

If you make time to write and put away all of your excuses, could you stay on track and finish your novel in only a month? With a structured plan and a focused goal, yes, you can!

Using a combination of flexible weekly schedules, clear instruction, and detailed worksheets, author Victoria Schmidt leads you through a proven 30-day novel-writing system without the intimidation factor. Book in a Month shows you how

   • Set realistic goals and monitor your progress
   • Manage your time so that your writing life has room to flourish
   • Select a story topic that will continue to inspire you throughout the writing process
   • Quickly outline your entire story so that you have a clear idea of how your plot and characters are going to develop before you start writing
   • Draft each act of your story by focusing on specific turning points
   • Keep track of the areas you want to revise without losing your momentum in the middle of your story
   • Relax and have fun--you are, after all, doing something you love
So what are you waiting for? If you've been putting off your book project, let Book in a Month be your guide and find out just how much you can accomplish!

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Reference, How To, Education, Research

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 28, 2008

Reviews

[Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

To be honest, I'm not sure how helpful "Book in a Month" would be if a writer follows it down to the teeth. Speaking from experience, I didn't follow it strictly on the day to day activities it prompted me to do. I would often do two to three days worth of plotting/planning from the book in one single day, just in 20 minute bites of time. And noting that Schmidt relies on three act structure (which some of my stories do not follow) that might be something worth noting for people who may or may not use that particular form.

I used this as a loose guide during this year's (2011) NaNoWriMo, but I finished in 15-16 days versus the usual 30. I'm something of an odd combination of an outliner and discovery writer, so I empathize with writers of both methodologies. I wouldn't suggest anyone getting bogged down to fill out all of the worksheets provided in this guide (though if you're that kind of writer, go for it - just as long as you remember that you still have to write!). It provides a lot of structure, and that might be good for those who need it as beginning writers, but for those who are a bit beyond that, I don't know if it is the best form to follow, because there are times when you might be tempted to break through the pattern and mold it to your own. It's helpful though, and I will likely return to it for reference, but I think there are other guides that cover the details better for writers of all walks.

[Suzanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

If Chris Baty's No Plot? No Problem! is for budding "pantsers," I'd say this book is decent for budding outliners looking to speed through a first draft. Schmidt offers a crash course in three-act structure as part of her plan, and the print version of the book is actually a spiral workbook for you to fill out as you develop your story. (She encourages you to buy a new copy of the book for every book you write. Heh heh... of course.)

I think I might have found this book very appealing during my early days of NaNoWriMo, but since then, I've discovered that 1) I'm not an outliner, and 2) I really don't like my output when I write that fast. She also sells this as a system in which you can skip nothing and that's not very appealing either, especially on the heels of Bell's more modular Plot & Structure (which is overkill for someone doing their first NaNo, I suspect, but it depends on what you're looking for).

I think she oversells the final product from her program, too. One piece of advice, for example, is "Watch the length of your sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. Use the white space on the page to your advantage." Maybe during revisions, but this sounds like a waste of time during the first draft. Even if you're working from an outline, you're going to end up making text adjustments in the final version once all your plot points are where you need them to be. Plus, I wouldn't just start adjusting the lengths of the sentences, etc. It's better to scrutinize why blocks of text look the way they do if they appear daunting or are ruining pacing. Was there an excessively long descriptive passage? A backstory info dump? Simply adding more paragraph breaks to things like that are not going to fix the real problem. This advice felt very superficial to me.

She also suggests a check during the third week to make sure you've hit on all the critical elements of whatever genre you're writing. "After all, you do not want to be in the romance section if your book doesn't have much romance in it. You will lose all your readers." Talk about jumping the gun. There are a LOT of revisions to be done before the book will see the shelf (unless you self-publish without revising, god forbid). And who's to say that the romance you set out to write might not turn into a great mystery instead? Would you be packing in the love scenes just to get your book shelved in a different place? I doubt it. Cross-genre books are very popular, plus shelving is not something you can personally control anyway.

So, although I think this book isn't bad for a beginning outliner, I'd think critically about what she's asking you to do. Some of it doesn't make sense and isn't necessarily going to help you move forward. Some of it feels like busy work. Maybe the biggest reason to buy this book is if the workbook/daily homework aspect appeals to you, because you can get outlining methods and info on the three-act structure in lots of other books.

If you're just looking to enhance your productivity, I highly recommend Rachel Aaron's 2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love instead. It's my favorite of any of the write-like-the-wind books out there and it's adaptable to whatever your writing style might be, whether you work from an outline or fly by the seat of your pants. You could certainly use it to try to complete a first draft in a month, too.

[Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I personally believe that to write a book in 30 days borders on insanity, I enjoy reading the different methodologies for accomplishing this Herculean feat. Of all the books I've perused, this one remains my favorite.

Schmidt's approach requires a systematic way of approaching one's writing. As you move through her book, you fill out various forms (which you can download off of the Writer's Digest website) to create a template for your novel. She explains there reason behind each template and how the results will apply to your writing.

Being a bit of a form junky, I found myself thoroughly enjoying filling out the template when I worked on my first project. I also found that the templates made me view my story from a deeper perspective and revealed the flaws behind some of my writing ideas.

Every writer has a different way of approaching their writing and I recommend this book for any beginner.

[J.P. Barnaby · Rating 3 out of 5]

It wasn't a bad book - it gave a few good pointers on finishing a novel within 30 days. The worksheets are interesting, but it drives the potential author into a formulaic approach to writing. Also, it may be a good resource for new authors, but I didn't gain much value from the daily exercises.

[Glenn Guillory · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a workbook. It has explanation of a system of structuring and then writing a novel in 30 days that really works.

Of the five publications (books) I've had published, I wrote all five on this system of novel building, writing, and revising.

In every case, with no exception, the novels I've written using this book (workbook) ALL WERE PUBLISHED FROM THIS FIRST DRAFT I GENERATED USING BIAM.

BIAM, Book In A Month: Day 1, 2, 3, ...30, are begun with a brief two or three pages of instruction, usually a form or two to fill out with such things as characters, settings, scenes, outline of scenes, and plotting. It features a novel development that is divided into three parts, similar to a three act play. The rise and fall of action and the climax are all eased out of your mind onto the paper in a studied and practical manner.

The books I wrote in 30 days (also used Ywriter5 as my computer word processing structurally helpful program). I submitted the exact draft that came out in the 30 days and in each of the five novels my FIRST DRAFT was what the editor/publisher accepts as a completed novel. I am serious, I had a few typos, and some minor adjustments in language and voice, but basically this method produced a publication ready novel every time for me in a month.

I am enthusiastic about this workbook. I. Have used about twenty of them. I buy them for about 2 or 3 bucks on abebooks.com unused, rather than on Amazon or similar sites for 14 bucks or so. These used copies come in mint or near mint condition, all the forms empty and no markings in these books. I am available to give hints on how to use this book. I would enjoy the dialogue. Just let me know if you need help writing a novel. This is my hoppy -- helping writers -- so ask and it is yours.

If you want to publish a novel, this is an essential beginning resource, and it works. I published as Jacob Campbell, and although some are no longer in print, you can get my books on abebook.com too.

Five stars for sure, actually ten stars!

[Auggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Totally loved this book.

I'm normally very wary about books on writing. I've picked up a few out of curiosity and have ended up with an overwhelming desire to tear their pages out and flush them down the toilet, or set them on fire,
all while screaming "Don't tell me what to do!"

I'm definitely one of the ones who feels like very "structured" classes on writing take away from the creative process. I don't like being told HOW to do things. This is probably a character flaw of mine. I'm working on it (No I'm not). Anyway, this book takes the "suggestion" angle. The author is not telling you HOW to do anything. Instead she's offering you options and wisdom about what's worked for her and other writers.

It's very much a book that is saying "Just do this and see what happens!".

So, I guess what I'm saying is that the tone of this particular book is very chill and friendly. It's encouraging and leaves room for you to do exactly what you need to do to write your first draft, even if it doesn't fit entirely in with her worksheets and suggestions.

Here is a teacher who is giving you the freedom to have a personal and enjoyable experience that isn't full of stringent rules and very black and white boundaries. It's like the Montessori of writing reference books.

Highly recommend.

[Bernadette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. This book has actually been a quite useful time management tool for writing fiction, and I'm only 2/3 of the way through it. Great for those prone to procrastination and in need of encouragement. I managed to complete a 54 page rough draft in a month and a half.

[Chad Schimke · Rating 5 out of 5]

BOOK IN A MONTH - Book in a Month by Victoria Lynn Schmidt is an excellent tool for writers. Out of the several dozen books I have on writing craft and promotion; it’s got to be one of the best. Why? All of the ideas aren’t necessarily new (examples – hero vs. villain; plot/ subplot; three act structure; short story arc; draft, edit and revise). What’s great about it: take your novel idea off the procrastination shelf, open this toolkit and sit down. Complete your first draft. No excuses! What’s included: goal setting, tracking time and research, focus on plot or character along with excellent reproducible worksheets. There’s something to be said about getting your butt in the chair. Do it for long enough to practice storytelling, integrate fiction mechanics, devote sufficient time, let the story unfold and establish a consistent routine. I really believe that once the schema is established, the spark of creativity will follow.

[Rebecca Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. I've written about three novels. Though some people might find it formulaic, I've got a good deal out of the structure. You can also pick and choose which exercises you'd like to do, but the great part about the book is that you WILL write that novel you've been putting off!

[Demetri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Victoria Lynn Schmidt’s “Book in a Month” arrives wearing the blunt smile of someone who has watched a roomful of talented people talk themselves out of finishing. It is, in the way of certain effective coaches, uninterested in your reasons. It does not ask whether your life is busy, whether you are tired, whether the book you want to write is “worth it,” whether your childhood teachers praised your imagery, whether your sentences sing. It assumes you have a story and a tendency to postpone it. Then it builds a small, sturdy machine designed for one purpose: getting you to “The End.”

That machine runs on a handful of fuel sources the literary imagination sometimes pretends to disdain: time blocks, lowered standards, accountability, and the unglamorous insistence that you can write even when you do not feel like writing. Schmidt’s premise is not that genius can be scheduled, but that work can. In a culture that still romanticizes the author as a solitary lightning rod, “Book in a Month” is almost cheerfully heretical. It treats writing less like divination and more like carpentry: measure, cut, assemble, keep moving.

The book’s opening pages do the necessary demolition. Many aspiring novelists are not short on ideas; they are short on permission, and Schmidt supplies it in the form of an argument: the first draft is not the novel. The first draft is the raw material that makes a novel possible. Confuse drafting with polishing, and you are guaranteed to stall. Confuse a day’s imperfect pages with your identity as a writer, and you will stop to protect yourself. Schmidt keeps returning to this point, not because she is in love with repetition for its own sake, but because she understands the nervous system of the blocked writer. The mind seeks relief. It will seize any plausible justification to exit the room. “Book in a Month” is, at heart, a book about staying in the room.

It is also, plainly, a book about speed. Not speed as bravado, not speed as a fetish, but speed as a psychological tactic. The faster you draft, the less time you have to audition your anxieties. A hurried sentence may be ugly, but it is alive. A pristine paragraph revised endlessly inside an unfinished manuscript is, in Schmidt’s view, a sophisticated form of hiding. The month, as she frames it, is not a dare so much as a container. Containers are underrated in the arts. They are what let the formless become form.

Schmidt organizes her method around five “secrets,” a word that suggests a wink, but the content is largely the opposite of mysterious. The secrets are principles you would recognize if you have ever tried to change any habit and discovered that willpower, unstructured, evaporates.

First: structure. Not necessarily an outline with color-coded plot points, but enough scaffolding to prevent the story from dissolving into possibility. Schmidt knows that many writers mistake freedom for infinity. In practice, infinity is paralyzing. A framework gives the imagination something to push against. It creates the productive friction out of which scenes can emerge.

Second: short, regular writing sessions. She is suspicious of the mythic Saturday when you will finally have six uninterrupted hours and the muse will show up with coffee. The book makes a quieter claim: most lives can sustain repeated small commitments, and repeated small commitments change you. The month is won less by heroic weekends than by daily contact with the work. If you treat writing as a rare ceremony, you will spend most of your time preparing for it. Schmidt prefers the ordinary.

Third: draft now, edit later. The distinction is the book’s moral center. Drafting is generative, permissive, forward. Editing is evaluative, selective, corrective. Schmidt argues that a writer who edits while drafting is forcing the brain to do two incompatible jobs in the same moment. The result is not higher quality but lower output and higher shame. She is not anti-craft; she is anti-craft-at-the-wrong-time.

Fourth: lower standards. This is the section that will either feel like liberation or like heresy, depending on how much of your self-worth is tied to being “good” on the first try. Schmidt’s lowering is temporary, strategic, and oddly compassionate. She is asking you to stop judging pages that were never meant to be final pages. The book suggests that standards are not abandoned in the month; they are deferred. The month is a season for production, not refinement.

Fifth: accountability. The book’s tone shifts here into something almost sociological. Schmidt recognizes that human beings keep promises to others more reliably than promises to themselves, and she encourages you to harness that fact rather than resent it. Tell someone. Track the work. Mark the days. Create a witness, even if the witness is a spreadsheet and a wall calendar. The book is fond of externalizing intention because it knows that internal vows are easily revised.

These principles are, in themselves, not revolutionary. Their power lies in Schmidt’s insistence that you implement them without negotiating every step. “Book in a Month” is less interested in your philosophy of writing than in your behavior. It is a behavioral book dressed in a writing book’s clothing. And the craft world, for all its talk of discipline, is full of people who would rather debate process than submit to one.

The third section, on time management, is where Schmidt’s pragmatism becomes most bracing. She dismantles the excuse of “no time” by treating time as a design problem. If you keep waiting for time to appear, you will live forever in the lobby of your own project. Schmidt advocates claiming small windows, stacking them, defending them. She does not imagine you quitting your job or fleeing your obligations. She imagines you rearranging your day the way a serious person rearranges furniture before a guest arrives. Your book is the guest. Make room.

What is striking is how much of this guidance is, quietly, about dignity. Writers often treat their writing time as disposable. They will protect a meeting, protect a favor, protect a commute ritual, protect an evening scroll, and then say they “couldn’t” write. Schmidt is not cruel about this, but she is firm. If writing matters, behave as if it matters. Put it on the calendar. Keep the appointment. Return when you miss. Do not dramatize the lapse. Resume.

Then comes resistance, a word that names the shadow companion of every creative endeavor. Schmidt’s resistance is not the glamorous sort, not the artist’s noble torment. It is the mundane resistance of laundry, research binges, sudden convictions that you must rebuild your protagonist’s backstory from scratch. She catalogs the disguises resistance wears, and in doing so she performs a small act of exorcism. Once named, these behaviors lose their mystical authority. They are no longer fate. They are patterns.

The most useful insight here is that resistance intensifies not when you are failing, but when you are progressing. The mind resists change even when the change is desired. A draft is a change. A finished manuscript is a change. Completion alters the story you tell yourself about who you are. It removes the safe fantasy of the unwritten masterpiece and replaces it with a real thing that can be judged. Resistance, in that light, is self-protection. Schmidt does not ask you to stop protecting yourself. She asks you to stop obeying the protective impulse.

There is, throughout, a particular voice: directive, encouraging, occasionally blunt, built for action. It is the voice of someone who has seen the same traps over and over and has decided that kindness sometimes looks like specificity. The book’s language is not ornate, and that is part of its function. Ornament invites admiration; Schmidt is aiming for compliance. You can feel the workbook logic in the prose: clear steps, quick reframes, manageable tasks. It wants to be used, not quoted.

And yet, a reader approaching “Book in a Month” with the sensibility of a literary critic may find themselves wanting more. Not more pep, but more craft. The book’s focus is drafting volume, not sentence-level artistry. It does not linger over scene architecture, voice, rhythm, or the delicate moral engineering of character. It rarely addresses the questions that haunt the ambitious novelist at 2 a.m.: What makes a scene inevitable? How does language become pressure? What is the difference between sincerity and sentimentality? How do you revise without murdering the original pulse?

Schmidt’s answer, implied rather than argued, is that those questions belong after you have a draft. This is reasonable. It is also limiting. A month-long drafting sprint can produce a manuscript, but it cannot guarantee that the manuscript contains the spark that will survive revision. Some writers, especially those with a strong inner ear, may find the book’s emphasis on speed risks flattening their prose into functional reportage. Others will discover that speed, paradoxically, releases their voice by silencing the censor. The method, like most methods, is a mirror: it amplifies what is already in you.

There is also the matter of repetition. Schmidt repeats because she is training. But training can feel, to the already-trained, like padding. The reader who has internalized the separation of drafting and editing may find themselves skimming. The reader who has never internalized it may need the repetition the way a new runner needs the same route until the body stops arguing. This is not a flaw so much as a sign of the book’s target: the stuck writer, not the seasoned stylist.

What “Book in a Month” does superbly is remove the false drama from writing. It insists that you can write on days when your mind insists you cannot. It argues that imperfect pages are the entrance fee to later excellence. It encourages you to treat yourself like a person worth scheduling. And it is honest about the emotional weather of drafting: the midpoint panic, the impulse to start over, the fear that the idea is collapsing. Schmidt does not promise that you will feel confident. She promises that you can proceed without confidence.

In the end, the book’s value depends on what you are asking it to be. If you want a manual for finishing a first draft, it is a strong one. If you want a comprehensive education in the art of the novel, it will feel partial. But partial, in this case, is not a weakness. It is a choice. Schmidt has written a book with a single, muscular intention. The book does not pretend to be everything. It wants you to do one thing: finish.

And perhaps that is its most literary lesson, delivered in the plainest language. A novel is not built out of inspiration; it is built out of return. Return to the page. Return after a missed day. Return when the work embarrasses you. Return when you want to flee into planning. Return when the story sags. Return until the draft exists. Only then do you earn the right to be exquisite.

If the measure of a writing guide is whether it changes the reader’s behavior, “Book in a Month” deserves its solid, workmanlike praise – and its limitations. It is not a cathedral. It is scaffolding. I would place it at 71 out of 100, a book that will not teach you to write like a virtuoso, but may very well get you to the place where virtuosity becomes possible: a completed manuscript, waiting to be made true.

[Nik · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book. I own a copy and use it as a reference. It's great at helping you set goals and find plot holes. I learned some great writing techniques to help me get the story flowing.

Still, I feel compelled to mention, not all books can be written in a month. The BIAM process was written and is used by a career fiction writer who writes formulaic books. With that being said, if you are writing a romance novel there are certain rules you must follow.

When you follow all those rules, you can write a first draft in a week really. It's boy meets girl. Boy and girl hate each other. Something happens to make them realize they need each other. Then something happens to make them start to be romantically attracted to each other. Something drives a wedge between them, that they finally work through and then they live happily ever after. Oh, and don't forget the guy has to save the girl in some way.

Any book outside of a set formula, and there are tons of formulas, you need to give yourself some realistic goals, but set some. Even if you fail to meet them, keep showing up to the blank page because eventually you will finish.

I found this book to be extremely helpful, but I didn't finish my book in a month because I wasn't writing a formulaic book. It doesn't make me a failure, in fact, not finishing a book in a month is more normal than finishing one in a month.

Make sure you look up whatever genre you are writing in so you know the rules and reader expectations. It will help tons whenever you are lost.

[Carolyn James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before I start my review, I'll be straight up: I did not end up writing a book successfully in 30 days, BUT! That's no fault of the BIAM system. Knowing how big demands at my work were, I wasn't expecting to finish a full out novel. I have done it in the past with Nanowrimo and it takes a lot of time, which I sadly don't have. Why use this book then? Well, I was hoping it would help me draft a novel idea I had and help me get some words on the paper. With that I'd say I was successful. My biggest fault as a writer is that I start strong and fizzle fast. I can't tell you how many half finished stories I have laying around on my computer, something needed to change!

What I liked about the structure of BIAM was it made me question my choices. It has you map out your plot, but as you read the 30 day section, it makes you write down alternatives to explore other options. I feel that by reading and doing that, I started with a plain jane plot, but ended up making it far more interesting by changing my original ideas. I also tried to write parts from the beginning, middle and end as I read the the 30 day section. It has left me with a novel that has ALOT of spaces to fill in, but I think it's better then having a really strong beginning and hitting a roadblock. In the end I don't think I will try to write a rough novel in 30 days with this system, but I would use it in the same way I just did to help me question plot and lay down the barest of skeleton to a novel idea. I think I got about 5% of my story on paper, but I got a lot to work with!

[Holli · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is decent, but not entirely for me. Parts of it are ones I will snag for my plotting methods, but probably not the book as a whole. I don't like how the author suggests readers buy a new copy of the book for every project. I get where she's coming from, as this will make it a mobile writing system, but it's rather greedy and entirely unnecessary. You can make your own copies of the worksheets with pens, paper, and a notebook/binder (about $5, rather than $15 and up for physical book) and get the same benefit. Or, even download them from the internet for free and print them. Also, the version of this I read was the Kindle format and this was still in it, as well as the stickers you are supposed to use on and in the book. This is entirely lazy of the author to not alter this statement as you can't exactly take a pen to your Kindle book without destroying the screen. Or make use of the stickers either. I also would have liked examples in the book of the worksheets filled out. The way this is done, you are basically told "do this, but you're on your own as to exactly how" with her instructions. While others may not have a problem on this, but I like examples as a semi-guide of what the heck I'm supposed to be doing. One big question I do have: she states she put aside her fiction writing to write her dream nonfiction books; where are those fiction books exactly? I've come across not one iota of them existing anywhere.

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

Has a very good set up to help you develop your novel in just one month. It has lots of exercises for you to do while you are writing your draft to help you get through the process. It will involve a lot of writing that will never end up in the actual book though, so this method may not be for everyone. It would actually probably work very well if you already had a rough draft of your novel and then used the exercises to make sure you're on the right track.

[Kimberly [Come Hither Books] · Rating 4 out of 5]

This gave me everything I needed to tackle (and WIN!) my first Nanowrimo, with a story that has since been developed into a full novel. Worked for me!

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm going to rate this a 4 with the caveat that if I really write a book from 01Mar-30Mar, then I come back and give it a 5, but if I don't... it will lose a star to 3. :P

I was surprised by how much of this book dwelt on self-esteem, and the resistance that writers give themselves in self-sabotage. So... I was impressed. This isn't a tick off the box, you have to write exactly this much daily, it was a take care of yourself, but also realize that you need to take some baby steps before you change your life. Again, refreshingly surprised!

[Toni Suzuki · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was...okay. There were definitely some helpful quotes and snippets to take from here, and I like that the author included worksheets throughout. However, I found the Book in a Month system itself to feel a bit off. Once you get into the day-by-day and week-by-week steps, there's hardly any mention of the actual writing at all, which feels really odd. I'd only recommend this one if you really want your hand held while writing a book and don't mind following a set of pretty prescriptive steps to do so.

[Clare Spelick · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's an excellent book if you have no idea where to start and merely have an inkling of an idea. The work is thorough and includes many worksheets that are ideal for someone that doesn't have what they want to write already planned. That said, if you've already planned out your work and are looking for something to help with the literal writing (not the planning portion), this probably isn't the book for you.

[Sinead · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this book was excellent for those that like to plan out their novels in great detail as they start their novel. The worksheets and prompts were an excellent way to flesh out plot and characters.

[Marie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting and perhaps helpful to some, but it didn't do anything for me.

[Alyssa Mayley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Checked out this book from the library and I loved it so much, I've purchased it for my home collection. Love this book and how it help inspire you to write a book in a month!

[AlleyCatBooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic guide for NaNoWriMo or anytime "you" want to quickly write a comprehensive rough draft.

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are some really helpful nuggets of information in this book. I enjoyed reading it and made lots of notes, which to me is always a good sign that its content is useful.

I then tried to put its advice into practice during NaNoWriMo, and realised that there were a few sections where the author listed actions that you should do on a particular day (or gave headings to fill in on a worksheet) but then didn't actually explain what those activities meant, or suggest any examples. So sometimes it felt like I'd been led down a bit of a dead end.

Having said that though, there were plenty of other sections where the advice was detailed, practical and relevant. As well as advice on how to structure a story, there was also discussion of how to write a good story, and suggestions of basic elements to include in several popular genres. Unfortunately for me, none of these suggestions included sci-fi or fantasy, so if you're writing in those genres then you're on your own.

On the whole though, I got a lot out of the book and enjoyed the ordered, logical 'step by step' feeling it gave me (even though of course that all went out of the window when I was actualy writing). It will definitely be a reference resource that I use again in future.

[LS Schulz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A friend of mine picked this book up and handed it to me to look at after I told her I had read a similar 30 day novel writing book so that I could compare them. There is no direct comparison, though. While they both deal with outlining in some fashion, I think the approach in this book is much more usable, especially to a writer who is new to outlining or who prefers to be a "pantser". And, of course, you really only need to use whichever items make sense for you, even though the daily exercises given do encourage the use of the worksheets provided, so if you are a more advanced outline writer, I think you could still glean some good advice from this book.

I enjoyed the way the sections were laid out by week, and then by day. And each section was full of good tips as well as encouragement to just keep writing and get it done. I am looking forward to using this system on a future project and I'm really glad she loaned it to me, even though that means I need to buy my own copy!

[Robyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an aspiring writer, I have been looking for resources that will help me organize my time and my ideas in order to produce a finished manuscript. I think I have finally found it in this book. While not every single exercise fits my book idea, the overall structure of how to get from the first page to the last page will be very useful.

I was most impressed by the first third of the book that aims to eliminate the resistance that I know I, as a first time novel writer, deal with every day. After reading through this book, I am excited to get started on my own story. I would recommend this book to newbie writers like me who have the desire, but find ourselves sitting a keyboard saying "Now what do I do?"

[Natacha Pavlov · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an easy-to-follow, step by step guide to writing fast, which brings to mind NaNoWriMo and could be used for that purpose. Although it’s designed to be followed as you’re writing, I think it’s just as helpful to read it before the month you decide to write your novel. I did notice that she mentions ‘foreshadowing’ events in your work quite a bit, which I feel can be double-edged sword depending on the kind of writing you want to do. In some ways you may want to drop hints, but I’ve also read books where too much foreshadowing could easily ruin a storyline (so perhaps it’s a good idea to keep an eye on its frequency). Quick read that comes with charts to help you keep track of your progress, characters, etc.

[Book_Club_For_Introverts Rebecca Ryan Long · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really helps to structure you in writing your first book. Lots of cool features. Definitely worth the buy even if you take longer than a month.

[Elizabeth Howe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel that this book will help me with editing or making the outline of a book that I've written to help fix it then it would to actually write it in 30 days. I'm a seat of the pants writer.

second reading: I finished what I was working on faster than the book. Yeah I left it in limbo for a long time and by faster than the time in the book I mean faster than 30 days but I didn't do it in consecutive days. Life and all that. I finished with it months ago but just didn't remember to come on here and do this. I am embarrassed that I didn't stay with it and kind of just flew off the rails and finished the book on my own.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are a Polly Planner, BIAM has a plethora of worksheets to satisfy your obsession. The first portion of the book was full of "you can do it!" platitudes (I bought the book, already. I obviously think I can do it.) The remainder is an exercise extravaganza to brainstorm outlines. Great reminders/advice of what makes a story great from an experienced writer.
PDF's of the worksheets are available online, but thorough explanations are in the book.

[Ms. Nikki · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 Stars
I liked No Plot, No Problem better. This one is not as motivational and the pages you are supposed to write your progress and ideals on are very small. I may or may not use it in the future. This book is for when you're ready to write. You have all three ACTS written out to give you a guideline and you know which genre you are writing in and in which voice you are going to write.