The Insecure Writer's Support Group Book Club discussion

Did you post a review for Method Acting for Writers on Goodreads? Go ahead and copy your review and paste it here in a comment so we can all read it. :)

You can also share any thoughts you had about the book here or just tell us what star-rating you would give it.

I suspect this review might have triggered something ;-) but here's the link: https://rolandclarke.com/2018/10/25/m...

This was an excellent how-to guide about "digging deeper" to write prose that fosters a tight connection with readers and plucks their emotional strings like well-tuned fiddles. Exactly what every writer wants, right?

The author points out some of the ways writers inadvertently create a distance between readers and the story... by doing things like insinuating their own voices where they don't belong or dropping unnecessary info bombs right in the middle of the action. (You know... that stuff most readers skim read.) She also served up some particularly good food for thought regarding the use of taglines vs. "beats." I've always been more of a "beat" writer, or at least, that's what I thought I was... but as it turns out, it seems that some of my beats are more like stage directions. (oops!) I definitely need to read that section again...

All-in-all, I think this is a book that can benefit any writer, and it's also one I plan to read again... to better absorb some of the ideas that I may have missed the first time around. My only beef, and this is kinda stupid... is the author uses the pronoun "they" when referring to a single individual, and she does it multiple times. I realize times have changed, and using a plural pronoun in this manner has become "acceptable" in some writing circles, but to me, it's worse than fingernails screeching across the blackboard. For that admittedly petty reason, I give this book 4 1/2 stars.