Solutions for Novelists: Secrets of a Master Editor

Front Cover
Souvenir, 2000 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 202 pages
In ths book, Sol Stein, one of the greatest editors of our time, offers help on the most important recurrent problems novelists encounter when learning their craft. With numerous examples from the work of both established bestselling authors and talented newcomers, combined with detailed analysis, he reveals the secrets that can lift a piece of creative writing and give it that spell-binding quality that holds the reader enthralled. The need to give the reader a unique experience, the necessity for conflict between characters, the importance of instant attraction, what makes a character compelling and a plot gripping; why dialogue should never mimic spoken conversation and how misplaced or unnecessary words can slow down the narrative - all this and more is conveyed in this entertaining yet practical book that provides all the benefits of an individual tutorial.

About the author (2000)

Sol Stein is a Chicago-born transplant to the Bronx. In the 1950's he was an anti-Communist scriptwriter for the Voice of America, Washington¿s Cold War propaganda radio network, and a leading defender of civil liberties. But he made his lasting mark in publishing. In 1962 he and his wife at the time, Patricia Day, founded the publishing house Stein and Day, which had immediate success that year with the director Elia Kazan¿s debut book, America, America. The story of a Greek youth who comes to the United States, the book sold three million copies, and Mr. Kazan turned it into a movie, released the next year. Mr. Stein was Stein and Day¿s editor in chief. In one of the many books Mr. Stein himself wrote, Bankruptcy: A Feast for Lawyers (1989), he exposed the bureaucratic nightmare that had accompanied the financial implosion of Stein and Day after 27 years in business. Solomon Stein was born in Chicago on Oct. 13, 1926, to Louis and Zelda (Zam) Stein, Jewish immigrants who fled Russia. His mother became a translator for the United Nations. His father was a jewelry designer. The family moved to the North Bronx in 1930. Mr. Stein went on to enroll at City College, but his studies there were interrupted when he enlisted in the Army Air Forces in 1944. He voluntarily transferred to the infantry and served in Germany during the post-World War II occupation. After returning from military service, he completed his bachelor of social science degree and earned a master¿s in English and comparative literature at Columbia. Besides working as an anti-Communist scriptwriter for the Voice of America, Mr. Stein was a member of its ideological advisory staff starting in the early 1950s. The journalist Robert Scheer, who was editor of the left-leaning Ramparts magazine in the late 1960s, branded him The Archdeacon of the Cold War. Sol Sttein passed away on September 26, 2019 at the age of 92.

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