Mastering the Process: From Idea to Novel [1]
The author of two dozen suspense novels leads readers through her writing process, revealing the steps she took to start and finish her 2008 novel, Careless in Red, from conceiving the characters and developing the voice to outlining the plot and building the scenes. In Mastering the Process, George returns to the form she established in her 2004 book, Write Away: One Novelist’s Approach to Fiction and the Writing Life, in which she illustrates her points using examples from works by Barbara Kingsolver, Harper Lee, E. M. Forster, John Irving, Toni Morrison, Stephen King, Ernest Hemingway, and Alice Hoffman. This time she sticks to one consistent model—the book she wrote herself using a process she has followed for twenty-two of her twenty-four novels. The result is a behind-the-scenes look at a bestselling author’s decisions as they are made throughout the creative process.