Author: Tony Vandermarker

Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing

ISBN: 978-1-62636-552-0

If you had the opportunity to have your writing perused by one of today's most recognized best-selling authors, what would you do? This is exactly what Tony Vanderwarker, author of Writing With The Master experienced when John Grisham made the following offer: “Look, I'd be willing to help you if you'd like. Kind of mentor you, through the novel-writing process. Something I've never done before-not that plenty of people haven't asked.”

You can well imagine Vanderwarker's response to an offer he just couldn't refuse! Vanderwarker had seven unpublished novels on is hard drive when the offer was made to teach him the art of writing a thriller novel.

Initially, Vanderwarker may have thought that this would be fun, but as he and readers learn, writing a novel is not exactly a piece of cake as it requires a great deal of diligence, dedication, imagination and effort. Grisham reminds Vanderwarker that the nature of editing is to point out the bad stuff and not the good- a thick skin helps, as he painfully discovers.

Divided into twelve chapters and an epilogue, Vanderwarker recounts the help he received from Grisham and covers such topics as a compelling plot, characterizations, constructing a synopsis, outlines, and a host of other “goodies.”

There is a great deal of ink devoting to outlines, and when Vanderwarker began writing his outline, he was quite sure that it would not be difficult. As we read, until Grisham was ready to give him the green light to write the novel, he was obliged to produce six outlines. According to Vanderwarker, “John's hardly a somber guy, but he doesn't kid around about outlines.” In fact, Grisham is dead serious about plots and outlines and as mentioned in the book, he couldn't imagine writing a book without first doing an outline.” I don't know how many times I have interviewed self-published authors and asked them if they work from an outline and surprisingly many tell me that the plot comes to them as they write. And I hate to say it, the end result is garbage! Incidentally, prior to writing the outline, Grisham insisted that Vanderwarker write a synopsis.

Many of the chapters contain Grisham's enlightening comments that were passed unto Vanderwarker in the form of letters. For example, Grisham points out that it is very difficult to cover forty years in a few chapters and goes on to point out what should be done. Other comments show how Vanderwarker succeeds in making his story tighter, more focused, leaner and with quicker pacing.

Although this is a good book for someone wanting to have an inside scoop on how the mind of a best-selling author works, I would have liked to have seen better organization. For example, there are no summaries of the principles presented in each chapter and neither is there an index. I also found that the author devoted too much time to his whining and feelings rather than concentrate on showing how the tips he received were helping him. Chapter titles were also confusing and should have been more indicative of what was to come.