"Damn good" fiction is dramatic fiction, Frey insists, whether it is by Hemingway or Grisham, Le Carre or Ludlum, Austen or Dickens. Despite their differences, these authors' works share common elements: strong narrative lines, fascinating characters, steadily building conflicts, and satisfying conclusions. Frey's "How to Write a Damn Good Novel" is one of the most widely used guides ever published for aspiring authors. Here, in "How to Write a Damn Good Novel, II," Frey offers powerful advanced techniques to build suspense, create fresher, more interesting characters, and achieve greater reader sympathy, empathy, and identification. "How to Write a Damn Good Novel, II" also warns against the pseudo-rules often inflicted upon writers, rules such as "The author must always be invisible" and "You must stick to a single viewpoint in a scene," which cramp the imagination and deaden the narrative. Frey focuses instead on promises that the author makes to the reader--promises about character, narrative voice, story type, and so on, which must be kept if the reader is to be satisfied. This book is rich, instructive, honest, and often tellingly funny about the way writers sometimes fail their readers and themselves.

詹姆斯•N•弗雷，著有《最后一个爱国者》、《末日之战》等多部畅销小说，曾获得爱伦•坡奖提名，长期在加州大学伯克利分校开设创意写作课程，教授“小说写作”和“悬疑小说”。他受邀在美国各地进行过多次演讲和授课，并主持写作工作坊，其工作坊成为众多出版社挖掘新锐作家的重要基地。