A Novel Approach: To Writing Your First Book (or Your Best One)

You're ready to write your book, but where to begin? Characters? Conflict? Dialogue? Story arc? In a lot of ways writing your book is like building a home or raising your child, efforts of love and patience that are hard enough in their own right but almost impossible without having a blueprint or the examples set by some devoted predecessors to show the way. Writing your book sounds like work, and it is - but you can do this. Los Angeles Book Festival Finalist, 2015. Let's start. Jack Woodville London is the author of French Letters: Children of a Good War, the winner of the 2018 Gold Medal for Fiction Book of the Year in war and military fiction, as well as other novels, non-fiction, and articles on history and literature. He studied the craft of fiction at the Academy of Fiction, St. Cr, France and at Oxford University. He was the first Author of the Year of the Military Writers Society of America and has become its Director of Writing Education. His French Letters trilogy of novels are Virginia's War, Engaged in War, and Children of a Good War. They are widely praised for their portrayals of America in the 1940s, both at home and in Europe in the Second World War, and afterward as America evolved from its wartime unity into progress and prosperity. Children of a Good War goes on to portray a country that soon gives way to bitter division over the Vietnam war and the struggle to find its soul by the generation that forgot its history and took its wealth, status, and privilege for granted. In addition to the 2018 Gold Medal for Children of a Good War the first novel, Virginia's War, was a Finalist for Best Novel of the South and the Dear Author 'Novel with a Romantic Element' contest. The second volume, Engaged in War, earned for Jack the Author of the Year award and won the silver medal for general fiction at the London Book Festival. His craft book, A Novel Approach, a short and light-hearted work on the conventions of writing, is designed to help writers who are setting out on the path to write their first book. A Novel Approach won the E-Lit Gold Medal for non-fiction in 2015. Jack also is the author of several published articles on the craft of writing and on early 20th century history. His work in progress is Shades of the Deep Blue Sea, a mystery-adventure novel about two sailors and a girl, set on a Pacific island in World War II. Jack lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, Alice. Visit him at jwlbooks.com