"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《最後一個愛國者》、《末日之戰》等多部暢銷小說，曾獲得愛倫•坡奬提名，長期在加州大學伯剋利分校開設創意寫作課程，教授“小說寫作”和“懸疑小說”。他受邀在美國各地進行過多次演講和授課，並主持寫作工作坊，其工作坊成為眾多齣版社挖掘新銳作傢的重要基地。