Reference Book Review - The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing

I'm in the process of editing my NaNo novel. In order to take a little break from the work, I'm reading some of my reference books on how to edit and re-write. I just finished the Marshall Plan for Novel Writing by Evan Marshall. If ever someone were looking for a step-by-step guide book on how to write a novel, this is it. It tells you how long your book should be by genre and how many sections and chapters you should have, what major events should happen where, how many chapters to devote to each character, where you should have your 3 big surprises, etc. It's a very formulaic guide. If you like a precise pattern, this is the book for you.

I am not quite so rigid in my writing style, but I was able to use many of the tips/suggestions/rules that are in this book to help me write and re-write. I'm more of a relaxed writer - sometimes I start writing with just a character and an event and other times I will write a pretty detailed outline that I end up following loosely. Trying to keep everything as tightly placed as this book suggests would annoy me to no end. But it's always nice to see things from a different perspective and to be able to pick and choose which advice I'll use.

I wrote a few notes that pertain to how I write from the book, but this book will end up being donated to the library and hopefully someone else will be able to get more from it than I did. Good book, just not my style.