There are so many books out there on how to write: what made you think the NOT approach was necessary?

HM: It isn't necessary. Really, the entire profession of writing-manual writing isn't strictly necessary. But given that people want to write novels, and those people are going to read books about how to do so, we knew we had some helpful things to say and that this could be a particularly useful format.

Good novels tend to be more or less seamless; bad novels, you can often see everything that's going on. All the mistakes and bad choices leap out at you. In the course of making a living, we've both read hundreds of bad novels, novels that most people never see because they don't get published. If you read enough of them, you realize that the same mistakes come up again and again.

Also, of course, it's a great setup for humor, which made it a lot of fun to write.

SN: In my experience, the negative approach actually works. In writing workshops, people often learn more from working on other people’s mistakes than they do from getting comments on their own work. You see the mistake, recognize it, and immediately conclude that you would never do anything so bone-headed. The next day, in the midst of reproducing the very same bone-headed error, you catch yourself. Light dawns and you decide that it was painting you were actually good at. Or (if you really do want to write) having seen the mistake in someone else's work gives you a more objective view of it. So, firstly, you're not as prone to want to pretend it works. Secondly, you often have a better idea of how to solve a writing problem when you're already familiar with it. And thirdly, you don't feel like such a unique example of benighted idiocy as you wrestle with the problem.

With HOW NOT TO WRITE A NOVEL, we’ve tried to simplify this process by offering a dictionary of mistakes, with suggestions on how they’re usually fixed. This will give the aspiring novelist complete invulnerability to all possible errors, except don’t blame us if it doesn’t.

Out of all the mistakes made by would-be novelists, what's the single most common error you've come across?

HM: Much greater fascination with the details of a character's backstory than the novel can sustain. There can be a sort of puzzle-solving satisfaction in figuring out all the details of your character's history, almost an endorphin rush when it all comes together and it all makes sense, even when those details are completely irrelevant to the story you're telling. Details like this can be useful for the author to know, but they should inform the character's behavior, not be explained whenever a character behaves.

Similarly, too much building up to the story, setting the scene. The history of the town the novel takes place in. That sort of thing.

SN: I think the one I see most commonly is bad scene management. This has to do with how a writer moves you in and out of scenes, and how they integrate background information into the narrative. Often scenes crop up out of nowhere, only to suddenly morph into a scene from the following day, then a scene on a cruise liner, then a scene of early infancy. Here’s an example of bad scene management:

“What the hell are you doing with my wife? Take your hands off her!!!” shouted Jimmy, walking in on Dahlia and Rinaldo. “I’ll – I’ll kill you both! Yes – both!”

Jimmy had always been a jealous person, ever since, at the age of five, he had been told he was going to get the best birthday present of all – a new sister.

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

• Audio Books

Times Recommends

• The 100 Best Books of the Decade
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• The conversation: James Ellroy