What Author have you collected the most books from? Plus a writing question.

Good lord. I thought I was gonna come in hot and ready with my 10 JK Rowling books.

Raymond Feist

This is ths type of thread I love to bookmark!

Bump for the day crowd.

Robert Jordan would be #1, unless you could the complete Shakespeare, but that's just one book.

My guess is that Cormac McCarthy is #2.

Crichton/Grisham up there as well, but I don't even know where all those older paperbacks are.

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What Author have you collected the most books from?

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I think I have like 4 james pattersons...so I'm well behind your list.

Top 3:
Most - King
Then Watterson
Then John Sandford

King:
book - Top 3 It, Salems lot, The Stand
Series - Dark Tower
Collaboration - The Talisman.

Watterson:
Book - Something under the bed us drooling
Series - Sunday Collection

John Sandford.
Book - Deadwatch
Series - Lucas Davenport aka the Prey novels

Hon Men : Mitch Rapp American assasin series

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Side note #2. Any advice on starting a novel? I have a decent concept, but not sure how deep to go with the outline. Obviously I outline the gist of the plot. Then start breaking it down, but do I break it all the way down to chapter and have a specific plan of how long each chapter should be and what it should cover? Ot just a rough idea of how each third should go, accomplish that and make chapter divides in natural breaks within the story.

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My #1 piece of advice: forget the plot for now. You need a setting and you need characters.

Plot is good, don't get me wrong. It's something you need to fine-tune. But the reason why novels are published are because they bring a story to life, and the life comes from the setting and the characters. I guarantee your plot - while it may be a good one - has been done before. They all have. It's about using the plot as a centerpiece to tell a story.

Seems like you enjoy fantasy books. Is that what your book will be as well?

One piece of advice I received about writing a novel is to write the back cover first. How does this story sell itself? What's the inciting incident? Who are the characters? What's the pull through? What's the end goal?

George Martin said that there are gardeners and architects. Gardeners just start writing and see how things end up. Architects meticulously plan every detail about the novel's world before writing it out.

For me, playing gardener is too difficult. You wind up forgetting where you're going. You take a few days off and lose interest.

Playing architect turns the novel into more of a research paper like you may have written in college. You have outlines, brainstorms, details, all sorts of things you can access at later times and always be on task with the original plan.

So this is a huge topic, and there are plenty of websites out there that offer advice. Try perusing www.reddit.com/r/writing. They typically have some good stuff on novel writing.

From me, I'd say to start writing short stories with the characters you plan on using in your novel. Use those stories to also start creating a setting. Let the characters come to life. You'll see how they need to react in certain situations.

Then once you've done that, you can place them in the center of the plot.

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4) 21 Terry Brooks'
5) 17 Stephen R Lawhead's

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I've read a number of books from these authors and enjoyed them, but would not say I "collect" books. I happen to have accumulated a number of copies of Wheel of Time books, in both hard cover and paperback. Partly because all of my siblings and my mom (the first of us to find the series in the mid-90's and shared with us) have also each read the series.

I don't display my fantasy books if that is what you mean. I do have 4 or 5 bookcases, two of which I built myself, full of books in 3 different rooms, but I don't put any fantasy book out. Those are all business, history, political, science, and classical books. The most prominent author is probably Ron Chernow, biographer.

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4) The Sword of Shannara-it isn't his best book, but it's fun to read and watch him grow as a writer.

5) The Pendragon Cycle-

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I've read both and they are excellent. I love his take on the Arthurian tale.

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Side note #2. Any advice on starting a novel?

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David Eddings wrote a book called the Rivan Codex that is supposed to help someone looking to write a book. He is a prolific author with at least 5 separate series. I have read 4 of them in full but could only get through the 1st book of the latest series because it was a rehash of his other series just with different names.

jeffery Deaver