Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft (8th Edition)

I originally bought this book for a creative writing class i took in college. I ended up taking the class twice because. It was a good class and the instructor had great instincts using this to teach from. We didn't get all the way through the book, but this was one of the few text books i kept after my class ended and continued to read and work through.To write good fiction you have to read good fiction and the author of this book picked some really good short works to read and analyze and have become some of my favorite short stories.If you are looking for a work book to help improve your writing, if you ACTUALLY read it and do the exercises this book can help.

Every writer needs this book. It's like a text book but not at all dull and full of great instruction on how to discover and execute your story on to the page: showing vs. telling, the writing process, character text and subtext, methods of character presentation, fictional place and fictional time and more. I especially like Burroway's chapter on Story Form as an Inverted Check Mark. Here she talks about Freitag's famous pyramid of five actions and moves to how the "story shape" can work as an inverted check mark. She asks '"where should your narrative begin?" Her distinctions between 'story' and 'plot' are very precise. Need help with story conflict, crisis, and resolution? This is the book that will crystallize it for you. I just loved this book as my own little writing workshop. One that you can reread once a year to sharpen up those skills.

The only reason I do not give it five stars is the cost. For the nearly $80.00 I paid I expected a full sized hardcover book that was twice its length and if not an exhaustive introduction to fiction writing at least more encyclopedic on the topic. While excellent as far as it goes there are plenty of reasons to read other books on the subject such as;  Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively   The Art of Description: World into Word   Elements of Fiction Writing - Conflict and SuspenseElements of Fiction Writing - PlotIt Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences: A Writer's Guide to Crafting Killer SentencesThe Book on Writing: The Ultimate Guide to Writing WellSin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective ProseThe Elements of Expression: Putting Thoughts into Words, Revised and ExpandedWired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence .These are only some of the many other excellent books that expand on the on the various subjects covered in this book and provide further essential insights. Nonetheless, if you want to learn fiction writing I would start with this book as a comprehensive introduction, but (unless you bear the genes of Hemingway) understand that for the price you will still need to read at least a dozen other books if you're serious.The purchaser should also be aware that about half of the book is comprised of excerpts from the writings of others. Although these examples are instructive and illustrative for the hefty price you are only receving about 200 pages of actual instruction.

We used an earlier edition of this book for my creative writing class when I was in college. Since I've been doing a lot of writing lately, I thought I'd pick up a copy of the newest edition. I wanted a broadly focused writing book. I was a bit disappointed, though. Even though it's been through numerous revised editions, it's not terribly different from the one we used in the early 80s. It fails to incorporate current terminology or to mention narrative techniques that are commonplace in today's markets. For instance, there's no mention of limited third point of view, and nothing about deep pov. It would also be nice if there were some more recent works provided as examples of various narrative techniques.It's still a good book with some useful information for beginners. The information on filtering is still highly relevant (I believe Burroway coined the term) and something more writers should heed. But new copies of this book are rather expensive. There are other books out there that are less expensive and more up to date.

of value for the short stories included as well as the essential fiction course.

満足しました。娘の大学の教科書として利用されており、必須のもの。娘は日々使っており、満足と答えた次第です。