Read Like A Writer

There are two ways to learn how to write fiction: by reading it and by writing it. Yes, you can learn lots about writing stories in workshops, in writing classes and writing groups, at writers' conferences. You can learn technique and process by reading the dozens of books like this one on fiction writing and by reading articles in writers' magazines. But the best teachers of fiction are the great works of fiction themselves. You can learn more about the structure of a short story by reading Anton Chekhov's 'Heartache' than you can in a semester of Creative Writing 101. If you read like a writer, that is, which means you have to read everything twice, at least. When you read a story or novel the first time, just let it happen. Enjoy the journey. When you've finished, you know where the story took you, and now you can go back and reread, and this time notice how the writer reached that destination. Notice the choices he made at each chapter, each sentence, each word. (Every word is a choice.) You see now how the transitions work, how a character gets across a room. All this time you're learning. You loved the central character in the story, and now you can see how the writer presented the character and rendered her worthy of your love and attention. The first reading is creative—you collaborate with the writer in making the story. The second reading is critical.


John Dufresne, from his book, The Lie That Tells A Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction

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Wednesday, November 25, 2015

A Handbook on Story Writing by Blanche Colton Williams (1917)

 

A Handbook on Story Writing 

by Williams, Blanche Colton, 1879-1944

 




PREFACE


WHEN in 1910 I undertook the "teaching" of the short-story to a class of undergraduates at Hunter College, I found a dearth of books on the theory of story writing. There were Poe's examples and his body of criticism, from which help might be deduced; there was the pioneer "Philosophy" of Professor Matthews, and there were two or three texts whose chief valye lay in their exposition of the genre. After no great length of time a growing suspicion asserted itself that although my students could write unusually well, frequently with suggestion of charm and power, yet they were not always writing stories. They fell short of modern narrative requirement. , As first aid they needed some formulation of the laws of structure. By a frankly academic and deductive process, that is to say, by study of the classic stories and the best current examples, I found obvious underlying principles, so obvious, my first reaction was that nobody had written them down because of their obviousness. But I gave them to my students, with happy results in improvement of manuscripts. The writers learned to direct their energies, with a diminution of diffuseness, to the accomplishment of stronger stories. 

 CONTENTS 

I Definitions and Characterisations 

II The Inception of the Story 

III Plot: Preliminaries

IV Plot: Struggle and Complication 
 

V Plot: Composition 

VI Plot: Story Types Dependent on Plot Order 

VII The Point of View

VIII The Scenario

IX Characterisation

X Characterisation, continued

XI Dialogue

XII The Emotional Element 

XIII Local Colour and Atmosphere 

XIV Problems of Composition: Beginning, Body, and End

XV A Short-Story Type: The Ghost Story 

XVI Popularity and Longevity

Index



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A Handbook on Story Writing by Williams, Blanche Colton, 1879-1944 

 

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