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 Manual of the Short Story Art by Glenn Clark (1922)



A Manual of the Short Story Art 

by 

Glenn Clark

 

 Overview

This 1922 how-to textbook, intended for teachers and students, includes exercises to get a writer started; lessons in visualization, dialogue, and theme; a list of thirty-six plot situations; and, as examples, short stories by Anthony Hope, Gertrude Hamilton, Edna Ferber, O. Henry, Beatrice Walker, and Wilbur Daniel Steele.


A Manual of the Short Story Art by Glenn Clark (1922). This book was written with an eye on the student, not on the rules of composition and rhetoric. It conceives of the student as a creature who loves to use his eyes and ears, and who takes delight in playing the amateur detective and in raveling and unravelling plots. It assumes that a young man or a young woman is filled to overflowing with warm, living interests and desires and aspirations which, taken together, constitute a greater driving force toward success in writing than anything which the textbooks and teachers can give him. By taking advantage of these natural desires and instincts and not working against them it is believed that the teacher may best "draw out" the student to the fullest self-expression. One of these deep-seated instincts of the student is to see things in the concrete. For that reason the method of presenting exercises commonly used in this book is the so-called "projective method." Instead of being asked to describe a city street, the student is asked to read a sentence that helps him to visualize a street and then to write down what he sees.


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