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

Art In Short Story Narration: A Searching Analysis of the Qualifications of Fiction in General, and of the Short Story in Particular, with Copious Examples, Making the Work A PRACTICAL TREATISE. By Henry Albert Phillips, (1913)


Art In Short Story Narration: A Searching Analysis of the Qualifications of Fiction in General, and of the Short Story in Particular, with Copious Examples, Making the Work A PRACTICAL TREATISE. By Henry Albert Phillips, (1913). Many books have been written bearing chiefly upon the technical side of fiction construction, but few — indeed, if any — have taken a step further and undertaken to analyze and reconstruct the artistic qualifications essential to fiction literature. Sometimes it is easier to tell how to do a thing, than it is to do it or to define intelligently the nature of the thing to be done. The literary craft has been informed so often how it should do its work, that it seems refreshing to be told in definite terms just what that work is." Art in Short Story Narration," then, is a book of unusual timeliness. Never before, have so many short stories been written — and published; never before has there been such a vast army of tyros — and such a great company of successful authors. In like proportion, the field for technical lore and critical discussion has advanced and widened apace.



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