How To Write Fiction: Especially THE ART OF SHORT STORY WRITING by  Sherwin Cody (1868-1959)       

A  Practical Course of Instruction After the French Method of Maupassant  (1894). Most young writers imagine when they first think of writing  short stories that one writes well or will by nature , and if one does  not write well in the first place improvement is a matter of chance or  the working out of inherent ability in some blind way. That the art of  short story writing is something that can be learned seems not yet to  have suggested itself very practically to authors or critics. Yet  Maupassant studied seven years with Flaubert before he began to print at  all, with the result of a very obvious skill, and this suggests the  possibility that others also can learn the art. But any writer young or  old who has gone to an acknowledged master of literature in order to get  instruction knows how little practical assistance is commonly obtained.  There are bureaus of revision and advice, which have made some  pretensions beyond merely telling the young author whether his work is  salable or not, and where he may hope to dispose of it. But none of them  have been successful in much more than the mechanical and business  part.                              

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