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, April 13, 2022

Our Short Story Writers by Blanche Colton Williams, 1879-1944

Our Short Story Writers by Blanche Colton Williams, 1879-1944

Our Short Story Writers 

 

by Blanche Colton Williams

 

1879-1944

 

CONTENTS

Alice Brown.--James Branch Cabell.--Dorothy Canfield.--Robert W. Chambers.--Irving Shrewsbury Cobb.--James Brendan Connolly.--Richard Harding Davis.--Margaret Wade Deland.--Edna Ferber.--Mary Wilkins Freeman.--Hamlin Garland.--William Sydney Porter ("O, Henry")--Joseph Hergesheimer.--Fannie Hurst.--Jack London.--James Brander Matthews.--Melville Davisson Post.--Mary Roberts Rinehart.--Booth Tarkington.--Edith Wharton.--Maxwell Struthers Burt.--Wilbur Daniel Steele
 
AT the risk of supererogation I desire to state emphatically that these twenty authors are only representative of our short story writers. I labor tinder no delusion that they are all we have of high rank, rather am I inclined to suspect that the first prospective reader will find his favorite story teller missing. Some of my own preferred stylists are conspicuously absent; and, although for the most part I have included those whom within prescribed limits I place first, I regretfully record the absentees. The short story is the literary medium that supersedes all others in America; one small volume is a container too exiguous for even its chief authors.

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