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Elements of Fiction Writing - Beginnings, Middles & Ends Kindle Edition
Keep them tight and crisp throughout.
Conclude them with a wallop.
Is the story or novel you've been carrying around in your head the same one you see on the page? Or does the dialogue suddenly sound flat and predictable? Do the events seem to ramble?
Translating a flash of inspiration into a compelling story requires careful crafting. The words you choose, how you describe characters, and the way you orchestrate conflict all make the differencethe difference between a story that is slow to begin, flounders midway, or trails off at the endand one that holds the interest of readers and editors to the final page.
By demonstrating effective solutions for potential problems at each stage of your story, Nancy Kress will help you...
• hook the editor on the first three paragraphs
• makeand keepyour story's "implicit promise"
• build drama and credibility by controlling your prose
Dozens of exercises help you strengthen your short story or novel. Plus, you'll sharpen skills and gain new insight into...
• the price a writer pays for flashbacks
• six ways characters should "reveal" themselves
• techniques for writingand rewriting
Let this working resource be your guide to successful storiesfrom beginning to end.
- ISBN-13978-1599632193
- PublisherWriter's Digest Books
- Publication dateFebruary 25, 2011
- LanguageEnglish
- File size1075 KB
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Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B005307M1W
- Publisher : Writer's Digest Books (February 25, 2011)
- Publication date : February 25, 2011
- Language : English
- File size : 1075 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Not Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 178 pages
- Page numbers source ISBN : 1599632195
- Best Sellers Rank: #241,764 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #27 in Composition
- #88 in Fiction Writing Reference (Kindle Store)
- #175 in Authorship
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Nancy Kress is the author of thirty-four books, including twenty-six novels, four collections of short stories, and three books on writing. Her work has won six Nebulas, two Hugos, a Sturgeon, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. She writes frequently about genetic engineering; including the acclaimed science-fiction novel Beggars in Spain. Kress’s fiction has been translated into Swedish, Danish, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Polish, Croatian, Chinese, Lithuanian, Romanian, Japanese, Korean, Hebrew, Russian, and Klingon, none of which she can read. In addition to writing, Kress often teaches at various venues around the country and abroad, including a visiting lectureship at the University of Leipzig, a 2017 writing class in Beijing, and the annual intensive workshop TaosToolbox. Kress lives in Seattle with her husband, writer Jack Skillingstead, and Pippin, the world’s most spoiled Chihuahua.
Customer reviews
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Top reviews from the United States
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One of the things I liked the most is Kress gave both bad and good examples. Sometimes it's a challenge to determine what's bad when only good examples. She talked a little about sentences but the main focus was the three story act: beginning, middles and endings. She has ways to help writers who get stuck in the process of coming up with a good beginning, an intriguing middle and a satisfying ending.
It was very clean, well explained, easy to understand, good examples given and a list of exercise questions at the end of each chapter. And the questions were well explained and felt more alive then a simplistic "yes" or "no" answer. It really gets you to think of your ideas, shows you alternate ways they can go and how differently they can effect every element of your writing like the characters, setting, dialogue, description...
At the very end of the book Kress talks a bit more about revisions and that there are some writers, like Isaac Asimov who did little revisions because...and I quote "they have the entire story plotted in their heads before they even begin, so that midcourse direction changes don't require massive alterations to earlier scenes...they are experienced writers, sure of both their subject matter and their story structure...If you are give [a story], and it truly seems to arrive so completely that you can't think of anything you should change, rejoice. But don't count on it. These stories are exceptions."
I found the passage above very pleasing and amusing as I consider myself one of these types of writers. Storylines and plots have always come easy and fluid to me. I don't have much revisions, mostly it's grammar and sentence structure reviews, maybe an extra scene here or there to add or expanded the already written/thought out content. I'll take this as a compliment from Nancy Kress!
All in all, great book for any kind of writing, beginning or professional, lots of good tips and advice that can be used or thought over. I'd highly recommend buying this book!
A key idea running through this book is that the beginning makes a promise to the reader: not about exactly how the story will turn out, but about what kind of reading experience it will deliver. An interesting middle builds on that, and a satisfying ending delivers on the promise.
When I read this book, I got a solid picture of what Kress as a writer thinks about as she works on a story and (to a degree) how she works. There's interesting discussion about whether or not to revise the beginning and perfect it before moving on, and always an eye toward the reader (or editor) and what they will need to see at each point in the piece to make it work for them. For this reason, Kress puts a spotlight on the very beginning (opening lines or paragraphs) and very ending, since these are places that will sink and entire work if they're not effective. When talking about middles, she addresses the common experience of feeling stuck or overwhelmed by a writing project.
A refreshing feature of this book is that Kress frequently gives advice tailored to the short story form, not focusing exclusively on novels as many writing books do. This is important because in many genres, short stories are how beginning writers learn their craft and begin to market their work.
Because the focus of this book is not narrowly on plot per se, but about "beginnings, middles, and ends" as an organizing frame for teaching how to write well, it can serve passably well as a one-stop book on fiction writing. There's information here on dialog, incorporating detail and exposition, establish setting and tone, etc.
This book has the feel of talking with a working writer about what works and what doesn't; she uses only the abstractions and concepts she needs to make the point. Someone looking for a clear, readable orientation to the craft of fiction writing will be well served by this book.
Top reviews from other countries
This author starts with explain7ming the function of beginning, middles and ends and leads you through the writing of each based on that explanation.
I liked that approach and the book is written in a style one likes to read.
Reviewed in India on December 7, 2022
The Author gives good samples of how to make an opening attractive for a possible publisher, how to make a middle compelling, how not to ruin your story with a bad ending. The Author says everything you need to know to structure in the best way your story and explain also how you must deal with first and second draft and so on.
I think that this is a great refernce for anybody who wants to become a better writer. Definitely, I suggest this book as a first How-to book to read. Of course it must be integrated with other reads, such as the great "Characters and Viewpoint" by Orson Scott Card. This book doesn't want to be complete, but it makes the job it promises pretty well, giving to you good tips on how to structure your book or short story.