Product Description

This handbook is the perfect reference for beginning creative writers. It offers abundant illustrations, exercises, and useful techniques in all genres. While emphasizing problem-solving and the mastery of literary conventions, this handbook also takes the apprentice writer on a journey from inspiration to revision. Explores the work of ¿classic¿ modern as well as active contemporary writers through examples of effective stories, essays, poems and plays. An extensive look at fundamental creative writing issues includes attitudes, habits, journal-keeping, point of view, language, invention and research, and more. Appropriate for apprentice creative writers.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #302734 in Books
• Published on: 2004-07-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

From the Publisher
Combining theory, practical advice, and examples in each chapter, this introduction to creative writing not only explores the elements of effective writing that are applicable to ALL genres, but considers the creative writing enterprise and the necessary "writerly attitude."

From the Back Cover

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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

In this edition we have given more attention to the interrelationships among genres. Though techniques of character development or dialogue may appear irrelevant to writing poetry or nonfiction, they are not. Nor are the techniques of sound patterns beside the point when one comes to write a play or a story. As we tell students in our workshops, what makes writing both fascinating and difficult is the fact that everything counts.

Almost everywhere, we have added and replaced examples, expanded sections, deleted some material and added other material. We have tried to make the book more readable, and we have added tools like the "scam sheet" and "Proofreading Check List" in Chapter 16. Chapter 2 has new material on the journal as a literary form. Chapter 4 includes an enhanced discussion of style. Chapter 5 attends more fully to electronic research. We have added new stories to Chapter 12 as well as a creative nonfiction essay that is not a memoir. In Chapter 15, two ten-minute plays have replaced Trifles because we felt shorter plays would be more helpful models for beginning writers. We have deleted and added exercises. In short, we have tried to do what a revision ought to do.

If you are coming to The Creative Writer's Handbook for the first time, you may be overwhelmed by both the amount of detail and the number of questions we ask you to consider as well as the sizeable number of exercises. Don't be. Our idea was to provide you with a smorgasbord from which to choose what tempts your palate.

We wish to thank the following reviewers for their valuable contribution: Joan Connor, Ohis University, and Juliet W. Kincaid, Johnson County Community College.

We want to stress again that this book is about useful techniques for the beginner. No book teaches; practice does.

Finally, we want to thank those students, colleagues, and friends who have helped us to improve the work.

ABL

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Customer Reviews

I basically agree with Mr. Samuelson: far too much advice.
Though the text has some good discussion of the writing process and useful exercises, the authors tend to set down at times questionable "rules" and much too much advice. The price is also out of line for most students in public universities and colleges, especially adult education students who want to write as a means of personal enrichment--and it is the latter type of student rather than the next Hemingway or Frost who is most likely to register for a creative writing courrse.

Helpful but full of typos
The other people reviewing this should have kept in mind that this book was intended to introduce novices to the basic concepts of creative writing. I did not feel it was condescending or distracting. I thought it was helpful and thorough as well as specific. Not meant for the literary types who've convinced themselves that they are "writers" and therefore above the practical advice this book offers. It was used as a text book for a class I took: "Intro to Creative Writing." I found it very helpful and useful. I learned a lot!

Caution: This edition is filled with typos.

Unprofessional and patronizing
While I'm not the most prolific or most experienced writer, I am familiar enough with the field to not be talked down to like a 6th grader in a father-son chat. While the authors attempts to be "chumy" with the reader, they really do no more than patronize and make apparent their academic lack. There were no new ideas presented here--even for a beginning text, I would recommend looking elsewhere for a better basic understanding of the guidelines that will help your work work.