Product Description

The Only Writing Book You'll Ever Need

From the legendary creator of the Writer's Loft in Chicago, comes a writing course for those who want to see results now. Immediate Fiction covers the entire process of writing including manuscript preparation, time management, finding an idea, getting words on the page, staying unblocked, and submitting to agents and publishers.

With insightful tips and advice, Jerry Cleaver helps writers manage doubts, fears, blocks, and panic all while helping to develop their writing in minutes a day. A practical and accessible resource, this book has everything the aspiring writer needs to write and sell novels, short stories, screenplays, and stage plays.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #66777 in Books
• Published on: 2004-12-03
• Released on: 2005-10-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780312302764
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
Musicians and artists might need talent to succeed, but writers don't, says Jerry Cleaver in Immediate Fiction. Cleaver allows that talent is needed to win a National Book Award, say, but otherwise, any of us can do it. All we need is the ability to "develop and exercise sadistic license." The operative word is conflict. As Cleaver puts it, "Happy lives make lousy novels.... If the characters are having a good time, the reader is not." He takes the mystery out of fiction writing. You don't have to write about what you know, he says; write what you can imagine. Don't fret if you can't find large chunks of time to write. Start with five minutes on weekdays and 20 on weekends, and you'll have 100 to 300 pages by year's end. Perhaps most refreshing about Cleaver's approach is the lack of directives. Some writing instructors demand that you work with an outline; others forbid it. Cleaver claims that teachers who tell you to do it one way or the other are telling you not how you work best, but how they work best. --Jane Steinberg

From Publishers Weekly
Adages ("Want + obstacle = conflict"), advice ("Make all of your story worth showing") and even an assortment of solitary words author Jerry Cleaver considers important ("fear," "worry," "hope") stand out in boldfaced type on the pages of Immediate Fiction: A Complete Writing Course. Cleaver, who founded the Chicago writers' workshop the Writers' Loft and has ghostwritten several books, insists that all one needs to be a successful writer is the "right tools" (while painting may require "inborn talent," writing doesn't) and in enthusiastic prose, he describes those tools one by one. With its writing exercises, time management hints and endlessly jocular encouragement, this volume will please many a would-be Welty or Wilde. (St. Martin's, $24.95 304p ISBN 0-312-28716-X)

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
The creator of the Writer's Loft, an independent writer's workshop in Chicago, Cleaver has been coaching amateur writers into print for 20 years. Here he presents the basic outline of his course. In a breezy, informal, and personal manner, Cleaver shares his early difficulties and ultimate breakthrough, which led to his success as both writer and teacher. Crafting a story from idea through marketing takes skill, discipline, and talent. Cleaver, like so many of his ilk, encourages the development of all three through practice and daily writing exercises. He discusses self-editing, rewriting, time management, and the basics of plot and story. There's not much new here, but the price of the book is a bargain compared with the online course offered at www.immediatefiction.com. Buy where there is an insatiable need for tips on how to write. Stephen King's On Writing is still the best of the recent crop. Denise S. Sticha, Murrysville Community Lib., PA
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

At Last Something Substantial
I graduated a couple of years ago from a university that specializes in cranking out creative writers. (I apologize if I have not successfully masked my deep bitterness; usually I do a decent job of appearing well-adjusted.) I learned more from reading this book than I learned from four long years of higher learning. Mr. Cleaver is not vague. Somehow he managed to come up with a detailed, specific answer for each one of the countless questions I had when I began reading his book. (What constitutes conflict? What is the best way to end a chapter? What are the most common pitfalls, and how can I avoid them? And on and on!) If you are serious about amounting to anything as a writer, you need to read IMMEDIATE FICTION. The author's instruction and advice leave no stone unturned. There is no comparable book out there on this subject, with the possible exception of Dorothea Brande's classic BECOMING A WRITER. Yes, come to think of it, you should probably pick up that one, too. Five stars for both of them!

If you want to become a writer.....
If you want to become a better writer or a more critical reader, buy this book. Most offerings in this genre resemble a well picked over smorgasbord in which one finds a few good tips among acres of wilted lettuce. What remains of the main course, conflict creation, resolution and character development is incoherently scattered among the weeds. Cleaver gets it right by giving us a complete road map to writing, self-editing and publishing fiction. He shows how to convert your onmiscient narrator essays into scenes and dialogue that drive the plot, develop character(and keep the reader's attention), how to replace those "telling" images of emotion(e.g.,"icy stab in the stomach") with "showing" the emotion through thought and dialogue. Not only is this book a "sine qua non" for writer's, it is a fun read.

Immediate Fiction - A classic next to Becoming a Writer
I have been writing all of my life and have read many books about writing. Immediate Fiction by Jerry Cleaver is the only book about writing that I would put next to Dorthea Brande's classic Becoming a Writer. When Brande's book was published in 1934, the information she gave to writers was not only ahead of its time, but timeless through the many decades since its first published date. The same can be said and will be said about Jerry's book. In a time when "story" is driven by what is in the media and pop culture, Jerry tells us about what really makes a story - want, obstacle, action - thus, developing the characters and the conflict as the story progresses. I have several different stories and characters I have been working on for years and I thought I knew well. When I applied the - want, obstacle, action - my characters and their conflict developed better because I finally found out what they wanted. Jerry gives writers ideas about finding time to write, getting organized to write and completing projects that have lost their way. I cannot recommend Jerry's book enough.