Review of Creating Literary Stories: A Fiction Writer's Guide

[FABIAN_BATS]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Creating Literary Stories: A Fiction Writer's Guide" by William H. Coles.]

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4 out of 4 stars

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William H. Coles has written several laudable fiction books and short stories, including his debut novel “The Surgeon’s Wife”, a finalist in the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition, and “Unwed Girl” for which he won the Callenwolde Prize (Atlanta) for best poem. He has won over 14 awards in writing and film making. Throughout his writing career, there is a recurring spark for teaching, evident in his highly ranked books, “Story in Literary Fiction: A Manual for Writers” in 2007, and in 2008, “Literary Story as an Art Form: A Text for Writers”. He has also done a wonderful job in the book Creating Literary Stories: A Fiction Writer’s Guide.

Creating Literary Stories: A Fiction Writer's Guide by William H. Coles is an educative book, specifically for fictional writers. It takes the reader through the literary story creation process in depth. The reader first learns about the essential components of a great story, their definitions, and applications, then, a step-by-step guide follows. There are so many rich examples and engaging challenges to improve the readers learning of the concepts taught in each chapter. The author takes careful steps in explaining complex concepts.

He introduces the book with an important definition of the term “Literary Fiction”, he clarifies that it is distinct from general fiction, memoir, creative non-fiction, auto biography and non-fiction. Further definitions and explanations give the readers insight into what authors do, and why they would prefer a certain literary work more than another. Some chapters educate the reader on commonly misused terms.

The author provides a lot of examples on bad writing, but significantly less on good writing. For some, this might be enough, but for some others, it may not. I suggest that more solid examples of good writing should be provided to affirm the readers understanding of the topic. All the components of good writing are explained, and their purpose clarified, also their position in the story and their degree of relevance is discussed thoroughly. There is a lot to learn from this book, I have but scratched only the surface.

Creating Literary Stories: A Fiction Writer's Guide is concise and straight to the point, has minimal use of “Literary Jargon”, and is easy to follow and understand. It was clearly edited professionally with no errors. This book is good for anyone who loves to learn, especially, fiction writers, and those interested in the inner workings of literary fictional stories.
Considering the positive aspects of this book discussed above, I rate Creating Literary Stories: A Fiction Writer's Guide by William H. Coles 4 out of 4 stars.

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Creating Literary Stories: A Fiction Writer's Guide
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[Christabel18+]

I would love to learn about the step by step process in literature. Thanks for the review.