Review by wowitsalison -- Creating Literary Stories: A F...

[wowitsalison]

[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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Creating Literary Stories: A Fictional Writer’s Guide by William H. Coles is a book that teaches everything a fiction writer would need to know to write a story. Coles writes about character, narration, dialogue, and many other aspects of writing. He individually explains each aspect and how to use them in your story.

Cole first writes about what goes into a story- such as characters, narration, etc.- then he also writes about how to create your own story. He goes through each aspect of writing, explains what it is, then explains how to use it in your story. He uses examples when, and he builds up each point on the others to show how everything works together.

Overall, I found the book to be very educational. Coles does a better job of teaching and explaining what goes into a story than any writing class I’ve ever taken. All of his points are concise and well explained.

One thing that I particularly liked about this book was how it is laid out and organized. At the beginning of each chapter, there are definitions of terms that are used throughout the rest of the chapter. This helps make sure that everything is very clear and understandable when he goes into more complex ideas. Coles lays out each aspect of writing in order of how you should be writing your story. He starts with explaining characters and how to create them, then moves on to other topics such as conflict, point-of-view, and time. He also does a great job of using examples where they are needed, but not including them too often and congesting the book.

The only thing about this book that I did not particularly like is how inconsistent the summaries are. Some of the chapters have summaries, but not all of them do. Out of those that do have them, a few of the summaries are titled something like “a final thought” or “a parting thought” instead of just “summary” like the rest. The inconsistency there makes the book flow a little less, but it does not make that much of an impact overall.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who has ever been interested in writing fiction. It is very helpful and interesting to read, and it helped me learn how to better my writing.

I rate Creating Literary Stories: A Fictional Writer’s Guide 4 out of 4. It is very well edited and there are very few grammatical errors. There is nothing vulgar or erotic, and there is not much to dislike.

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Creating Literary Stories: A Fiction Writer's Guide
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