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

[Amna Khalid]

[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 Fiction Writer’s Guide is a guidebook written by William H. Coles. The author uses a step-by-step approach to help readers in writing an influential fiction story. This guidebook focuses on improving a writer’s skills in several areas such as imagination, theme, setting, characterization, plot structure, narration, dialogues, and emotions. Telling stories to the readers is a challenging task experienced by many writers. However, writers can improve their knowledge and practice relevant skills with the company of such books.

The author has divided the book into two parts named ‘Book One’ and ‘Book Two’. Furthermore, book one is called ‘The Literary Story in Fiction’ that is divided into chapters. These chapters highlight the areas mentioned in the above paragraph and provide a thorough understanding of literary fiction. Book two is named ‘Creating a Literary Fictional Story’ that comprises only five chapters. These chapters aim to guide the writers on how to write a powerful and captivating fictional story.

I didn’t dislike any aspect of the book, but there are several elements that I liked. Firstly, I liked the division of the book into two parts, and both focus on different components. Furthermore, the best thing is that the author has mentioned relevant content under headings and sub-headings. It will help readers to find the content they are looking for. I liked how the author chose a step-by-step approach to write the entire book and carefully organized the chapters. For the readers who want to understand where they lack and why their literary story fails, the author has talked about such concerns too. Moreover, I liked how the author invested his efforts into providing details and thoroughly explaining concepts. Also, he mentioned examples within various chapters, such as the passages from the tale ‘Red Riding Hood’ to describe the component of characterization.

I rate the book 4 out of 4 stars since the author magnificently compiled the details about every component required for writing literary stories. Also, writing this book would have been a challenging experience for him. I did not rate it 3 stars because the book is well-edited. Therefore, few grammatical errors that I noticed while reading the content can be ignored.

I would recommend this book, especially to writers who are creating or planning to create a fictional story. It is worth reading for the writers. Secondly, I would commend it to all the readers who enjoy reading literary fiction and look forward to acquiring knowledge in this area.

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Creating Literary Stories: A Fiction Writer's Guide
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[MsH2k]

Kudos to the author for sharing what he has learned throughout his writing career. This sounds like a very useful book.
Thank you for your thorough review!