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

zainherb · Post by **zainherb** » 15 Jul 2021, 08:31

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

4 out of 4 stars

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Literary fiction, which differs from genre fiction, should be important, memorable, and have a permanent artistic value. For it to be so, according to Coles, literary fiction must be composed of imagination, structure and theme, characterisation, and a dramatic plot. In this manual for writers, William H. Coles explains the various aspects of literary fiction as an art form. This is to enlighten and guide writers through creating their literary fictional stories in the proper way.

Written as a textbook/manual, Creating Literary Stories: A Fiction Writer’s Guide is divided into two parts. The first part discusses, among others, narration, dialogue, humour, conflict, emotions, and the reasons literary stories fail. The second part discusses the fundamentals and the essentials of creating a literary story. It also discusses how to provide for a reader and how to bring a literary story to life. In addition, there is an appendix which includes questions for the reader to find out her motivations for writing, which is great.

I loved the fact that the book was organised and written in easy language, which made my reading easy. The concepts were well-explained, with examples for better understanding. I also loved how the book wasn’t boring like school textbooks; each time I put it down, I felt the pleasantly nagging pull-that comes with wonderful books to pick it back up. The author added brief excerpts from some of his literary stories to illustrate his point and, besides this, they made the book interesting. As it is packed with information and written like a textbook, I would advise that one reads the book slowly and writes notes for better retention.

There was nothing I disliked about this book. I found a few typographical errors. However, they were not many enough to affect either my enjoyment or my rating. Therefore, I rate this book four out of four stars.

Although this book is targeted at writers of literary fiction, I believe that writers of all kinds of fiction can benefit from it. I recommend it to amateur writers, writers who may have advanced writing skills, and those between. Book critiques, editors and proofreaders will also find this book highly beneficial. Writing instructors can do worse than assigning this book as part of their course curriculum, or at least recommending it to their students. Those who are not interested in nonfiction books and, or writing fiction may not find it interesting.

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Creating Literary Stories: A Fiction Writer's Guide
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Dzejn_Crvena · Post by **Dzejn_Crvena** » 10 Aug 2021, 03:17

I'm thinking of reading this book next. As a book reviewer, I may learn a lot from it. This is very helpful in analyzing the books we read. Book clubs may also use the pointers in this book as guides in their discussions. Thank you for your review.

Saint Bruno · Post by **Saint Bruno** » 12 Aug 2021, 15:11

Though I don't inted to be a writer, I sure would love to understand how some author's manage to make their books hard to put down. Thanks for the amazing review and recommendation.