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This article is from the misc.writing Recommended Reading List FAQ, by Terry L Jeffress jeffress@xmission.com with numerous contributions by others.

2.2 Recommended Reading List: Writing Fiction part3

Hills, Rust. "Writing in General, and the Short Story in
Particular: An Informal Textbook." Revised ed. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1987. ISBN 0-395-44268-0, trade paperback,
197 pp., $14.00.

L. Rust Hills was fiction editor of Esquire Magazine for some
20 years, and his book is jam-packed with rapid-fire
commentary on just about every technical aspect of crafting a
short story. It is by far the most intelligent and complete
such book I have come across, and makes a fine companion to
Gardner's "Art of Fiction" mentioned above.
-- ?

Hills organized his personal ponderings and observations about
the short story about the short story from his years of
experience as an editor into this concise reference about the
short story as a literary form. Although his tone is
conversational, Hills gives an in-depth analysis of the
elements of the short story, continually comparing and
contrasting the short story with other literary forms. He is
amazingly thorough and maintains his conversational tone
through masterful transitions between each section. While
reading, Hills seems to be conducting one long discussion, but
in retrospect we see that he has covered many topics in
detail. This smooth transition between topics also
demonstrates the interdependency of the elements in the short
story form -- that each element of the successful short story
(character, plot, setting, tone, style) all rely so heavily on
each other that to change one changes them all. This is why
one can argue that any of the points of a short story is the
most important, because all of the elements work together in a
synergistic fashion toward the whole story.

In the afterword, Hills presents an example of his own writing
process, a chaotic, meandering method that is amazing when
reflecting on the coherent and organized result. It also fills
writers with comfort that not everyone moves from outline to
rough draft to final draft as smoothly as our College
professors would have us believe.
-- Terry L Jeffress <jeffress@xmission.com>

Knight, Damon. "Creating Short Fiction." Vol. 1. Cincinnati, Ohio:
Writer's Digest Books, 1981. 3rd ed. St. Martins Press, 1997.
ISBN 0-312-15094-6, trade paperback, $13.95.

Really one of the very best how-to-write handbooks I have ever
read.

Lukeman, Noah. "The First Five Pages." Fireside Books (Simon &
Shuster), 2000. ISBN 0-684-85743-X, trade paperback, 207 pp.,
$11.00.

Subtitled "A Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection
Pile," Lukeman's book is designed not to tell you how to
"write", but to tell you how "not" to write. The book is
divided into three basic sections: "Preliminary Problems"
(dealing with issues such as presentation, excessive use of
adjectives and adverbs, sound, etc.), "Dialogue" (avoiding
cliches, how not to be melodramatic or hard to follow, etc.),
and "The Bigger Picture" (the all-important "Show, not Tell,"
various viewpoints, hooks, and so on.

I think the advice on how to grab the reader with the first
few pages of the manuscript -- plunging the characters
immediately into conflict, and introducing a dramatic element
as quickly as possible -- was most useful to me. Many other
the other tips may seem subtle at first, but put together, the
combination proved to be extremely helpful to me.

For those who immediately react negatively when told what
"not" to do, I can only offer you two bits of advice: first,
when I went back and compared half a dozen of my favorite
best-sellers against the advice in this book, I found that
every one of them obeyed the rules to a "T". And secondly, I'm
of the school that says, "before you can break the rules,
you've got to learn what they are." Once they're mastered,
then and only then can you make the decision when and how to
break them.

Lukeman writes from an editor or literary agent's point of
view -- understandable, given that he's a major NY-based agent
-- but I think beginning writers would be wise to take heed of
his words. in Like the author, I can't guarantee that if you
follow the rules of "The First Five Pages" your book will
sell. But it seems obvious to me that your manuscript won't
even get past the first step if you make the basic mistakes
described in the book. For that reason alone, I consider this
book to be one of the most important books on writing I've
read (out of several dozen).
-- Marc Wielage <mfw@musictrax.com>

Madden, David. "Revising Fiction: A Handbook for Writers: 185
Practical Techniques for Improving Your Story or Novel."
Plume. Reissue ed. New American Library, 1995. ISBN 0-4522-
6414-6, trade paperback, $13.95.

Touches on just about anything you could think of. A good
checklist/reference book.

 

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