Ideal for anyone interested in writing short stories or for introductory courses in fiction writing, A Short Story Writer's Companion is a highly accessible guide to the craft of creating short fiction. Written in an engaging style, this book enables beginning writers to recognize what works in writing short stories, what doesn't, and why. Part One of A Short Story Writer's Companion discusses fictional truth and significant detail, helping students of the form to make good sense of the often taught creative writing maxim, "Show, don't tell!" Part Two delves into the elements of fiction: character, point of view, plot, setting and time, metaphor, and voice. The author uses specific examples from a variety of widely anthologized short stories to demonstrate how each component functions as a part of the whole and offers advice on the techniques of using each of the elements successfully. Part Three closely examines the fiction-writing process and helps guide writers who may never have written a short story before through drafting, revising, and polishing short stories of their own.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
Not quite what I was looking for:
The first thing to know about this book is that the author has his heart in the right place. The tone of the book feels just as the title says, like you have a friendly companion helping you out on your journey through the process of writing short stories. Unfortunately, this companion seems to little more than a compilation of several other books, so instead of that friend offering any direct help, it's like he's saying, "Well, let's get that John Gardner book down from the shelf, and see what he says."... more info
The Craft of Short-Story Writing: The Basics:
Whenever asked to recommend one basic book on the craft of short-story writing, I choose Tom Bailey's A SHORT-STORY WRITER'S COMPANION and the companion anthology edited by him, On Writing Short Stories . Okay, that makes two books; however, with the duplicate material excised, the two could easily be republished as one 350-page book. In this brief book (184 pages), Tom Bailey helps the beginning writer learn more about the craft of short-story writing than the long-standing textbook "Writing Fiction"... more info
Great book!:
As a student of Dr. Bailey's, this book greatly helped me explore the short story genre and opened my eyes to how amazing the form can be.
useful for writers and teachers:
Tom Bailey's "A Short Story Writer's Companion" is one of the most helpful writing books that I've read (the others being Bailey's own "On Writing Short Stories" and John Gardner's "The Art of Fiction" and "On Becoming a Novelist"). Bailey's book is steeped in the words of other writers but never showboats his extensive knowledge-each writer's words are cited and Bailey quickly pulls them into the points that he hammers home: whether it be drawing from a Eudora Welty quote to illustrate the many functions... more info
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On Writing Short Stories from Oxford University Press, USA (Paperback) - Usually ships in 24 hours
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