Turning Life into Fiction: Finding Character, Plot, Setting and Other Elements of Novel and Short Story Writing in the Everyday World (1884910378) - Reviews and Prices
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Turning Life into Fiction: Finding Character, Plot, Setting and Other Elements of Novel and Short Story Writing in the Everyday World (1884910378) - Customer Reviews, Information, Ratings, and Prices
Turning Life into Fiction: Finding Character, Plot, Setting and Other Elements of Novel and Short Story Writing in the Everyday World (1884910378) - Reviews and Prices
A guide to fictionalising real-life stories ethically and legally.
If you've got friends who are fiction writers, watch out: "Writers are spies, liars, and thieves," writes Robin Hemley in Turning Life into Fiction, and your words, deeds, and character--benevolent and malevolent alike--could be immortalized in print some day. If you write fiction, listen up, look around, and take note. Why strain your brain making things up when you can transform real life into stories worth telling? Hemley recommends keeping a journal ("It's akin to an artist's sketchbook"), writing down your dreams (the unconscious is a great source of free material), and mining all those crazy stories your grandmother used to tell. Then combine bits and pieces from these sources, take one great mind leap (and many drafts) and--voila--you've got fiction. Warning: even though it really happened, it might not be believable. Second warning: while it's hard to know when something you write will offend the person it's based on, says Hemley, "above all, don't mess with male pattern baldness."
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
Role Reversal:
I actually use this book to write creative nonfiction. I often fin myself with a witty anecdote, a little tidbit of "meaning" from my life that I want to craft into an essay. But that crux is not enough - a story, fiction or nonfiction - must be a STORY. Hemley's book has helped me find ways to craft my anecdotes into actual stories, and to, when all else fails, make something up to fill the gaps, thereby making fiction out of real life.
Blasted Open:
Turning Life into Fiction was like a jackhammer, busting out all the stories that had been dammed up in my mind.
Turn this book into your lifesaver!!:
How many of us have shelves and shelves of writing books...yet when they found this one realized that it was one of the very few that they needed? I wanted to chime in on the revised edition since I just discovered it yesterday and have not put it down, aside from going to sleep. I am one of those writers who draws inspiration from my own life and the lives of friends and always had an idea of how to go about it, but this book is the black and white, be all and end all. Here you'll learn that it's... more info
A "must-read" for practicing and aspiring fiction writers everywhere:
Updated and expanded by Robin Hemley (Director of the Nonfiction Writing Program as Iowa University), Turning Life into Fiction is a newly updated and expanded how-to manual for skillfully converting real life experiences into exciting storytelling. Packed with writing exercises, techniques for recording and generating ideas from day-to-day experience, and advice for dealing with the potentially thorny ethical issue of borrowing experiences from the lives of strangers and loved ones, Turning Life into... more info
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