A Handbook on Story Writing (Classic Reprint) - Couverture souple

Kemmerer, Edwin Walter

 
9781330579664: A Handbook on Story Writing (Classic Reprint)

Synopsis

Master the craft of short fiction with practical techniques that take you from idea to ending.

This handbook offers clear, actionable guidance for writers who want results on the page.

Structured around core building blocks like incident, plot, character, and atmosphere, it helps you plan, revise, and polish your stories. The guidance is grounded in accessible methods that you can apply bite by bite, whether you’re drafting a first draft or tightening a finished piece.

  • Develop a strong germ and initial impulse to drive your story forward.
  • Structure the plot with clear lines of interest and a coherent sequence of events.
  • Create vivid characters through description, naming, dress, and backstory.
  • Use dialogue and scene work to reveal action, mood, and character motivation.

Ideal for aspiring writers, students, and teachers of short fiction looking for practical, time-tested techniques.

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Présentation de l'éditeur

Excerpt from A Handbook on Story Writing

When in 1910 I undertook the "teaching" of the short-story to a class of undergraduates at Hunter College, I found a dearth of books on the theory of story writing. There were Poe's examples and his body of criticism, from which help might be deduced; there was the pioneer "Philosophy" of Professor Matthews, and there were two or three texts whose chief value lay in their exposition of the genre. After no great length of time a growing suspicion asserted itself that although my students could write unusually well, frequently with suggestion of charm and power, yet they were not always writing stories. They fell short of modern narrative requirement. As first aid they needed some formulation of the laws of structure. By a frankly academic and deductive process, that is to say, by study of the classic stories and the best current examples, I found obvious underlying principles, so obvious, my first reaction was that nobody had written them down because of their obviousness. But I gave them to my students, with happy results in improvement of manuscripts. The writers learned to direct their energies, with a diminution of diffuseness, to the accomplishment of stronger stories.

About the Publisher

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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Présentation de l'éditeur

This book was originally published prior to 1923, and represents a reproduction of an important historical work, maintaining the same format as the original work. While some publishers have opted to apply OCR (optical character recognition) technology to the process, we believe this leads to sub-optimal results (frequent typographical errors, strange characters and confusing formatting) and does not adequately preserve the historical character of the original artifact. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as blurred or missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work or the scanning process itself. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy seeing the book in a format as close as possible to that intended by the original publisher.

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