Creating Short Fiction

I'll say right off that I don't agree with everything proposed in this book, but even when I disagree, at least I was thinking about something that I had overlooked in my writing. That said, I didn't disagree with much. I didn't do any of the exercises - yet, but I will. The book is a great read and has helped me realize why my previous stories had not been getting published. It gives a great outline to go back over 'finished' work and improve it exponentially. As a discouraged writer, I'm beginning to see the glimmers of inspiration again.

If you want to write short fiction, read this. It is clear. It is well written. It has what you need to know. It provides a few exercises, just the right number for practice but not so many as to aid procrastination. Yes, D. Knight wrote genre; he wrote it well. But don't be deceived, the insight and knowledge in this book is not limited to genre writing. This is not a formula book. This is not about paint-by-numbers writing. D. Knight thought about his craft and practiced it. If you want to write short fiction, read this.

Damon Knight passed away recently --he was not only a great writer (penning such classics as the original Twilight Zone episode 'To Serve Man') but a first rate teacher. I have many writing books including Jack the classic 'Short Story Writing' by Thronley but THIS book by Knight beats them all. He not only covers everything from getting ideas to mixed viewpoints and compression in story action but goes into such detail you will feel you're are sitting in a serious university class on writing fiction. Harlan Ellison recommended this book--Harlan Ellison -- if you know Ellison you know he would never recommend anything unless he liked it. As a matter of fact this book is NOT some fluff piece on 'getting in touch with the inner writer' and all that nonesense --no this author treats the reader as a serious aspiring writer. He also includes excercises which adds to what he is teaching you. I only wish I could have met this author to shake his hand. A job very well done you will NOT be disappointed! It's about 208 pages (with index) of packed information on how to write and especially on how to get control over your story, keep that control till the end until you have a quality manuscript.

CREATING SHORT FICTION is an excellent introductory text for writers who want to try their hands at making short stories and starting a novel. However, published writers will learn much from it as well. It has, for example, one of the best analyses of point of view that I have seen in text or scholarly article. Reading Damon Knight's chapter on viewpoint will expand the understanding of many published authors who speak at writers conferences and professors who write introductory texts on literature. This text is about how to write fiction, not a book about how it was like to be a writer of fiction. Its occasional reference to science fiction, fantasy, and detective fiction is a useful corrective to the snob view that such "sub-genre" fiction is unworthy of being mentioned in a "literary" creative writing course. One hundred years from now, some of the short stories and novels that will be literature will come from such sub-genres. My college sophomore fiction-writing students begin with CREATING SHORT FICTION. In the second semester, they use Janet Burroway's WRITING FICTION: A GUIDE TO THE NARRATIVE CRAFT, also an excellent more-advanced text, now in its 6th. edition.

As an MFA student I've been looking at a lot of books about how to write fiction, and very few of them do anything other than encourage you to keep writing. This book teaches you how to write a short story, and encourages you to write a =better= short story (without imposing its own definition of "better"). It is the only "how-to" book in fiction that I have found that I can recommend, and I use it in my own teaching