How to Write Short Stories

This book was bought for my 10 year old granddaughter that loves to write short little stories. I thought I would try this book and see if she could use it. She loved it! It gave her some great ideas in an easy to understand way. She will be able to refere back to this book many times.

One of the best little hand books. Summs it up really. This book is concise and has little fluff and condenses what a dozen other How-Tos get to. True there are not so many stories and the explanations do not ruminate but get straight to the point, but its a great resource to have in hand with a book like Burroways Writing Fiction and Baechtel Shaping the Story. Its light and best appreciated probably after you have waved through the other multi hundred page behemoths, but the behemoths will be the books you read and forget, this book you'll go back to repeatedly. I know I will.

Ms. Sorenson's book was the perfect accompanament to a short story course I took last January 2002 in Vancouver, British Columbia. The course taught how to write short stories that get accepted for literary magazines. It was taught by a young woman with a Master's Degree in Creative Writing. The course was excellent and when I found this book, I felt it was the course all over again. It covers so much of what we took, and, of course, I couldn't remember everything. This book, which I have already read once, is the perfect reference book for writing literary short stories. I have been recommending it to anyone interested in the short story writing form. I can't tell you how happy I was to have found it. I have read so many books on how to write short stories and they all tend to be the same, but this one takes your hand and walks you step by step through the process. I can't praise this book enough.Keep up the good work, Ms. Sorenson.Sandra Merz.

This is a great guide to have after you've read all those articles and books on short story writing. Not a deep, wordy book on the art of short story writing, it neatly summarizes most of the points you were supposed to get out of that other reading. Each section includes outlines/checklists for analyzing the various elements of a short story (character, plot, dialog, POV, etc...) and sample stories for illustration. (The last third of the book is a detailed study of Hawthorne's "The Birthmark," which I just skimmed.) I would guess that advanced writers might find this book too elementary, but as a student, it's been an extremely useful guide that brought the short story writing process into focus.

This book is a very clear guide to writing short fiction. It exactly matched the "ideal" book I was looking for on the subject. It is full of useful and non-trivial guidance that will be of use right from the start. Highly recommended.