How to Build a Short Story

With Movies In The Mind: How To Build A Short Story, Colleen Rae provides the aspiring writer with compendium of sound advice, techniques, and strategies for writing plausible, believable, resonating fiction. Each informative chapter is a gem of sound, practical, illustrative, and occasionally inspiring instruction and includes: Entering The Storymaker's Realm; Fiction's Building Blocks; Participatory Art; Digging The Clay; Whose Story Is It Anyway?; Unlocking Your Story; How To Birth A Story; and There's Always A Critic. Very highly recommended for anyone seeking to improve the quality of their fiction, Movies In The Mind is further enhanced with a section of Exercise Pages, a Reading List; and a user-friendly index.

This book is great, will really rev up your writing, and I'm not the only one who says so. The February 2001 issue of Wisconsin Bookwatch has the review : With "Movies In The Mind: How To Build A Short Story", Colleen Rae provides the aspiring writer with compendium of sound advice, techniques, and strategies for writing plausible, believable, resonating fiction. Each informative chapter is a gem of sound, practical, illustrative, and occasionally inspiring instruction and includes: Entering The Storymaker's Realm; Fiction's Building Blocks; Participatory Art; Digging The Clay; Whose Story Is It Anyway?; Unlocking Your Story; How To Birth A Story; and There's Always A Critic. Very highly recommended for anyone seeking to improve the quality of their fiction," Movies In The Mind" is further enhanced with a section of Exercise Pages, a Reading List; and a user-friendly index.

Before I finished the first chapter of this book, I saw a dramatic difference in my writing. If you want to learn how to connect with the mysterious well where all of our stories come from, if you want to understand what really grabs your reader and connects him/her with your story, read this book! It's not just for short story writers. It's for writers. Period. Look through Colleen Mariah Rae's eyes as you devour this book, and you'll see your creative world in a whole new light!

"Movies in the Mind" has helped me understand more clearly and practically the process of going within, "digging the clay," as Ms. Rae so aptly calls the process of finding the story. Looking at the movies in my mind, then using method writing to capture what I see, hear, taste, touch, smell, and feel in those movies, develops the characters and uncovers the stories that want to be told. As Ms. Rae says in her first chapter, "this book is about getting out of your own way so that the storymaker inside of you can tell its stories." She accomplishes that goal wonderfully by drawing upon her teaching experience and creativity to offer reassuring encouragement, friendly guidance, and knowledgeable tips galore. In a word, "Movies in the Mind" is an eminently useful book for would-be fiction writers.

I am a writer and frequent buyer of writing books, and Colleen Rae's Movies in the Mind is a wonderful book for any writer to have on her bookshelf. Movies in the Mind will guide a writer through the creative process that leads to literature in a way that many how-to writing books seem to miss. Creating a story is compared to sculpting from clay, that is, to take an idea and carve away the excess then refine the detail until you end up with the final piece of art. Colleen Rae is an excellent writer as well, and her book reflects that. It is a pleasure to read, unlike some writing books that tend to read like a textbook. I buy many writing books, but only a few of them do I set aside as special books that I will turn to for help when I am stuck, and Movies is one of these. Theresa Foley