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A review by ejpass
Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft by Janet Burroway
3.0
3/5 stars
Recommended for people who like: fiction workshopping, writing advice
I had to read this for my CRW 207 class, which is a class on workshopping fiction, mainly short stories.
Some of the bare-bones advice was good. I liked the bits that talked about dialogue and that suggested stepping away from a story before editing/revising it, as the break would give you time to have 'fresh eyes' when you go back to it. Admittedly, a lot of the advice was also the standard advice you'd get from a writing advice book: add detail, flesh out character, find your narrative POV, etc. The book definitely got repetitive and boring.
One of the writers, I'm not sure which one, is a rather pretentious sort of person too. They'll be going along with their advice and then out of the blue make a comment that's just so pompous it's off-putting. Also, there was an example in one of the character chapters where the author (and I like to think it's the same author) gave one of their own pieces as an example--"big boned, lanky, melon-breasted, her best feature [...] oblivious to her eccentricity" (134-35)--that I also found to be off-putting. It comes back to this idea that male authors have a fascination with the breasts of their female characters, and of course with the idea that said female characters are unable to identify their beauty or, in this case, eccentricities (also, is he aware how heavy that would be? Especially on someone with a 'lanky' figure).
Some of the stories provided were pretty good. I really liked 'The Red Fox Fur Coat,' 'Fiesta, 1980,' 'Sea Faries,' 'Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter,' and 'Keith.' Overall, I actually think I liked the short stories more than I liked the advice portion of the book. Some of the other short stories felt as if they were written for the specific purpose of proving a point made in the book. Others felt as though they were written by amateurs.
In general, despite the standard 'Recommended for...' portion of the review, I really wouldn't recommend this book.
Recommended for people who like: fiction workshopping, writing advice
I had to read this for my CRW 207 class, which is a class on workshopping fiction, mainly short stories.
Some of the bare-bones advice was good. I liked the bits that talked about dialogue and that suggested stepping away from a story before editing/revising it, as the break would give you time to have 'fresh eyes' when you go back to it. Admittedly, a lot of the advice was also the standard advice you'd get from a writing advice book: add detail, flesh out character, find your narrative POV, etc. The book definitely got repetitive and boring.
One of the writers, I'm not sure which one, is a rather pretentious sort of person too. They'll be going along with their advice and then out of the blue make a comment that's just so pompous it's off-putting. Also, there was an example in one of the character chapters where the author (and I like to think it's the same author) gave one of their own pieces as an example--"big boned, lanky, melon-breasted, her best feature [...] oblivious to her eccentricity" (134-35)--that I also found to be off-putting. It comes back to this idea that male authors have a fascination with the breasts of their female characters, and of course with the idea that said female characters are unable to identify their beauty or, in this case, eccentricities (also, is he aware how heavy that would be? Especially on someone with a 'lanky' figure).
Some of the stories provided were pretty good. I really liked 'The Red Fox Fur Coat,' 'Fiesta, 1980,' 'Sea Faries,' 'Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter,' and 'Keith.' Overall, I actually think I liked the short stories more than I liked the advice portion of the book. Some of the other short stories felt as if they were written for the specific purpose of proving a point made in the book. Others felt as though they were written by amateurs.
In general, despite the standard 'Recommended for...' portion of the review, I really wouldn't recommend this book.