Creating Short Fiction: The Classic Guide to Writing Short Fiction [Paperback]

Damon Knight (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 15, 1997 | ISBN-10: 0312150946 | ISBN-13: 978-0312150945 | Edition: Revised

Distilled from decades of teaching and practice, this book offers clear and direct advice on structure, pacing, dialogue, getting ideas, working with the unconscious, and more. Newly revised and expanded for this Third Edition, Creating Short Fiction is a popular and widely trusted guide to writing short stories of originality, durability, and quality. Celebrated short-story author and writing instructor Knight also includes many examples and exercises that have been effective in classrooms and workshops everywhere.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"To those who hunger to be writers I commend this book without reservation."--Harlan Ellison

"What Knight doesn't know about writing the short story cannot be put into expository prose anyway."--Algis Budrys

"Knight is one of the preeminent teachers of writing in this country. [This book] should be considered essential for all beginning writers . . . not to mention a few others, who've forgotten the valuable information it contains."--Lucius Shepard, author of The Jaguar Hunter

About the Author

Damon Knight earned his reputation as a modern master of the short story with such classics as "I See You," "The Handler," "To Serve Man," and "The Country of the Kind." He and his wife, Kate Wilhelm, taught short-story writing at the Clarion Workshop for almost thirty years, during which time he worked with many of today's prominent writers. Knight has also received the C.E.S. Wood Award and the SFWA Grand Master Award for his writing.

Product Details

• Paperback: 209 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; Revised edition (March 15, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312150946
• ISBN-13: 978-0312150945
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.6 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #98,105 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 49 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply the best of its class. June 19, 1997

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

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

37 of 38 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Practical advice from a talented writer January 29, 2005

By Galen K. Valentine

Format:Paperback

Knight's, Creating Short Fiction is, perhaps ironically, a short book but he manages to cover the craft of writing from nurturing talent to getting the story completed to what its like being a writer. A lecturer at the Clarion Workshop and author of many short stories and novels he knows how to write. But he doesn't give the reader a step-by-step guide to story writing. Such a recipe, in my limited experience, doesn't exist and Knight does well to avoid trying to give one. What the reader will find are discussions about the elements every story must have and how to use them. He also discusses what a story is and is not, how to generate ideas, and even a few work habits the reader might find effective.

The elements of stories and story writing can be found in many other books. Rather than simply parrot them, Knight is candid about which techniques he doesn't like and why; but that isn't to say the would-be author is allowed to break every rule. He give examples of stories and authors that show the successful use of a particular element or technique e.g. first person subjective point-of-view. And Knight includes diagrams that make the concept of story structure and viewpoint easier to understand. All of this advice is given in a conversational style that is never condescending.

Creating Short Fiction helped me to understand that, like painting or drawing, writing is highly individualized. Every art form has its accepted rules and techniques. And each artist must learn to build upon that foundation, combining the fundamental elements into unique patterns.

There are a few editorial errors, mainly of omission, that make the book feel as if it were the choicest bits from a much longer work. Overall this is an excellent book for the beginning writer, and perhaps the experienced one.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Where to Begin and Good to Come Back To January 18, 2003

By John N. Thornburg

Format:Paperback

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.