Oakley Hall, writing teacher emeritus, invites readers as his apprentices to study the inner workings of fiction, the foundation upon which all good stories depend. Inside, readers will find the elements of fiction examined and illuminated, with insights into how each element must interact to create a distinctive story. Hall covers every fictive technique, from plot and characterization to word choice, voice and style. The key to Hall's teaching method is his brilliant use of examples. Throughout the book, he emphasizes the importance of reading and evaluating fiction with an eye toward craft. To this end, he offers more than one hundred excerpts from literature, illustrating through analysis and advice how fiction works. With Hall's guidance, readers will learn to craft fiction that is tuned like a precision timepiece.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Oakley Hall is the author of short stories, novellas, libretti, mainstream novels and mysteries. His novel Warlock was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and was made into a feature film. For more than twenty years he was director of the writing programme at the University of California at Irvine.
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
For the Beginning Writer,
By Mark Reston "Mark the Spark" (San Francisco) - See all my reviews
This review is from: How Fiction Works (Paperback)
I can see how this book might really help out a beginning writer. It contains fine insights and addresses topics not usually covered in a writers manual (such as use of negative space on the page, myth and models in storytelling, serendipity for the writer). It also covers a lot of the basics, such as the use of adverbs, verbs, nouns, modifiers etc, as well as assonance, alliteration and rhythm, although if one is interested in learning about the latter three items, I think Mary Oliver does a much better job. Still, there's enough here to recommend it for the beginning writer.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent for Learning the Art & Craft of Writing Fiction (Novels and Short Stories),
By C. J. Singh (Berkeley, California, USA) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: How Fiction Works (Paperback)
This book is an updated version of Oakley Hall's "The Art & Craft of Novel Writing." Moreover, it covers short-story writing as well.HOW FICTION WORKS comprises chapters on craft elements such as specification, sensory details, language, indirection, point of view, characterization, and plot. To illustrate his points on the craft of fiction writing, Hall presents numerous examples from masters such as Gustave Flaubert, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad as well as great contemporary writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cormac McCarthy, and Anne Tyler. I browsed through his highly acclaimed earlier book The Art and Craft of Novel Writing, published in 1989, but selected HOW FICTION WORKS, published in 2001, as it's an updated version -- includes examples from the writings of Philip Roth, Don Delillo, Charles Frazier, and others. Moreover, it covers writing short stories (my current focus) as well as novels. I disagree with the reviewer who wrote, "I hated, hated, hated the book . . . . (because) by the final third of the book, the author is into total self promotion and it gets on ones nerves." What's in the final third of the book? In the author's words: "Here follow two short stories of my own. They were written when I was a beginning writer." Hall includes a commentary on the shortcomings of the second story: ". . . a social protest story and the characters are political constructs. The young author here let his symbols jump all over him." This sounds more like self-denigration. Oakley Hall's giving examples from his own writing strengthens the book. Only on the jacket are his impressive credentials mentioned: published 21 novels, served as director of the MFA program at the University of California at Irvine for more than two decades, and directed the Squaw Valley Writers' Summer Conference for three decades. Excellent book for self-teaching.
2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
How Fiction Works,
By Novels Too "Linda" (St. Louis, MO) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: How Fiction Works (Paperback)
I love this book. I am not a writer and I don't intend to be one, however, this book has totally changed how I read and how I perceive my books. I now know why I prefer certain authors more than others. It's always easy to recognize a beautiful phrase, but now, I know what it is about the composition of that particular phrase or sentence that makes it work so well.This book is also easy to read; not too text bookish.
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