With clarity, verve, and the sure instincts of a good teacher, Madison Smartt Bell offers a roll-up-your-sleeves approach to writing in this much-needed book.
Focusing on the big picture as well as the crucial details, Bell examines twelve stories by both established writers (including Peter Taylor, Mary Gaitskill, and Carolyn Chute) and his own former students. A story's use of time, plot, character, and other elements of fiction are analyzed, and readers are challenged to see each story's flaws and strengths. Careful endnotes bring attention to the ways in which various writers use language. Bell urges writers to develop the habit of thinking about form and finding the form that best suits their subject matter and style. His direct and practical advice allows writers to find their own voice and imagination.
Narrative Design: Working with Imagination, Craft, and Form
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Editorial Reviews
Review
An excellent study, first of its kind. -- Josh Allen, Queens College
An original approach; useful; excellent and lucid introduction. -- Wendy Coural, Cabrillo College
Bell does the best job I have come across so far of explaining what the traditional linear structure of a story is and why a story should have it. -- Jeff Minerd, co-editor, Writer's Carousel
Here are terrific examples of line-by-line reading of terrific stories. Bell offers the student reader terrific examples of line by line readings of terrific stories. I'm impressed -- Elizabeth Evans, University of Arizona
It's the first book I've seen that gets to the heart of the matter and won't let go....Useful to classroom writers and writing students of every stripe. -- Alan Davis, editor, American Fiction
Madison Bell has chosen fine stories by writers whose work is not shopworn by having gone from one anthology to another for years....His extremely detailed and often brilliant commentary can often take more pages than the story itself....This is the best book of its kind that I have seen since Lionel Trilling's The Experience of Literature. -- Clarence Brown, Trenton Times
Madison Smartt Bell's Narrative Design is one of those books you might need to take with you to your writerly desert isle. It offers all of the essential instructions for writing fiction, as well as providing wonderful examples of the end product, and then supplying brilliant analysis of them. His is a thorough, fascinating, forgiving, good-hearted, unique, and - most impressively - useful book. -- Antonya Nelson, author of Living to Tell Them and Nobody's Girl
Offers concrete advice for organizing fiction. -- Laurie Champion, Sul Ross State University
This is the book I've wanted someone to offer for twenty years. Structure is by far the most effective tool to teach beginning fiction writers. -- Sam Blate, Montgomery College
This is the most insightful, outright useful, most inventive guide to writing that I've seen. -- Howard Norman, author of The Bird Artist
An original approach; useful; excellent and lucid introduction. -- Wendy Coural, Cabrillo College
Bell does the best job I have come across so far of explaining what the traditional linear structure of a story is and why a story should have it. -- Jeff Minerd, co-editor, Writer's Carousel
Here are terrific examples of line-by-line reading of terrific stories. Bell offers the student reader terrific examples of line by line readings of terrific stories. I'm impressed -- Elizabeth Evans, University of Arizona
It's the first book I've seen that gets to the heart of the matter and won't let go....Useful to classroom writers and writing students of every stripe. -- Alan Davis, editor, American Fiction
Madison Bell has chosen fine stories by writers whose work is not shopworn by having gone from one anthology to another for years....His extremely detailed and often brilliant commentary can often take more pages than the story itself....This is the best book of its kind that I have seen since Lionel Trilling's The Experience of Literature. -- Clarence Brown, Trenton Times
Madison Smartt Bell's Narrative Design is one of those books you might need to take with you to your writerly desert isle. It offers all of the essential instructions for writing fiction, as well as providing wonderful examples of the end product, and then supplying brilliant analysis of them. His is a thorough, fascinating, forgiving, good-hearted, unique, and - most impressively - useful book. -- Antonya Nelson, author of Living to Tell Them and Nobody's Girl
Offers concrete advice for organizing fiction. -- Laurie Champion, Sul Ross State University
This is the book I've wanted someone to offer for twenty years. Structure is by far the most effective tool to teach beginning fiction writers. -- Sam Blate, Montgomery College
This is the most insightful, outright useful, most inventive guide to writing that I've seen. -- Howard Norman, author of The Bird Artist
About the Author
Madison Smartt Bell is the author of twelve novels, his most recent being The Stone That the Builder Refused. He teaches at Goucher College and lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I saw that pitiful lil stankin azz review and HAD to say something because this book deserves way more than two stars. For anyone SERIOUS about writing and actually *wants* to be in a class, this is the only book that I can think of that will actually deconstruct a story line by line and break down its significance into sections that make you discover how they work and WHY they work so well. The notes are so detailed that you will be shown things that you would have never figured out on your own, and it will teach you to read ALL work like that. You learn on a sentence level, a structural level and a thematic level and how to combine those crucial elements together, yet make it look effortless (if you're lucky).
I was sold with the very first story by Mary Gaitskill, who I positively adore. Then a Peter Taylor story? AND Ernest Gaines? Forget it! Bell combines greats with unknowns and offers up a true MFA level lesson on craft, with some amazing stories. I haven't seen a book like it and am SO glad that it exists. This is a must-have, which I say about a lot of the books I review, but if you think about all the writing books out there, there are only a few you really need and this is one of them. I don't write reviews for books I am indifferent about - I don't even READ them. So if you know what's good for you and your writing, you will get this jont! LOL
I was sold with the very first story by Mary Gaitskill, who I positively adore. Then a Peter Taylor story? AND Ernest Gaines? Forget it! Bell combines greats with unknowns and offers up a true MFA level lesson on craft, with some amazing stories. I haven't seen a book like it and am SO glad that it exists. This is a must-have, which I say about a lot of the books I review, but if you think about all the writing books out there, there are only a few you really need and this is one of them. I don't write reviews for books I am indifferent about - I don't even READ them. So if you know what's good for you and your writing, you will get this jont! LOL
2 of 5 people found the following review helpful
By Mia.
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book is very helpful for writters and students. I'm currently reading this book for Fiction English. This book has many advantages because it includes an explanation sentense by sentense of why the author wrote his/her story in a certain way. The book also includes a section where it tells you the plot, setting, characters, dialogue, imagery and so on, about each reading. And how the techniques the authors use can be used in your (my) own writing.
0 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
the book is almost complete garbage... and underlined in racism. i got the best use from the Glossary and i wish it had more words.
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