A Short Story Writer's Companion [Paperback]

Tom Bailey (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0195135555 | ISBN-13: 978-0195135558 | Publication Date: December 28, 2000

Ideal for anyone interested in writing short stories or for introductory courses in fiction writing, A Short Story Writer's Companion is a highly accessible guide to the craft of creating short fiction. Written in an engaging style, this book enables beginning writers to recognize what works in writing short stories, what doesn't, and why. Part One of A Short Story Writer's Companion discusses fictional truth and significant detail, helping students of the form to make good sense of the often taught creative writing maxim, "Show, don't tell!" Part Two delves into the elements of fiction: character, point of view, plot, setting and time, metaphor, and voice. The author uses specific examples from a variety of widely anthologized short stories to demonstrate how each component functions as a part of the whole and offers advice on the techniques of using each of the elements successfully. Part Three closely examines the fiction-writing process and helps guide writers who may never have written a short story before through drafting, revising, and polishing short stories of their own.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is the best of its type ever written. Every aspiring fiction writer should have it on his/her shelf and consult it often."--Arnold Talentino, State University of New York at Cortland

"A remarkable work--very insightful and honest."--Brian J. Benson, North Carolina A and T University

About the Author

Tom Bailey is at Susquehanna College.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (December 28, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195135555
• ISBN-13: 978-0195135558
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #709,279 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars On Writing Short Stories, second edition, March 18, 2008

By 

C. J. Singh (Berkeley, California, USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: A Short Story Writer's Companion (Paperback)

Addendum: (28 July 2010)

The second edition of the just published On Writing Short Stories is a single volume 432-page version that combines and upgrades the first editions of "A Short-Story Writer's Companion" and "On Writing Short Stories." The new book comprises two parts: expository essays on craft; and an anthology of short stories.

Tom Bailey contributes an excellent 55-page exposition of short-story writing basics: Character, Plot, Setting, Metaphor, and Voice. Other essays on craft include Francine Prose's " What Makes a Short Story" (9 pages) ; Joyce Carol Oates's "Reading as a Writer: The Artist as Craftsman" (13 pages); and C. Michael Curtis's "Publishers and Publishing" (13 pages). The expository essays constitute a third of the book.

The anthology comprises thirty stories, nearly twice the number in the first edition. They range from classics such as Guy de Maupassant's "The String"; Anton Chekov's "The Lady with the Pet Dog"; William Faulkner's " A Rose for Emily"; to contemporary stories such as Margaret Atwood's "Happy Endings"; Joyce Carol Oates's "Heat"; and Tobias Wolff's "Bullet in the Brain." Bailey has added a multicultural dimension by including outstanding contemporary stories like Jhumpa Lahiri's "A Temporary Matter"; Z Z Packer's "Brownies"; and Junot Diaz's "Nilda."

Each story is introduced with a quote by its writer "to place the writer and his or her shiort story and style in the context of the history of the genre." A brief biographical note follows the quote. For example, Jhumpa Lahiri's quote: "It interests me to imagine characters shifting from one situation and one location to another.... When you grow up the child of an immigrant you are always -- or at least I was -- very conscious of what it means or might mean to be uprooted or to uproot yourself...." "Indian American authoress Jhumpa Lahiri, winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for her short story collection 'The Interpreter of Maladies,'...." I was astonished by the usage "authoress" in a literary book published in 2010. (Lahiri does not include "The" in her book's title. ) On rereading the preface, I learned that the biographical notes are not Tom Bailey's work; he assigned them to one of his students.

The exercises at the end of each of Bailey's essays on craft elements -- totalling fifty exercises -- make the new edition a five-star book for self-teaching or as a source for writing workshops.

-- C. J. Singh
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The following is a copy of my review of the first editions of Bailey's "On Writing Short Stories" and "A Short-Story Writer's Companion"

Whenever asked to recommend one basic book on the craft of short-story writing, I choose Tom Bailey's "A Short-Story Writer's Companion" and the companion anthology edited by him, "On Writing Short Stories." Okay, that makes two books; however, with the duplicate material excised, the two could easily be republished as one 350-page book.

In this brief book (184 pages), Tom Bailey helps the beginning writer learn more about the craft of short-story writing than the long-standing textbook "Writing Fiction" by Janet Burroway (434 pages) and the recent textbook "The Making of a Story" by Alice LaPlante (672 pages). These three craft-writers include several of the same short stories -- such as Flannery O'Connor's "Everything That Rises Must Converge," Tobias Wolff's "Bullet in the Brain," Tim O' Brien's "The Things They Carried." However, Tom Bailey comments on the craft elements of each story in much greater detail, making it an excellent self-teaching book. He introduces the quotes from the stories so lucidly that his book is easily accessible even without the anthology. Bailey instructs more in fewer pages by his superior strategy of providing more detailed craft analyses of carefully chosen stories.

Unlike Burroway and LaPlante, Bailey presents one of his own published stories, "Snow Dreams," to illustrate the writing, copyediting, and publishing processes. And a very well-written story it is, indicating that Bailey is master of not only the craft but also the art of short-story writing.

-- C J Singh

==================================
More details?

The anthology edited by Bailey, On Writing Short Stories (see my review on amazon)
comprises all of the stories he analyzes in detail in his
"A Short-Story Writer's Companion."

Eighteen stories:
Among them are nineteenth-century classics (Maupassant's "The Strings,"
Chekov's "The Lady with the Pet Dog");
twentieth-century classics (Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants,"
Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily,"
Carver's "Cathedral");
contemporary stories (Cynthia Ozick's "The Shawl,"
John Updike's "A & P,"
Joyce Carol Oates's "Heat,"
Susan Minot's "Lust,"
Louise Erdrich's "Saint Marie").

The anthology also presents illuminating essays by:
Francine Prose, "What Makes a Short Story?";
Joyce Carol Oates, "Reading as a Writer--The Artist as Craftsman";
Andre Dubus, "The Habit of Writing";
Frank Conroy "The Writer's Workshop";
and C. Michael Curtis, "Publishers and Publishing."

Conroy's essay demystifies the Iowa Writer's Workshop model that continues to prevail in MFA programs in Creative Writing.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars useful for writers and teachers, November 4, 2003

By 

Jay S. Varner "JSVarner" (Wilmington, NC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Short Story Writer's Companion (Paperback)

Tom Bailey's "A Short Story Writer's Companion" is one of the most helpful writing books that I've read (the others being Bailey's own "On Writing Short Stories" and John Gardner's "The Art of Fiction" and "On Becoming a Novelist"). Bailey's book is steeped in the words of other writers but never showboats his extensive knowledge-each writer's words are cited and Bailey quickly pulls them into the points that he hammers home: whether it be drawing from a Eudora Welty quote to illustrate the many functions of setting or citing David Foster Wallace and William Gass on point of view. Reading Bailey not only informs you on how to write but about writers as well. It serves as a great launching board for these authors.

But Bailey never drowns in outside sources. His own prose is often just as well crafted as those authors he cites and to prove that he's not simply blowing smoke, Bailey includes his Pushcart-winning story "Snow Dreams." It's a dark, character-driven tragedy set in a fully realized world that make not only a gut-wrenching story but promises to be a knockout novel in 2004.

Also included are exercises for young writers to hone their craft. I found these to be very helpful in the few workshops that I've had the opportunity to lead. Ultimately, that proves the value of this book: it's useful not only students and writers but to teachers as well.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not quite what I was looking for, January 9, 2010

By 

Kyle Callahan (Poultney, VT United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: A Short Story Writer's Companion (Paperback)

The first thing to know about this book is that the author has his heart in the right place. The tone of the book feels just as the title says, like you have a friendly companion helping you out on your journey through the process of writing short stories. Unfortunately, this companion seems to little more than a compilation of several other books, so instead of that friend offering any direct help, it's like he's saying, "Well, let's get that John Gardner book down from the shelf, and see what he says." You'd be better off cutting out the middle man and going directly to the source material.