Elements of Writing Fiction - Plot (Elements of Fiction Writing) (Paperback)

by Ansen Dibell (Author) "If you're like me and most of the writers I've known over the years in writers' groups, at conferences and in classes, you're coming to..." (more)
Key Phrases: Lord of the Flies, Darth Vader, The Empire Strikes Back (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
This book is about identifying the choices available when creating, fixing, steering, and discovering plots and then learning what narrative problems they are apt to create and how to choose an effective strategy for solving them. The result? Strong, solid stories and novels that move. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Back Cover
"There are ways to create, fix, steer and discover plots--ways which, over a writing life, you'd eventually puzzle out for yourself," writes Ansen Dibell. "They aren't laws. They're an array of choices, things to try, once you've put a name to the particular problem you're facing now."

That's what this book is about: identifying those choices (whose viewpoint? stop and explain now, or wait? how can this lead to that?), then learning what narrative problems they are apt to create and how to choose an effective strategy for solving them. The result? Strong, solid stories and novels that move.

Inside you'll discover how to:
- test a story idea (using four simple questions) to see if it works

-convince your reader that not only is something happening, but that something's going to happen and it all matters intensely

- handle viewpoint shifts, flashbacks, and other radical jumps in your storyline weave plots with subplots

- get ready for and write your Big Scenes

- balance scene and summary narration to produce good pacing

- handle the extremes of melodrama by "faking out" your readers--making them watch your right hand while your left hand is doing something sneaky

- form subtle patterns with mirror characters and echoing incidents

- choose the best type of ending --linear or circular, happy or downbeat, or (with caution!) a trick ending

Whether your fiction is short or long, subtle or direct and hardhitting, you'll learn how to make the correct narrative choices that will lead to strong plots -- and fiction others will want to read.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Writers Digest Books (July 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0898799465
• ISBN-13: 978-0898799460
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #95,455 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highest Recommendation, January 26, 2001

By	David Rowell "www.TheTravelInsider.info" (Redmond, WA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The simple one word title of this book - "Plot" - and its slim 170 pages do not adequately hint at the wealth of guidance that is packed into every one of its pages. This is the best book on the subject of writing that I've yet purchased.

If you're like me - a hopeful author-to-be, then you're probably, also like me, casting around for some desperately needed advice and guidance on how to turn the winning story that you know you have into a published and popular novel. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be a magic formula that can be revealed, and the challenges in trying to define what is as much a creative art as a pseudo-science means that many "how to write a book" texts promise a very great deal more than they deliver.

By happy contrast, Ansen Dibell's book delivers a very great deal more than it promises. It not only gives extremely easy to follow, hard-hitting advice on plot construction and development, but it offers extra "bonus" material on just about every other aspect of authorship. Unlike some books which end up in a morass of generalities, she talks in easily understood specifics, and also uses some excellent examples of published material, while avoiding the temptation that other authors have suffered from of padding the book with many pages of unnecessary example.

To summarise, this is an excellent book that discusses most aspects of writing a novel, with Plot as its central unifying subject. It has my highest recommendation and I urge you to add it to your own collection accordingly.

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Way Too Convoluted. Nothing New In Here, February 27, 2003

By A Customer

I've read some 30 books on story craft and this is easily one of the least useful of the bunch. This author doesn't believe in Outlines but this book could have definitely benefitted from one. Not only is the information put forth in a confusing manner, the author compounds this by attempting such things as trying to make up new terminology for age old story elements (apparently in an attempt to sound original and to convince you she has some pearls of knowledge that no one else has thought of).

If you're looking for a useful source of story elements, this isn't the book. "Story" by McKee "The Writer's Journey" by Vogler and "Building Better Plots" by Kernen are FAR better, and more importantly, they are straight forward and easy to use in regards to your own work.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great Start For Plot-Newbies, April 15, 2005

By	Christopher Kokoski "Book Author" (New Albany, Indiana) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Look, the book isn't Shakespere, but for someone like me who smiled and nodded--and that's about it--when I head the term, "plot," there is good information to glean. However, even after finishing the book, I didn't feel like a master of plotting. Two of the best books on plots that I've read are "Scene and Structure," and the more recent, "Plot and Structure."