Creative Writer's Handbook / Edition 5

by Philip Jason, Allan Lefcowitz

Overview

This handbook is the perfect reference for beginning creative writers. It offers abundant illustrations, exercises, and useful techniques in all genres. While emphasizing problem-solving and the mastery of literary conventions, this handbook also takes the apprentice writer on a journey from inspiration to revision.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780136050520
Publisher:	Pearson Education
Publication date:	03/23/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

Read an Excerpt

In this edition we have given more attention to the interrelationships among genres. Though techniques of character development or dialogue may appear irrelevant to writing poetry or nonfiction, they are not. Nor are the techniques of sound patterns beside the point when one comes to write a play or a story. As we tell students in our workshops, what makes writing both fascinating and difficult is the fact that everything counts.

Almost everywhere, we have added and replaced examples, expanded sections, deleted some material and added other material. We have tried to make the book more readable, and we have added tools like the "scam sheet" and "Proofreading Check List" in Chapter 16. Chapter 2 has new material on the journal as a literary form. Chapter 4 includes an enhanced discussion of style. Chapter 5 attends more fully to electronic research. We have added new stories to Chapter 12 as well as a creative nonfiction essay that is not a memoir. In Chapter 15, two ten-minute plays have replaced Trifles because we felt shorter plays would be more helpful models for beginning writers. We have deleted and added exercises. In short, we have tried to do what a revision ought to do.

If you are coming to The Creative Writer's Handbook for the first time, you may be overwhelmed by both the amount of detail and the number of questions we ask you to consider as well as the sizeable number of exercises. Don't be. Our idea was to provide you with a smorgasbord from which to choose what tempts your palate.

We wish to thank the following reviewers for their valuable contribution: Joan Connor, Ohis University, and Juliet W. Kincaid, Johnson County Community College.

We want to stress again that this book is about useful techniques for the beginner. No book teaches; practice does.

Finally, we want to thank those students, colleagues, and friends who have helped us to improve the work.

ABL

Table of Contents

• Anthology of Poems
• Part I A Writer’s Concerns
• 1 Working like a Writer
• 2 Journal/Research/Invention
• 3 Point of View
• 4 Language Is Your Medium
• Part II The Concerns of the Poet
• 5 The Elements of Poetry
• 6 Practicing Poetry
• 7 Poetry Problems
• Part III The Concerns of the Storyteller
• 8 The Elements of Fiction
• 9 Narration and Its Techniques
• 10 Creative Nonfiction
• 11 Stories and Nonfiction
• Part IV The Concerns of the Playwright
• 12 The Elements of Drama
• 13 Dialogue and Its Problems
• 14 Plays and Screen Plays
• Part V The Writer’s Business
• 15 From Drafting to Revision to Submission
• Glossary of Key Terms
• Acknowledgments
• Index

Editorial Reviews

Teaches beginning writers to tap and shape their creative energies. Introductory chapters discuss a writer's motivations, journal keeping, point of view, language, and the relationship of invention and research. Subsequent sections address individual genres such as poetry, fiction and nonfiction prose, and drama, and discuss the business of writing. Numerous examples in the text include stories by Joyce, Hemingway, and Salman Rushdie, among others, and more than 30 poems. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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