What If?: Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers

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Overview

What If? is the first handbook for writers based on the idea that specific exercises are one of the most useful and provocative methods for mastering the art of writing fiction. With more than twenty-five years of experience teaching creative writing between them, Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter offer more than seventy-five exercises for both beginners and more experienced writers. These exercises are designed to develop and refine two basic skills: writing like a writer and, just as important, thinking like a writer. They deal with such topics as discovering where to start and end a story; learning when to use dialogue and when to use indirect discourse; transforming real events into fiction; and finding language that
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More About This Book

Overview

What If? is the first handbook for writers based on the idea that specific exercises are one of the most useful and provocative methods for mastering the art of writing fiction. With more than twenty-five years of experience teaching creative writing between them, Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter offer more than seventy-five exercises for both beginners and more experienced writers. These exercises are designed to develop and refine two basic skills: writing like a writer and, just as important, thinking like a writer. They deal with such topics as discovering where to start and end a story; learning when to use dialogue and when to use indirect discourse; transforming real events into fiction; and finding language that both sings and communicates precisely. What If? will be an essential addition to every writer's library, a welcome and much-used companion, a book that gracefully borrows a whisper from the muse.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780062720061
  • Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
  • Publication date: 11/28/1991
  • Edition description: Older Edition
  • Edition number: 1
  • Pages: 256
  • Sales rank: 227,457
  • Product dimensions: 5.31 (w) x 8.00 (h) x 0.57 (d)

Meet the Author

Anne Bernays
Anne Bernays

Anne Bernays, a novelist and writing teacher, is the author of eight novels, including Professor Romeo and Growing Up Rich, as well as two works of nonfiction, including The Language of Names written with Justin Kaplan and What If? written with Pamela Painter. Her articles and essays have appeared in numerous major publications, among them The Nation, the New York Times, Town & Country, and Sports Illustrated. She lives in Cambridge and Truro, Massachusetts with her husband, Justin Kaplan. They have three daughters and six grandchildren.

Biography

Anne Bernays is a novelist (including Professor Romeo and Growing Up Rich) and coauthor, with her husband, Justin Kaplan, of Back Then: Two Lives in 1950s New York. Her articles, book reviews and essays have appeared in such major publications as The New York Times, Sports Illustrated and The Nation. A longtime teacher of writing, she is coauthor, with Pamela Painter, of the textbook What If? Ms. Bernays currently teaches at Harvard's Nieman Foundation. She and Mr. Kaplan have six grandchildren. They live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Truro, Cape Cod.

Author biography courtesy of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Good To Know

Some fun and fascinating out takes from our interview with Bernays:

"I've written a memoir, Back Then, which has a lot of dicey stuff in it. And it's a good read! I'm fixated on how things work and how groups of people work with and against each other. I'm also a passionate liberal, and am convinced that this administration is so business-oriented that it's forgotten to serve the people who elected it. I'm a lifelong Democrat and have voted in every election since 1952."

"We have three daughters, five grandsons and one granddaughter. I think about them all the time. They have pet names for me. I don't see them nearly enough."

"Justin and I play word games at breakfast. I'm a demon walker and walk about ten miles – briskly -- a week. We have two dogs, Pansy and Daisy, who seem to occupy more time and emotional space than they ought to."

"Justin and I love to travel. We go on these ‘educational' trips, where Harvard professors tell you what you're going to see or what you have just seen."

    1. Hometown:
      Cambridge, Massachusetts
    1. Date of Birth:
      September 14, 1930
    2. Place of Birth:
      New York, New York
    1. Education:
      Wellesley College, 1948-1950; B A., Barnard College, 1952

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

First sentences are doors to worlds. -Ursula K. Le Guin

New writers oftne find beginnings difficult—whether they're starting a story or a novel—because they take the word "beginning" too literally. They cast around for the "beginning" of a story—forgetting that beginnings rarely have the necessary ingredients for trouble, for conflict, or for complication. Your story can begin with dialogue, narrative summary, description, whatever, but it must begin in medias res, in the middle of things. You must resist the temptation to give the reader too lengthy an explanation as to how things got to this point. Remember, you are trying to hook the reader's attention, to pull the reader into your story so that he won't wonder, What's on television tonight?

Another stumbling block to beginning a story is that new writers think they have to know where their story is going and how it will end—before they begin. Not true. Flannery O'Connor says, "If you start with a real personality, a real character, then something is bound to happen; and you don't have to know what before you begin. In fact, it may be better if you don't know what before you begin. You ought to be able to discover something from your stories. If you don't, probably nobody else will."

The following exercises are designed to encourage you to think about real characters who are involved in situations that are already under way—situations that are starting to unravel because of, or in spite of, the desires and actions of their beleaguered characters. Don't worry about middles or endings yet. Just give yourself over to settingstories in motion—you will soon know which stories capture your imagination and seem unstoppable, which stories demand to be finished. Till that time, begin and begin and begin.

Table of Contents

1. Beginnings.


2. Notebooks, Journals, and Memory.


3. Characterization.


4. Perspective, Distance, and Point of View.


5. Dialogue.


6. Interior Landscapes.


7. Plot.


8. The Elements of Style.


9. A Writer's Tools.


10. Invention and Transformation.


11. Revision: Rewriting Is Writing.


12. Games.


13. Learning from the Greats.


14. Sudden, Flash, and Microfiction: The Short Story.

20/20, by Linda Brewer.

Excuses I Have Already Used by Antonia Clark.

Mackerel Night by Laurence Davies.

The Custodian by Brian Hinshaw.

Girl by Jamaica Kincaid.

Confirmation Names by Mariette Lippo.

It Would've Been Hot by Melissa McCracken.

My Mother's Gifts by Judith Claire Mitchell.

The New Year by Pamela Painter.

Wants by Grace Paley.

No One's a Mystery by Elizabeth Tallent.

Vision out of the Corner of One Eye by Luisa Valenzeula.


15. A Collection of Short Fiction.

Happy Endings by Margaret Atwood.

Christmas Eve at Johnson's Drugs N Goods by Toni Cade Bambara.

Gryphon by Charles Baxter.

Some of Our Work with Monsters by Ron Carlson.

Cathedral by Raymond Carver.

Sister by Deborah Joy Corey.

White Angel by Michael Cunningham.

How to Talk to a Hunter by Pam Houston.

Live Life King Sized by Hester Kaplan.

The Niece by Margot Livesey.

Shiloh by Bobbie Ann Mason.

Sheep by Thomas McNeely.

Five Points by Alice Munro.

A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor.

Wolinsky's Resort by Edward Schwarzschild.

The Appaloosa House by Sharon Sheehe Stark.

Under the Roof by Kate Wheeler.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 3.5
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Sort by: Showing all of 4 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted November 7, 2008

    I Also Recommend:

    9780641880643 9780812975482 9780393309331 9780195165739

    good for teaching beginning writers

    I used this text in one of my beginning writing courses this semester and the students found it very helpful. It's not really for more experienced writers although some of the exercises are quite good. There's nothing overwhelmingly original here but if you're looking for a good text for teaching writing, this is much better than most.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted November 13, 2002

    A must for any writer or teacher of writing

    As a writing teacher, I found this book to be the best source that I have found yet for focusing and tuning student talents. There are so many exercises that can be used immediately in the classroom. I can't say enough about the improvement that I saw in my student's writing after introducing them to the prompts in this book. I would highly recommend this to any writing teacher or writer.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted February 7, 2002

    More of the same in many other books

    The claim here is that these authors have devised a system that is uniquely their own. Not so. This is just a rehash of the same old thing that is in so many other books. It is more of a textbook than anything else. And not a very good one at that. Don't waste your time. Try some of the book suggestions I've listed instead.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 7, 2001

    Great for Teaching Writing to High School Students!

    I used this book in college for a creative writing class I took from Mary Clearman Blew (a published author) and kept it even after the semester was over. I began teaching English and creative writing at a private Christian school four years ago and was asked to create an elective creative writing course. This book really helped me through that first year to create a syllabus, course outline, and lessons throughout the year. It also has a collection of short stories that I have used in my Junior and Senior English courses as well, so I would reccommend this book to anyone who would like guidance in the teaching of writing.

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