Book review: The Art of Creating Story by William H. Coles.

 

Publisher's presentation

An educative volume with essays about the process of creating a fictional story; interviews with authors, editors, publishers, and a Pulitzer Prize winner on the writing process; and original short stories that illustrate concepts and techniques of storytelling in prose. Major topics include characterization, narration, character-based plotting, dialogue, drama, point of view, significance, and revision.

Biography

William H. Coles is a literary fiction writer, winner of multiple awards including finalists in His publications include five novels, collections of short fiction, and three books on the writing of fiction stories. The William Faulkner Creative Writing Competition, The Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, and others. To learn the art of writing fiction he studied in more than 100 courses and workshops with more than seventy-five authors, editors, and teachers and created storyinliteraryfiction.com, a website with resources for fiction writers, illustrators, and avid fiction readers. He was an ophthalmic surgeon specialing in ocular injury repair and reconstruction, a professor and chairman at SUNY Buffalo School of Medicine, a Regent for The American College of Surgeons, president of the Association of University Professors in Ophthalmology. He is an active jazz piano player, former President of the Gibbes Art Museum in Charleston, SC, and has lectured internationally on mechanistic biologic ophthalmic research, ophthalmic surgery, jazz, and valuing antique Georgian and federal furniture and 18th and 19th-century paintings at Emory University. He won a Mayor's award for contributions to historic preservation in Charleston, SC. and the Conrad Berens Award for best film on a medical subject. He lives and writes in Salt Lake City, Utah.

My review (Originally published on Reader's Favorite)

The Art of Creating Story by William H. Coles is a comprehensive 700-page educative guide that is packed with essays, interviews with authors, editors, publishers, original short stories displaying examples of what to do to excel at writing fictional stories, as well as enlightening blog posts. It is a must for anyone interested in literature, creativity, writing, teaching writing, well, it is perfect for teachers, writers (experienced or new to the calling), and of course students! It is a perfect and concise (yes, despite being 700-page long) volume which allows you to peruse it as a reference book depending on your issues, on the questions you want to find an answer to. It is always easy to understand, and includes such a variety of materials! H. Coles shares with us drafts, examples of analysis, writing, interviews so that we are given multiple stances on the concept of the creative process.