Book review: Creating Literary Stories: A Fiction Writer's Guide by William H. Coles.

Publisher's presentation

An essential guide for every writer of fiction. Learn: Character, Narration, Structure, Dialogue, Point of View, Writing in Scene, Drama (Conflict-Action-Resolution), Humor, Revision

William H. Coles is the award-winning author of short stories, essays on writing, interviews, and novels in contests such as The Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and the William Faulkner Creative Writing Competition, among others. He is the creator of storyinliteraryfiction.com, a site dedicated to educational material, a workshop, and examples for writers seeking to create lasting character-based fiction with strong dramatic plots that stimulate thought about the human condition. He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.

My review (Originally published on Reader's Favorite)

Creating Literary Stories: A Fiction Writer's Guide by William H. Coles explores all aspects of storytelling and literary fiction writing. It includes many aspects from characterization to proofreading. It is comprehensive, clear, concise, and engaging while being demanding of the writer-to-be. I appreciated the definitions of essential words at the beginning of the first chapters as reminders of what we are exactly discussing (as there can be so many misconceptions about literature and the creative process), as well as the quotations, in particular from Hamlet, to illustrate notions and help the reader better grasp concepts. The ideas to improve a dialogue are especially interesting and include what to avoid as well as various drafts of one example. All the essentials of writing and literature are dealt with, for instance, point of view, narration, characterization, narrative distance, change, and conflict,... Revision is also comprehensively dealt with, including the questions we should ask ourselves when we want to proofread and improve our novels. To conclude this beautifully written guide, the appendix allows you to delve into the reasons why you are writing in the first place.