Creating the Story: Guides for Writers

Here, gathered in one book, are all the tips and tricks-of-the-trade that published writers have been passing along to new writers in classes and in individual conferences for years. Authors Rebecca Rule and Susan Wheeler have created a text that teaches students how to scrutinize published prose so they can teach themselves writing skills and techniques. Creating the Story is filled with short, no-nonsense, practical guides that writers of all ages can dip in and out of as they have need. The exercises that conclude each section not only help writers develop essential skills, but also yield ideas for stories. Readers will learn such practical skills as: writing scenes, summarizing and stretching time, using flashbacks, moving characters from one place in time to another, having characters think on the page, writing about love and violence, choosing the most effective tense to use, and much more.

About the Author :
Rebecca Rule taught fiction writing and composition for several years at the University of New Hampshire, where she continues to teach in the Summer Studies Program for teachers. Her collection of stories, Wood Heat, was published in 1992 by Nightshade Press of Troy, Maine. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, her work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Yankee, Potato Eyes, Whetstone, New Hampshire Profiles, and others. She was awarded the 1992 Outstanding Emerging Writer Award by the New Hampshire Writers and Publishers Project and the 1990 Whetstone Award for Fiction. She writes fiction, essays, and reviews from her home in Northwood, New Hampshire, where she lives with her husband, John, and her daughter, Adi. Susan Wheeler has had stories published in The North American Review, Willow Springs, The Lyndon Review, The Bradford Review, and other literary magazines. Her articles on teaching writing in high schools have appeared in NEI Croft, a division of Prentice Hall. She currently teaches in the English Department at the University of New Hampshire and at the Molasses Pond Summer Writers Conference in Maine. She has taught at the University of New Hampshire in Manchester and has been a visiting teacher in the Manchester Public Schools. She and her husband live in Durham, New Hampshire, and have two children.

Review :
"Rule and Wheeler encourage writers to look inward for their fictional material. . . . They offer plenty of accessible concrete advice on matters large and small."-English Journal