Beginnings, Middles & Ends (Elements of Fiction Writing)

Beginnings, Middles & Ends (Elements of Fiction Writing)
by Nancy Kress

Beginnings, Middles & Ends (Elements of Fiction Writing)
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Book Summary Information

Author: Nancy Kress
Edition: Paperback
Published: 1999-05
ISBN: 0898799058
Number of pages: 149
Publisher: Writer's Digest Books

Book Reviews of Beginnings, Middles & Ends (Elements of Fiction Writing)

Book Review: Brilliant, pages 84 to 87 alone justify the price of the book
Summary: 5 Stars

I have always been told I'm a "good writer" and I have always wanted to "write" (specifically, make up stories and put them on paper. And despite starting with Aristotle's Poetics in high school, I guess I just didn't get it. Even so, I have spent most of my adult life in jobs that were dependent on writing and reasoning skills but, despite the number of stories in my head, never knew what to do with them.

So thank you, Nancy Kress for telling me how to go about writing a story. It could be that I'm just dense, but the reading I've been doing lately (like Noah Lukeman's "The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile" and "Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction--and Get It Published" by by Susan Rabiner and Alfred Fortunato, both excellent, five-stars from me, at least) has been positively enlightening. And "Beginnings, Middles, and Endings" is one of the best. Frankly, it's hard to rave too much about this book, because there's no much to rave about. It's clear, crisp, orderly, incredibly organized (especially when you consider that she's dealing with what is essentially how to tell a story, no small task in itself). But even more, is enormous fun to read and leads inevitably to that great AH-HA! moment, somewhere in pages 84 - 87.

In general, the two series "Elements of Fiction Writing" and the Writer's Digest books on writing fiction are excellent and, in addition to being downright enlightening, are just pure, huge fun. For the first time in my life, I feel as if I know what I'm doing. Too bad it took so long, but there I was one morning, standing in front of the mirror lost in the thousand yard stare when all of a sudden my writing focus burst out at me like a super-nova. And ever since then, my life has simply made sense. Now THAT'S a mid-life crisis.

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