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Product Description
Product Description
Techniques of the Selling Writer provides solid instruction for people who want to write and sell fiction, not just to talk and study about it. It gives the background, insights, and specific procedures needed by all beginning writers. Here one can learn how to group words into copy that moves, movement into scenes, and scenes into stories; how to develop characters, how to revise and polish, and finally, how to sell the product.
No one can teach talent, but the practical skills of the professional writer's craft can certainly be taught. The correct and imaginative use of these kills can shorten any beginner's apprenticeship by years.
This is the book for writers who want to turn rejection slips into cashable checks.
About the Author
You need to know only four things in order to write a solid story: how to group words into motivation-reaction units; how to group motivation-reaction units into scenes and sequels; how to group scenes and sequels into story pattern; how to create the kind of characters that give a story life. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best book ever published on the craft of writing,
By
This review is from: Techniques of the Selling Writer (Paperback)
If you could have only one book on writing craft, this would be the one to pick. This book is confusing for beginning writers but invaluable once you get a little experience. I suggest the reader take in only one topic at a time. Mr. Swain packed a lot into each and every word and his chapters take a while to digest. But once you get it, everything you've ever learned about writing falls into place. In my writing group, writers who just don't get Swain seem to like Jack Bickham's Scene and Sequel. But that's a review for another day.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best book on writing around,
By
This review is from: Techniques of the Selling Writer (Paperback)
This book was recommended to me before I sold my first book, and I'm certain what I learned in reading it contributed to that first sale and all the ones that followed (I've sold 33 novels in all). I highly recommend it, not only for novices, but for all writers.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
This book got me published,
By
This review is from: Techniques of the Selling Writer (Paperback)
Although Swain's book was originally published in 1965, there's a very good reason why it's still in print. The information he presents is solid, useful and timeless.The book has 10 chapters. The first, Fiction and You, tells what the writer needs to know and gives common traps writers fall into. Then he discusses things like rules and the creative act of writing. His style is terse and sentences are short. That makes it easy to find specific information when you go back later to look for it. In the second chapter he gets down to serious business -- words. How to find them, how to use them and make them clear and concise. The third chapter is all about feelings and how to use them. In the fourth he goes into the necessity for conflict, what to do and not to do in building it. Chapter Five presents the strategies of fiction. "Fiction..." he writes, "creates an especially vivid vicarious tension...Your job as a writer is to control and manipulate this tension." He also delineates the source of story satisfaction and describes how to produce it. Chapter 6 is all about getting a story started, lining up story elements, developing the middle of the story and winding it up. Story people and the importance of characters and character development are covered in Chapter 7. Planning the story, recognizing good story material, preparing to write, and what you need in order to succeed as a writer wind up the last few chapters. He devotes one page to marketing advice and that simply directs the reader to study the markets. This is, without a doubt, one of the most useful and easiest to use books on the craft of writing that has ever been published. Its advice is timeless. This book should be in every writer's collection.
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