By Cunning & Craft: Sound Advice and Practical Wisdom for Fiction Writers - Hardcover

Selgin, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1582974918 ISBN 13: 9781582974910

Publisher: Writers Digest Books, 2007

Synopsis

Ten Lessons for the Fiction Writer

&break;&break;Writing successful fiction is a balance between trusting one's own instincts and making the right conscious choices. In By Cunning & Craft, award-winning novelist and short-story writer Peter Selgin shows you how to combine the instinctive process of creation with sound technical ingenuity.

&break;&break;With precise instruction and examples from classic and best-selling works, this authoritative guide helps you master the ten essential fiction-writing elements: inspiration; character; point of view; structure and plot; theme; dialogue; description; scenes, summary, and flashback; voice and style; and revision.

&break;&break;Whether you're facing the blank pages of a first draft or trying to revise a completed manuscript, By Cunning & Craft provides you with the guidance you need to outfox common writing pitfalls and make sure your work isn't wanting in wit - or perfection.

About this title

From the Publisher:

There is craft and there is cunning. There is the struggle to get published at all. But there is also the chance that you will do something extraordinary. Peter Selgin illustrates the tricks, both basic and sophisticated. But greatness is what he's really interested in. He thrusts the readers into the company of those who wrote magnificently. Salinger is quoted, Hemingway, Thomas Mann, E.M. Forster, John Gardner. "This book is for serious writers of all levels," he writes in the beginning, and he's talking about intentions. If you mean to shoot for the stars, then this book is for you.

--Benjamin Cheever, author of The Plagiarist, The Partisan (both New York Times Best Books), Famous After Death, and The Good Nanny

Peter Selgin has written an excellent guide--witty, lucid, well-written--for beginning writers of fiction. In fact, any writer can learn from it.

--Vivian Gornick, author of The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative and Approaching Eye Level

Cunning and craft, indeed: Within these pages Peter Selgin quotes Chekov to the effect that, "The writer's task is not to solve the problem but to state the problem correctly." What I admire most about By Cunning & Craft is its rare and inspired modesty--an ultimately stylish resistance to pledging more than Selgin (really anyone) can deliver. May many learn from this book.

--Robert Polito, author of Savage Art: A Biography Of Jim Thompson, and Director of the New School Graduate Writing Program

Writing fiction is a matter of choices, decisions that shape the imagination. No one clarifies those choices more effectively than Peter Selgin in By Cunning & Craft. He demystifies the alternatives through straightforward explanations and illustrations. By showing the options, by suggesting which are most effective for specific situations, and by demonstrating through examples, Selgin gives writers the resources to structure their creativity.

--Walter Cummins, Editor, The Literary Review

Along with the great advice, Selgin is pure pleasure to read.

--Alexander Steele, Dean of Faculty, Gotham Writers' Workshop

By Cunning & Craft is a masterpiece of writing about writing. If, like Scheherazade, you had to spin out a story under threat of death, this is the how-to book to read. It's filled with thoughtful, nuanced advice from a teacher/writer who actually writes--and writes beautifully and with great humor. The list of rejected stories is worth the price of the whole book.

--Nora Gallagher, author of Things Seen and Unseen, Practicing Resurrection, and the forthcoming Changing Light

A wonderfully helpful, thorough, and honest book on writing, By Cunning & Craft is filled with good sense, good advice, and many excellent examples of good writing. A book to read and read again with profit by the beginning, the middle, and the writer of many years.

--Sheila Kohler, author of Cracks, Crossways, and The Children of Pithiviers

About the Author:

Peter Selgin is a literature and composition professor at Montclair State University and an MFA instructor at Western Connecticut State University. He served as a Gotham Writers' Workshop instructor from 2002?2005. He currently serves on editorial boards of Bellevue Literary Review, Global City Press, and Tiferet: A Journal of Spiritual Literature. Peter has a novel and a short story collection under consideration with Persea Books. He is also the author of the revision chapter in 2003 compilation Writing Fiction: The Practical Guide From New York's Acclaimed Creative Writing School.
www.peterselgin.com

About this edition

• Publisher: Writers Digest Books
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1582974918
• ISBN 13: 9781582974910
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 261