Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular: An Informal Textbook - Hardcover

Hills, L. Rust

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0395442559 ISBN 13: 9780395442555

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1987

Synopsis

A practical guide to the craft of short fiction explores such essential problems as motivation, character, plot, flashback, foreshadowing, and the techniques of suspense

About this title

Review

"There are now not enough commercial magazines regularly publishing literary fiction to count on the fingers of a single hand," says Rust Hills. So why bother writing literary short stories, or books about doing so? Because, says Hills, a longtime fiction editor at Esquire, "what young writers want to write, or ought to want to write, is literature." In Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular, Hills examines "the essential techniques of fiction and how they function." The short story is a tricky form, with no margin for error: "The successful contemporary short story," says Hills, "will demonstrate a more harmonious relationship of all its aspects than will any other literary art form, excepting perhaps lyric poetry." Many of the fictional elements discussed in this book will not be new to most fiction writers. We know that stories must have beginnings, middles, and ends; we know about epiphany and suspense and stock characters. But Hills claims that much of how we look at fiction derives from drama theory and from the formulas of "slick fiction" (fiction that once served the purpose mindless television now serves). Learned but not pedantic, Hills addresses these elements strictly in terms of literary short fiction.

An interesting side note here is Hills's discussion of the shift in support for American writers. "It is no longer the book publishers and magazines," he says, "but rather the colleges and universities that ... provide the major financial support for the great majority of American writers today." Given that, we might find it odd that this book comes from a man best known for his magazine editing. But we shouldn't. "Teaching fiction writing and editing magazine fiction have ... the same rather odd ultimate purpose in common: trying to get someone else to produce a fine short story." One caveat emptor: our copy of this edition fell quite apart upon our first, gentle reading of it. --Jane Steinberg

About the Author

Lawrence Rust Hills (9 November 1924 – 12 August 2008) was an American author and fiction editor at Esquire from 1957 to 1964, though he remained associated with the magazine until 1999.

Authors he championed include Norman Mailer, John Cheever, William Styron, Bruce Jay Friedman, William Gaddis, James Salter, Don DeLillo, Ann Beattie, Richard Ford, Raymond Carver and E. Annie Proulx.

His 1972 book How To Do Things Right: The Revelations of a Fussy Man was a set of humorous essays filled with obsessively-detailed instructions on, for example, the correct way to make and eat milk-toast.

His 1979 book Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular outlined his views on short story craft.

Hills died in Belfast, Maine of cardiac arrest

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0395442559
• ISBN 13: 9780395442555
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 197