True Stories: Guides for Writing from Your Life

We all have stories to tell about our lives and the lives of people we know. Rebecca Rule and Susan Wheeler help new and experienced writers commit those stories to paper. With a warm, wise, and encouraging voice, they describe the writing process, from the inkling of a subject, to drafts, to specific writing skills, to a final product. Each skill is practical, shown briefly, clearly, with outstanding examples from published as well as student writing to illustrate each point. The book covers critical topics such as:

• writing not to rehash, but to discover
• finding a subject and narrowing it
• writing scenes and dialogue
• developing conflict
• stressing important moments and points
• using outstanding details and facts, time summaries and stretches, flashbacks, endings, and more
• ways to find meaning and add depth
• revising and editing
• curing writers block
• giving and receiving constructive criticism.

As practical as Strunk and Whites Elements of Style, but far more warm, detailed, and encouraging, True Stories gives writers everything they need to find their stories and craft them with insight and meaning.

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.