Narrative Design: Working With Imagination Craft And Form

This collection of stories and the technique for understanding their craft is essential for any writer. The author takes care to dissect each story with an organized approach that works well for students. The book is divided into section on linear stories and modular stories and the two are well defined in analysis. An excellent read.

I bought this because I felt that the opening pages of the book (as shown in the ‘Look inside’ feature) really resonated with my own experience of creative writing workshops: I thought that perhaps I had discovered a teacher who would bypass the usual nonsense and get to the crux of great narrative design. However, while I enjoyed the theory sections, the rest of the book deteriorated into the tiresome and repetitive analysis of some very average short stories. This was not enlightening and the quality of some of the stories reduced my respect for the author, who rated pieces that I considered deeply flawed or simply dull, as near perfect. I found myself resenting the time I had spent reading the stories and finally lost patience with the predictable analysis and pages upon pages of footnotes. Ultimately, I felt that the author fell foul of some of the creative writing and thinking practices that he decried in his opening pages. If you are currently studying writing, or literature, you might find the analyses a useful reference for your own essays but otherwise, I would say that if you have experience of creative writing at degree level or similar, this book may disappoint you.

This book is a solo creative writing class. Bell takes a well chosen set of stories which you would never have come across otherwise and applies some detailed forensic analysis to them. These critiques unpick the authors' intentions, and the tricks and techniques they use to achieve them. Reading this book could make you a better reader as well as a better writer.

This book is very helpful for writters and students. I'm currently reading this book for Fiction English. This book has many advantages because it includes an explanation sentense by sentense of why the author wrote his/her story in a certain way. The book also includes a section where it tells you the plot, setting, characters, dialogue, imagery and so on, about each reading. And how the techniques the authors use can be used in your (my) own writing.

The examples and extensive notes clarify what could otherwise be a confusing topic. I found it useful and insightful.