Turning Life Into Fiction

by Robin Hemley

Book Overview

A highly entertaining and indispensable manual on how to write good fiction

If you want to write at all, whether from real life or not, you must be willing and able to use your imagination. That means you must be willing to take risks and sometimes look the fool. You must be willing to transform experience, not simply record it. If you were a good liar, daydreamer, or troublemaker as a child, you'll probably make a good fiction...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1555974449
• ISBN13: 9781555974442
• Release Date: May 2006
• Publisher: Graywolf Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Turn this book into your lifesaver!!

How many of us have shelves and shelves of writing books...yet when they found this one realized that it was one of the very few that they needed? I wanted to chime in on the revised edition since I just discovered it yesterday and have not put it down, aside from going to sleep. I am one of those writers who draws inspiration from my own life and the lives of friends and always had an idea of how to go about it, but this book is the black and white, be all and end all. Here you'll learn that it's OKAY to write from life (those that think it's not as imaginitive be damned), and you'll learn HOW to - best advice being to distance yourself from the story and make it believeable based on DETAIL, vivid characters and emotional honesty - not memory, which is our natural instinct at first. I love the way each chapter is broken down into the very concerns that we take on in order as we work our way through a story, so it's *extremely* user-friendly and very humorous too! I also love the fact that it's written for an audience that knows about writing already in terms of technique and terminology, and not dumbed down like the rest of the hokey bs that we see. I would rave on and on but I've got some writing to do! Get this book at once.

A "must-read" for practicing and aspiring fiction writers everywhere

Updated and expanded by Robin Hemley (Director of the Nonfiction Writing Program as Iowa University), Turning Life into Fiction is a newly updated and expanded how-to manual for skillfully converting real life experiences into exciting storytelling. Packed with writing exercises, techniques for recording and generating ideas from day-to-day experience, and advice for dealing with the potentially thorny ethical issue of borrowing experiences from the lives of strangers and loved ones, Turning Life into Fiction is a "must-read" for practicing and aspiring fiction writers everywhere. Highly recommended.

Life IS stranger than fiction...

This book offers tricks and tips to teach you how to use real life situations to develop characters, plot, setting and other elements of story. The author will have you eavesdropping in restuarants and spying on the neighbors in an effort to see how easy it is to come up with believable story.

An engaging well organized book.

Robin Hemley covers it all. He immediately engages the reader and his love, as well as his expertise in the craft, is evident in each page. The technical points are covered in a way that leaves you feeling as if you have just read a really good novel. The ethical questions are covered without getting too bogged down. A very inspiring and illuminating book on how to get started writing. B. Bruce, New Caney Tx.