Novelist's Essential Guide to Crafting Scenes - Softcover

Obstfeld, Raymond

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0898799732 ISBN 13: 9780898799736

Publisher: Writer's Digest Books, 2000

Synopsis

Writing page-turning fiction depends on your ability to create rock-solid, believable scenes. Scenes act as dynamic structures that thrust both your characters and readers forward through conflict, baiting them with goals that may–or may not–be obtained. Writing good scenes makes the difference between a tale that crackles with energy and momentum and a story that falls flat.

In Novelist's Essential Guide to Crafting Scenes, Raymond Obstfeld leads you through the creation process, examining all the elements that go into making scenes successful, cohesive and compelling. Tackling topics like finding a scene's "hot spot," identifying its dominating purpose and avoiding a cliched ending, Obstfeld provides essential reading for novice and novelist alike. Using examples from film, short stories, and best-selling fiction, he documents why and how scenes work. You'll learn:

• what is (and isn't) a scene
• how to make scenes memorable
• how to use point of view
• how to focus on character, plot and theme
• how to make scenes pay off
• how to structure a scene
• how to use setting
• how to revise a scene
• the importance of first impressions

Every page of Novelist's Essential Guide to Crafting Scenes opens a new window of opportunity for writers by offering valuable insight, articulate advice and expert examples. It's a reference, a road map and a romp, all rolled into one. So go on–make a scene. And make it unforgettable.

About this title

Synopsis

The core dramatic unit of any novel is the scene. Writers use scenes to contain the novel's action and explore its characters. In this book, novelist and collegiate writing instructor Raymond Obstfeld vibrantly explains every aspect of constructing these vital elements and shows how to apply those techniques to create specific types - action scenes, comic scenes, sex scenes and more. He then reveals how to link these scenes to form powerful novels. Obstfeld delivers advice born from years of writing and teaching experience in a fresh, witty voice perfectly suited to today's busy reader. Writers of any type of fiction will find quick remedies to their prose woes with his unique exercises and gorgeous use of examples from contemporary novels and films. Accessible to beginning writers, yet also appealing to more seasoned authors, The Novelist's Essential Guide to Crafting Scenes will be the next classic writing manual all novelists will want on their shelves.

About the Author

Raymond Obstfeld has published 27 novels including Dead Heat and Hungry Women. Four of his novels have been optioned for movies. He has also sold 10 screenplays, 13 books of nonfiction, and numerous short stories, poems and nonfiction articles. He is the head of the writing program at Orange Coast College.

Edition details

• Publisher: Writer's Digest Books
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0898799732
• ISBN 13: 9780898799736
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 218