Writing Short Stories

by Ailsa Cox

This new edition of Writing Short Stories has been updated throughout to include new and revised exercises, up-to-date coverage of emerging technologies and a new glossary of key terms and techniques. Ailsa Cox, a published short-story writer, guides the reader through the key aspects of the craft, provides a variety of case studies and examples of how others have approached the genre and sets a series of engaging exercises to help hone your skills. This inspiring book is the ideal guide for those new to the genre or for anyone wanting to improve their technique.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Short Stories, Reference

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Markus McDowell · Rating 5 out of 5]

To begin my project of a collection of short stories, I sought out some of the newest and highly recommended books on the subject. This was my favorite. Written by Ailsa Cox, Reader in Creative Writing and English at Edge Hill University, UK, the book is short and to the point—a characteristic I am sure was not lost on the author. This is the second edition which includes “up-to-date coverage of emerging technologies and a new glossary of key terms and techniques.”
This 176-page book comprises seven chapters, each followed by a set of anywhere from seven to nine exercises.
1. “Spinning a yarn,” which explores the characteristics of story-telling and short narrative. This chapter acts as an introduction and overview, discussing (with examples from Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, and others), suspense, tall tales, mysteries, and plot and structure.
2. “Capturing the moment” examines short stories that rely more on imagery than plot, discussing subjects such as modernism, epiphany, open endings, stream of consciousness, and the use of creative syntax. Examples come from Katherine Mansfield, James Joyce, William Trevor, and others. 
3. “Humor, character and dialogue.” This chapter studies irony, characterization, anecdotal writing, parody, and satire, using examples from Patrick McCabe, Garrison Keillor, and others.
4. “The fantastic,” as you might guess, examines genres of myth, altered reality, and parallel worlds, using examples from stories by Franz Kafka, Angeles Carter, and Jorge Luis Borges.
5. “What if?” explores the genre of speculative fiction or science fiction, and various ways to approach the genre (the unknown, utopia/dystopia, cyberpunk, and more ), examples come from the writings of H. G. Wells, William Gibson, Ray Bradbury, and others.
6. “Reality” considers styles of writing that mimic journalism, social observation, memories, and minimalism and dirty reality. Examples are drawn from the writings of Alice Munro, Guy de Maupassant, and more.
7. The final chapter, “Love, death and desire,” deals with love stories and examines those that revolve around desire, adultery, recognition, and the opportunity to deal with literary experimentation in the genre (examples from the works of Gabriel García Márquez, Anton Chekhov, and Ali Smith).
As you can see from this summary of the content, the book is practical, unlike many that deal only with theory and descriptiveness. Using examples from literature ground theory in concrete. The activities enable the reader to become an active participant. The conciseness of each chapter and the examples avoid leaving a reader buried under a mountain of theoretical information with little grasp of the essentials. Lest the conciseness leave one with only a cursory understanding, the author has also included an extensive bibliography for further studies, a glossary, an index, and a “Resources” section of print and online magazines, prizes, and organizations and databases.
Even if you are not a writer, but a reader who enjoys short stories and wants to learn more about the craft, this is a worthwhile read. For writers, this is a wonderful resource of orientation, practice, and resources. 

[Sue · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disappointed in this book. It looks in turn at several genres of short story. But instead of focusing on character-building and plot development, it basically gives extensive examples of how other authors have written in the various genres. The examples given are fairly literary and mostly rather dark, even those labelled humorous; not the kind of thing that appealed to me at all. There were a lot of exercises at the end of each chapter, none of which were remotely appealing.

For someone who enjoys dark and literary short stories, this book might be useful. But I found it rather tedious. It took me over a year to wade through it as I kept losing interest, and I simply skimmed the last couple of chapters, hopeful that I might find something more interesting.

[Emad · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book dos not directly tell you how to write, but tells you how they wrote. And it's a big guidance on its own.

[D.]

Writing Short Stories by Ailsa Cox (2005)

[Robert Day · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a five out of five stars book.

I learnt a lot from reading it, but more from doing the exercises at the end of each chapter. They really pushed me to think about what I was writing as well as pushed me to do the actual writing.

I think that the more words I write the less precious I get about words and phrases that I have to change or delete in the editing process. It's like, when I started out writing, deleting 100 words was a massive sacrifice because it was a huge percentage of my total output, but now that I've written hundreds of thousands of words, deleting 100 of them seems like nothing.

I recommend you read every word of this book and do every single exercise - you'll benefit enormously from it.

[Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

A real comprehensive guide to writing short stories, which has a critical element to it, and gives a context to the short story in literature as well, meaning that Creative Writing students will find this a good resource when writing stories, and when writing essays to accompany them. That means I've often found myself recommending this book. It's also compact enough to be handy without being daunting.

[Katia M. Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the updated 2016edition of this book and found it very useful. If you are serious about the craft of the short story, and I mean the nitty gritty parts that take forever but appear to have taken no effort what so ever, this book is for you. It is jammed full of literary examples and exercises to get your creative juices flowing. Short story writing is not easy, it takes time to learn the craft, and this book is a great starting point.

[Cooch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent guide to the Short Story

This is a useful and pragmatic guide to the Short Story. It is good for readers and writers. A good range of stories and their writers are discussed. There are a variety of good exercises provided.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting course text on writing short stories, filled with examples and advice. It looks at a range of genres and doesn't get stuck on just a few authors, but brings in a wealth of different experience. Plenty of writing exercises are included too, so it is a very practical course text.

[Willow YA Author · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a great tool to hone the writing skills of anyone who wishes to take their writing to another level and touch the reader on a deeper emotional level. It was suggested in an MA course on Creative Writing and has helped me delve deeper into the elements of writing.

[Kieron]

Unfinished

[Mattias Lönnqvist · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review will be posted in a few days

[Isadora Wagner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seems like an interesting read: This book came up in one of my weekly search-haunts on all writers ghostly and strange. This time, I was researching Edith Wharton and Elizabeth Bowen, trying to pin down if I had heard, or not, that the two women writers, both of whom wrote GREAT(!) ghost stories, were friends. An e-text of Cox's book came up on Amazon, and at first I thought, "Terrific. Another how-to book on writing by a writer I never heard of..." but then before I bailed, Guy du Maupassant's name caught my eye, and then Joyce's "The Dead," and then M.R. James, Kafka, and Poe, and pretty soon I discovered a section on the fantastic, and another on the unknown, and one on "the abyss." Who can resist titles and authors like that? So I bought the book, and I'm very glad I did, too, because a further skim of the contents shows that Cox is indeed tracking the same sense of oddness as me. Can't wait to read this!

[E · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is really good beginning text for novice short story writers (I fall into this category). The book covers many of the classic techniques covered in short story writing classes (the epiphany, for example), sampling works from Chekov to JG Ballard to Borges. The author also sites useful examples from recent (but lesser-known) authors, adding a nice contemporary touch to a book relatively traditional in its approach.

All in all, I think this is a useful text for someone who wants a thorough introduction to writing short stories. While some of the exercises may seem ridiculously basic (a stream-of-consciousness exercise? Really?), some seem more useful (okay, I admit it, I haven't tried any of them yet). The text helpfully summarizes effective techniques to use in different types of stories.

[Judy]

Probably a good book, but I never got into it really - may give it another try some time. I meant to start writing short stories but haven't done anything about it!

[Titus Hjelm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Less 'literary' than I anticipated, but a refreshing read, anyway.

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good tips.
This book helped me through my intro to fiction university class.