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Rebel Yell: A Short Guide to Fiction Writing
A cutting-edge, heading-for-the-millennium guide to the craft of fiction writing. Rebel Yell is ideal for individual or classroom use. Fast-paced and entertaining Rebel Yell, by acclaimed award-winning novelist Lance Olsen, begins with a concise but thorough presentation of compositional basics and quickly progresses to more sophisticated concerns, such as navigating the murky waters of the publishing industry, jump-starting your creative muse, and getting the most out of writing workshops. Whether you are sculpting a great hook, deciphering contract rights and wrongs, or coping with the challenges of a writer's life, hip and honest Rebel Yell can guide you to find your own best solutions. Innovative writing exercises at the end of each chapter encourage writers of all abilities to stretch and flex their creative muscles, while supplemental reading lists guide those who want to push the power of their pens to the next level. Best of all, Rebel Yell features something entirely lacking in many more than 40 interviews with contemporary authors, editors, and publishers (including Kathy Acker, Robert Coover, Samuel R. Delany, Raymond Federman, and Larry McCaffery) working in diverse media, providing significant insights into the multifaceted worlds of "them that's doin' it." Witty and informative, Rebel Yell is the definitive guide to writing fiction that will grab attention in a crowded literary world.
- GenresWritingNonfiction
239 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
1 person is currently reading
110 people want to read
About the author
Lance Olsen
55 books118 followersLance Olsen was born in 1956 and received his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin (1978, honors), his M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers Workshop (1980), and his M.A. (1982) and Ph.D. (1985) from the University of Virginia.
He is author of eleven novels, one hypertext, four critical studies, four short-story collections, a poetry chapbook, and a textbook about fiction writing, as well as editor of two collections of essays about innovative contemporary fiction. His short stories, essays, poems, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals, magazines, and anthologies, including Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review, Fiction International, Iowa Review, Hotel Amerika, Village Voice, Time Out New York, BOMB, Gulf Coast, McSweeney's, and Best American Non-Required Reading.
Olsen is an N.E.A. fellowship and Pushcart prize recipient, and former governor-appointed Idaho Writer-in-Residence. His novel Tonguing the Zeitgeist was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award. His work has been translated into Italian, Polish, Turkish, Finnish, and Portuguese. He has taught at the University of Idaho, the University of Kentucky, the University of Iowa, the University of Virginia, on summer- and semester-abroad programs in Oxford and London, on a Fulbright in Finland, at various writing conferences, and elsewhere.
Olsen currently teaches experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah. He serves as Chair of the Board of Directors at Fiction Collective Two; founded in 1974, FC2 is one of America's best-known ongoing literary experiments and progressive art communities.
He is Fiction Editor at Western Humanities Review. With his wife, assemblage-artist and filmmaker Andi Olsen, he divides his time between Salt Lake City and the mountains of central Idaho.
He is author of eleven novels, one hypertext, four critical studies, four short-story collections, a poetry chapbook, and a textbook about fiction writing, as well as editor of two collections of essays about innovative contemporary fiction. His short stories, essays, poems, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals, magazines, and anthologies, including Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review, Fiction International, Iowa Review, Hotel Amerika, Village Voice, Time Out New York, BOMB, Gulf Coast, McSweeney's, and Best American Non-Required Reading.
Olsen is an N.E.A. fellowship and Pushcart prize recipient, and former governor-appointed Idaho Writer-in-Residence. His novel Tonguing the Zeitgeist was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award. His work has been translated into Italian, Polish, Turkish, Finnish, and Portuguese. He has taught at the University of Idaho, the University of Kentucky, the University of Iowa, the University of Virginia, on summer- and semester-abroad programs in Oxford and London, on a Fulbright in Finland, at various writing conferences, and elsewhere.
Olsen currently teaches experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah. He serves as Chair of the Board of Directors at Fiction Collective Two; founded in 1974, FC2 is one of America's best-known ongoing literary experiments and progressive art communities.
He is Fiction Editor at Western Humanities Review. With his wife, assemblage-artist and filmmaker Andi Olsen, he divides his time between Salt Lake City and the mountains of central Idaho.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 28, 2009
Will be the core text in my Unruly Fictions class in the fall.
January 10, 2012
Excellent tone, genuine advice, a real voice that speaks to young writers, not a quick-and-dirty, sure, this is easy! book that fails and fails again.
March 10, 2009
Shortly after reading Lance Olsen's novel Nietzsche's Kisses, I found Rebel Yell: A Short Guide to Fiction Writing on display at my city library. I'd bought the former on advice from American Book Review, who called the novel "a brilliant achievement, a seamless, precise, marvelously affecting novel that must be read by everyone who appreciates the best of today's fiction," and with lines like, "I lie among these sheets, listening to her, sweating and thinking, sweating and endeavoring to think, knowing that between paragraphs home is where the hurt is," I had to agree with the review.
I'll be teaching creative writing next year, so I snatched Rebel Yell almost from another browser's hands. I wanted to know what Olsen might say to my future students. I was delighted to find not a singular message, but a refreshingly multiplicitous one: in addition to essays on various aspects of writing and the writer's life and numerous writing exercises, the book offers interviews with over forty influential contemporary authors. Kathy Acker offers advice on culminating an organic writing process, for example, while Robert Coover reminds writing students that "novelty is not the same thing as quality…but neither is imitation of conventional narrative, no matter how 'pretty' (36)." Often interviewees offer advice that complements and underscores Olsen's and other writers' advice; sometimes Olsen provides contrary or even contradictory views, a move I consider the mark of the most invaluable kind of teacher.
Aside from a multitude of viewpoints, Olsen provides other points of entry to the how-to of writing. Each chapter, written in a playfully postmodern and accessible but nuanced voice, centers around a particular theme, such as "Rebel without a Clause: Surviving Writer's Block" and "Ch-ch-changes: The Elements of a Story." Essays offer suggestions that appeal to risk-taking: "taking chances with writing fiction is more engagning and more enjoyable than not taking chances," writes Olsen (8), and "writing is discovery" (62). Chapters conclude with subsections; one, called "Now Read This," comprises lists of books and essays for writing students, including classics such as Robbe-Grillet's For a New Novel (1963) and John Barth's "The Literature of Exhaustion" (1967), as well as more contemporary works and collections, including the ridiculously important annual Writer's Market. Another subsection, "Stretching & Flexing," offers writing prompts and exercises, such as one I plan to use: "Write a sudden fiction in which an event that in real-time would take five or ten seconds to occur [but:] in your fictive slo-mo takes five pages—a death, a fall, a dazzling realization" (156).
Olsen's audience might be as layered as his approach to a guidebook. First, he offers advice tailored to writers of different genres, from literary to speculative to science fiction and beyond. Second, he addresses writers from a broad spectrum of writing abilities, never patronizing or condescending to the reader. Early and later chapters give more experienced writers material to think about, from the value (and potential pitfalls) of MFA programs to comparisons between mainstream and alternative markets in terms of both fictional possibilities and sales. I found much of the material I'd like to introduce to beginning students in the middle chapters, which describe innovative strategies for conceiving and developing story ideas and for playing with perspective. I have already recommended chapters regarding forming a agent-directed pitch for a new novel or collection to writing peers who have recently completed a work. I, for one—a workshop junkie with an MFA and an embarrassing number of writing-conference experiences—found plenty of substance and inspiration to feed my own writing.
I'll be teaching creative writing next year, so I snatched Rebel Yell almost from another browser's hands. I wanted to know what Olsen might say to my future students. I was delighted to find not a singular message, but a refreshingly multiplicitous one: in addition to essays on various aspects of writing and the writer's life and numerous writing exercises, the book offers interviews with over forty influential contemporary authors. Kathy Acker offers advice on culminating an organic writing process, for example, while Robert Coover reminds writing students that "novelty is not the same thing as quality…but neither is imitation of conventional narrative, no matter how 'pretty' (36)." Often interviewees offer advice that complements and underscores Olsen's and other writers' advice; sometimes Olsen provides contrary or even contradictory views, a move I consider the mark of the most invaluable kind of teacher.
Aside from a multitude of viewpoints, Olsen provides other points of entry to the how-to of writing. Each chapter, written in a playfully postmodern and accessible but nuanced voice, centers around a particular theme, such as "Rebel without a Clause: Surviving Writer's Block" and "Ch-ch-changes: The Elements of a Story." Essays offer suggestions that appeal to risk-taking: "taking chances with writing fiction is more engagning and more enjoyable than not taking chances," writes Olsen (8), and "writing is discovery" (62). Chapters conclude with subsections; one, called "Now Read This," comprises lists of books and essays for writing students, including classics such as Robbe-Grillet's For a New Novel (1963) and John Barth's "The Literature of Exhaustion" (1967), as well as more contemporary works and collections, including the ridiculously important annual Writer's Market. Another subsection, "Stretching & Flexing," offers writing prompts and exercises, such as one I plan to use: "Write a sudden fiction in which an event that in real-time would take five or ten seconds to occur [but:] in your fictive slo-mo takes five pages—a death, a fall, a dazzling realization" (156).
Olsen's audience might be as layered as his approach to a guidebook. First, he offers advice tailored to writers of different genres, from literary to speculative to science fiction and beyond. Second, he addresses writers from a broad spectrum of writing abilities, never patronizing or condescending to the reader. Early and later chapters give more experienced writers material to think about, from the value (and potential pitfalls) of MFA programs to comparisons between mainstream and alternative markets in terms of both fictional possibilities and sales. I found much of the material I'd like to introduce to beginning students in the middle chapters, which describe innovative strategies for conceiving and developing story ideas and for playing with perspective. I have already recommended chapters regarding forming a agent-directed pitch for a new novel or collection to writing peers who have recently completed a work. I, for one—a workshop junkie with an MFA and an embarrassing number of writing-conference experiences—found plenty of substance and inspiration to feed my own writing.
March 28, 2007
This is a bit outdated but there were a few good nuggets. Also there are lots of author interviews.
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August 20, 2009Rebel Yell: A Short Guide to Fiction Writing by Lance Olsen (1998)
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews