Creative Writing: A Practical Guide

by Julia Casterton

This book is a practical guide to creative writing, providing advice on style, form, developing work, and how to get published. Drawing on interviews with other writers, and her own long experience as a poet and tutor, Julia Casterton examines many kinds of writing--autobiography, poetry, dialogue, short stories, writing for screen and longer fiction. The third edition includes three completely new chapters, covering preparing poetry for performance and publication, writing your own myth and how to do research. The final chapter includes interviews with a novelist, poet and script-writer and provides a checklist of the stages needed to research a story, poem, novel or film.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction

200 pages, Paperback

First published December 3, 1986

Reviews

[Araminta Matthews · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really love how she took great care with the example texts in this book to ensure that women’s voices were represented. Awesome writing guide.

[Gemma · Rating 2 out of 5]

This contains a handful of useful tips to get started with your own creative writing however, seeing as it was published in the 1980's, some of the guidance feels dated reading it now. A lot of the examples used weren't engaging and I did not find the suggested exercises particularly useful either.

[Dorchi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I should have done my research before purchasing this book, it is (too) focused on poetry and while I agree it's important, I am not that way inclined. There are a few good sections on fiction, though!

[Alyce Hunt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gives a lot of basic advice, but backs up all of the statements with evidence from published writers. There's nothing revolutionary about this book, but it was still a worthwhile read.