The Creative Writing Coursebook: 40 Authors Share Advice and Exercises for Fiction and Poetry

Gave as a Christmas gift for a writer friend. She loves it.

I bought this book after reading Celebrity Authors' Secrets  Celebrity Authors' Secrets: The World's Greatest Living Authors Reveal How They Sell Millions of Books . The Creative Writing Coursebook is perfect if you want to set up a writers' group or you want to run a creative writing class. It's full of great ideas and covers many aspects of writing such as: characterisation, plot, setting, editing and revision. I found it useful and liked the emphasis on using detail in writing.

Love the information ot provides

The book is well organized, I've found it very helpful. I've been writing for six years and some of the ideas were new to me. And those that weren't, that have taken me years to realize on my own, were summarized neatly in this book.

I have enjoyed the lessons in this book. It is full of wonderful assignments that have given me a new outlook on writing short stories, with its easy to read instructions of each assignment. The recommending of books to read is also an advantage that I found to be helpful.

Great Help.As a beginning writer I found it difficult to organize my writing into an efficient process.I was struggling with keeping my focus on one book at a time. This book is also an invaluable tool for developing a critical editing eye for your own work.

Too Boring

This book was for my step granddaughter who wants to be a writer like me. The instructions are simple and easy enough for a 16 year old to follow. I put together a pamphlet of lessons for her but this will be more helpful. Thanks.

Oddly disappointed with this considering its pedigree.Chapters on publishing notwithstanding, mainly a book about writing as theory.How to think (about writing), would be more apt as a title - I would have preferred more of a focus on the minutiae of writing e.g. how to write a good crowd scene/entrance/argument etc etcWould have liked to see more practical advice on building sentences/paragraphs...Mostly it circles this but doesn't treat it enough in any depth.Not really a book for someone struggling amidst writing a story/novel etc.A book to inspire people. Too begin to think. To be creative. Hence the title.Good observations do lie within. But too much general surmising.A little bloated.A thinner more precise book would be better.More souffle' than bone.

I am attending a creative writing course. Purchased this book, although it's not part of our recommended reads, to help me get more on track with technicalities and to find the right terminology for what I neede to say.It is just perfect for my needs. Explains the theory behind writing structures and compiles a great set of rules in a non-intrusive, rather easy to read way.You can find quotes and technique explanations to use in your argumentative texts, as well as basic explanations for most styles of writing and base techniques. Recommended!

This book makes me want to go on a Creative Writing Degree course. It contains some excellent advice and inspiration given in a clear and concise fashion from some of the leading tutors and editors. Every time I read a chapter I want to go away and write. Highly recommended.

Well conceived, but I found it hard to read at times. Great advice in the book. It looks like it was written over a long period and not sure its completely upto date. Very well worth having.

A very useful book that would be of value to those studying creative writing or individuals working on their first novel. A