Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft (Penguin Academics Series)

Unlike the reviews to date, my review focuses on the current edition (second).

The overall organization of the book is unchanged. The first part comprises chapters on the five elements of craft common to all genres of imaginative writing: Image; Voice; Character; Setting; Story. The second part comprises chapters on the four genres: Creative Nonfiction; Fiction; Poetry; Drama.

Among the new examples in the second edition are the following: contemporary short stories such as Jhumpa Lahiri's "Interpreter of Maladies," William Trevor's "Sitting with the Dead," Ron Carlson's "Big foot Stole My Wife"; contemporary poems by Billy Collins, Annie Tibble, and Henry Reed: contemporary creative nonfiction by Gayle Pemberton, Bill Capossere, and William Kittredge; contemporary drama by Carol Real, Jim Quinn, and Josh ben Friedman.

Also new are a series of development, located in the basic techniques section at the end of each chapter. This series is designed to facilitate readers "toward a finished piece."

Burroway has wisely retained many of the exemplary selections from the first edition such as Charles Baxter's "Snow," Donald Barthelme's "The School, and Robert Olen Butler's "Missing."

Its unique mutli-genre approach, lucid expositions, and "Try This" prompts make IMAGINATIVE WRITING the best primer for teaching yourself.

-- C J Singh

I used this book in a class. I didn't find it very helpful, since many of the chapters are rather abstract. It rambles around without getting to the point in many instances. The examples of essays, short stories and poems were very uninteresting and uninspiring. I guess if you like negative, sensationalized American stories, you won't mind. However, I prefer deep interaction among characters with a little story and adventure. It's also pleasant to have stories written with eloquent, beautiful use of language. You won't see that here.

Burroway's book is just OK. That's about the gist of it. Her methodology is ok, devoting a chapter to the essential ingredients of creative writing, i.e., style, image, tone, voice, point of view, etc., but she sticks writing samples together, regardless of genre, so you'll get a short story and an essay along with some poems to illustrate a particular mode. This can be confusing to beginning writers since you pretty much have to overlook the form of the writing in analyzing the particular point she is attempting to stress. It's nice to try to integrate playwriting samples and exercises into a creative writing book but since performance is such an essential part of theatre, without some background in theatre going, the beginning writer may be putting "de horse before Decartes." (Sorry, John Simon, for stealing your line--but I acknowledge your cleverness). The writing exercises at the end of each chapter are typically adequate and she does offer some "body work" exercises borrowed from acting warm-ups, but in the end, it all doesn't quite mesh. I recommend "Mooring Against the Tide" for its methodology, informed examples--both from "professionals" and students--and its treatment of creative writing both as a craft and an ineffable art. At the very least, if you do find this book helpful, you should have an intuitive sense WHY people feel compelled to do creative writing. Otherwise, this book might just contribute to the M.F.A. style of creative writing so prevalent these days that come out of writing programs by the highly verbal, affluent kids who want to show off how clever they are, and rush off to medical school a couple of years after they aren't "making it."

I couldn't disagree more with the one-star review below. I find this such a useful and helpful multi-genre book that I have adopted it for use in my creative writing class here at the University of Alabama. Just an excellent book!

Not to start a war here, but Janet Burroway's book *is* fresh, and it's the best, most comprehensive multigenre text on the market. And it's affordable both for university students and writers who want to use it on their own. No, it's not full of inspirational gobbledygook and gimmicky suggestions to touch the heart of the writer. Instead, it's a very smart book that asks the writer to join in the long histories of the genres it discusses and offers the most succinctly articulated descriptions of techniques and approaches that will not only get a writer started writing but that will also help that writer understand what makes good writing good. The most innovative aspect of Burroway's book is that it takes creative writing as a whole and discusses those basic elements that make all writing good, from the need for concrete imagery that says something to the need for narrative to move and develop across a work. And it offers dozens and dozens of recent examples to illustrate its points. As an anthology alone, this book would be a good read. But Burroway's comments very aptly help a reader to understand what is working well in each of her excerpts. No, it doesn't offer up elaborate metaphors about bones or light or any inner writing child as a way to nurture the soul of the writer. But from my experience as a writing instructor, it's not the soul of the beginning writer that needs nurturing. This book understands quite well the need to nurture the mind of the writer first.