Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #185313 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Customer Reviews

Excellent, Well-Rounded Resource
This book includes not only strategies for generating your own worlds, characters, plots, etc. but has practical advice on grammar, manuscript mechanics and how to approach publishers with the finished product. It also includes a cold splash-in-the-face look at one scenario you might go through on the road to publication.

Given that every writing style is a process subjectively arrived at, he still does a great job of making some helpful, objective observations of what good story writing entails. There is the further advantage of being able to track down his fiction to see his approach in action, since he is a published author in the genre.

Informative, entertaining and delightful to read!
This book is laced with humor and wisdom. Kilian is experienced in fantasy, hard science fiction, education and children's literature. He explores the mythological basis of fantasy novels, explaining the importance of Greek, Roman, Celtic, Norse, Egyptian--world mythology, as well as acquiring a strong knowledge of history and philosophies of the world. Equally important to success is a fascination with the genre in which you write. Gaining the information may seem to be an intimidating task; it is necessary.

Kilian includes exercises to help generate writing. I followed these exercises, and wrote with the excitement I had greatly missed. He also explains each step of the creative process from the ideas to the finished product with a brief grammar refresher that is easy to read. The examples are humorous. The importance of proper grammar cannot be overstated if you want your book published.

Kilian expresses a sense of anger, but when tempered by the humor throughout the book, this becomes righteous indignation directed toward those who try to write in the genre without the seriousness to make it believable. Ultimately his anger