Product Description

Orson Scott Card presents practical, in-depth instruction on how fiction writers can make the best choices in creating characters and handling viewpoint. The author shows how to put original yet realistic people into fiction.'

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32842 in Books
• Published on: 1999-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 182 pages

Customer Reviews

A workout in the writers' gym!
Often, when reading "how to" books, I find myself flicking ahead to the end of the chapter, to find out how many more pages of tedium I have to suffer before reaching the next milestone.

Not so with this. It actually gripped me - extraordinary for a book on technique! Card's writing is so engaging and informative that it's a joy to read.

Compared to other books I've read in this area, it's brimming with ideas that are accessible and usable. Having finished it yesterday after reading it in two sittings at breakneck speed, I may not remember every detail but I feel I have a lot more insight into fictional characterisation and viewpoint than I did before... I've read other books on creating characters, but this really showed how and why, instead of giving me glib checklists and long, dry discussions of other peoples' work.

Another refreshing change is that, as well as giving you the tools to create characters, Card also offers advice on when deep characterisation is (in)appropriate. His MICE (Milieu, Idea, Character, Events) quotient - something I first met in his "How to Write SF and Fantasy" book - helped me think about my work in new ways.

The final part of the book is about viewpoint. It's much shorter than the characterisation section, and I thought "Oh, a minor part tacked onto the end". I was wrong: he gives an excellent analysis of viewpoint. I thought I understood this pretty well before... perhaps I did, but in any case I understand it better now :-)

I have no doubt that I'll return to this book again and again, but on a single reading all I can say is: if you're an aspiring writer, you could do a lot worse than to get this!

What is it with Card books and the lacking of stars?
There are never enough stars for Card books, and this is no exception. Card points out, not only the big and important things about creating characters, but also the small niggling things that give your character just that...character. He also deals with Viewpoint, a decidedly irritating topic, very well. Examples throughout the text help illustrate points, and the book is written in such a way that it could be helpful to English students as well as aspiring writers!

An excellent overview and insight in to technique
Having just finished reading this excellent work, I then had the opportunity to watch a couple of movies that I have seen before, and was surprised to see many of the techniques detailed in the book used on screen, where it was now noticable to me that they could have been done a lot better, had the director taken the time to read a book on writing...

Orson Scott Card has laid out the character techniques used in books and in places how they overlap with movie techiniques to help the writer create believable characters and how the writer can use these techniques in order to help the reader immerse themselves into the book rather than focus on the fact that they are reading a book (or watching a movie or a play), unless that is indeed what the writer is trying to accomplish.

I learned a great deal about a number of tools that can be used in writing, and would recommend this book to anybody who writes - be it fiction or not. I'll be sure to be using some of these techniques in my normal day to day life now that I know they exist and know how to apply them.

This is much more than just a book on writing - its a great tool in learning how to get across an idea or topic to any form of audience.