The Glimmer Train Guide to Writing Fiction

Building Blocks, a Collection from the Editors of a Literary Journal

Feb 5, 2009

Stimulating interviews, discussions, and reviews from over 100 well-known writers published in the literary journal Glimmer Train are gathered into one volume.

From its title, you might expect The Glimmer Train Guide to Writing Fiction: Building Blocks to be a manual on how to write literary fiction, with tips for winning a Glimmer Train literary writing contest. It is both of those...and it isn't.

There is an incredible amount of material packed into these four hundred pages. Plan to spend some time with this book. This is content not to be read but to be nibbled, masticated thoroughly, savored, swallowed, and digested (to paraphrase Sir Francis Bacon).

Building Blocks for Writing Fiction

The building blocks referred to in the title are chapters dealing with Setting, Character, Voice, Theme, POV, Dialog, and so on. But the book itself is based on interviews of over a hundred writers published between 1990 and 2006 in Glimmer Train and the related newsletter, Writers Ask.

These are experts in the field who are challenging conventions and forms with a full understanding of what they're doing and why. Each snippet of interview may be anything from a simple suggestion or opinion to a personal reminiscence to a brief review of a particular work or author.

Many of the interview clips deal with literary matters of angst, alienation, the meaning of the human condition, the impact of setting on culture, writing as art, the function of the writer as a mirror to society and similar navel-gazing tr-- uh, that is, deep psychological insights and matters of academic concern (it's amazing but not surprising that so many of the authors are academics).

Mechanics and Techniques of Writing

Of equal or greater interest are the discussions on mechanics and technique. Some deal with basics, such as effective sentence and paragraph structure or POV and how it affects the development and impact of a story. Others focus on:

There is a great deal of material of this type, and it does need to be considered and mulled over and integrated.

Building Blocks of Range and Intensity

Because of its range and intensity, and because it is not a “how-to” in the usual sense, this book may be of limited value to the beginning writer learning the basics of writing fiction.

Nonetheless, it has a great deal to offer. It will be of interest to academics, to fine arts students, and to thoughtful writers of novels or short fiction seeking to improve the depth and breadth of their work and their understanding of writing as both craft and art form.

Burmeister-Brown, Susan and Linda B. Swanson-Davies, Eds. The Glimmer Train Guide to Writing Fiction: Building Blocks. Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 2006. ISBN: 978-1-58297-446-0

The copyright of the article The Glimmer Train Guide to Writing Fiction in Resources for Writers is owned by Thomas Alan Gray. Permission to republish The Glimmer Train Guide to Writing Fiction in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.