Story First: The Writer As Insider

by Kit Reed

Tells how to find story ideas, construct a plot, develop characters, create believable dialog, and choose an appropriate style

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction

142 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1982

About the author

Kit Reed was an American author of both speculative fiction and literary fiction, as well as psychological thrillers under the pseudonym Kit Craig.

Her 2013 "best-of" collection, The Story Until Now, A Great Big Book of Stories was a 2013 Shirley Jackson Award nominee. A Guggenheim fellow, she was the first American recipient of an international literary grant from the Abraham Woursell Foundation. She's had stories in, among others, The Yale Review, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Omni and The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Literature. Her books Weird Women, Wired Women and Little Sisters of the Apocalypse were finalists for the Tiptree Prize. A member of the board of the Authors League Fund, she served as Resident Writer at Wesleyan University.

Reviews

[R.C. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm in the odd position of agreeing with most of the book's particulars while feeling that the book itself is going to be kind of discouraging for a good chunk of writers reading it. The author does give some very good tips (particularly in the chapter on what to put in and what to leave out of a story). She was a proponent of the don't bore your reader with extra words, just keep things moving along school. I appreciate this as a reader, because there's no better way to bore me to tears than to go on and on about things that don't matter to the story.

But, note that this book is not about plot structure. There's none of that howevermanypoint-plot structure stuff in here, or outlining, or any of that. The book skips over that area, looking more at how to listen to your characters, and then going into more what I'd call editing and paring down what you have once it's written. Also note that though the author did write speculative fiction, it's not a book that deals with that particular genre specifically.

My biggest beef with the book is that a disconcerting amount of it answers questions like "how do I do this? How do I make this better?" by saying, "Just write. Just write more, and You Will Know. You will intuit it through sheer experience. Your characters will tell you." ....okay? To some degree I can agree: writers are generally drawn to writing because they already have some sense of what good (or at least publishable) writing is, and it's just about honing that sense. But the author very, very much seems to suggest that if you can't figure out a story's "inner logic" on your own, if you know your characters and they don't "just tell you" what the story should be, then welp, you're not a writer and should just give up. Which is less than helpful, I think.

Also, the author is one of those authors who was Of A Certain Age or Pedantic Persuasion and made a huffy point of insisting on using the general "he" throughout. I'm glad to say that THAT looked weirder to me than using the general "they" or switching off between he and she every now and then would have. Times change.

[M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's hard for me to assess how useful the book was - I've read plenty of writing fiction manuals to vary degrees of satisfaction. I did, however, find a lot of good and sometime disruptive advice.

Kit Reed has interesting opinions to share and it shows. I appreciated her take on style. I was also surprised to find a defense of good telling (instead of repeating the well-worn "show don't tell"). Last, but not least, the chapter about dedication contained some hard-to-swallow truths that probably most writers should at least try to chew.

[Tom Britz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book as its premise is the heart of what makes a writer. . .a writer. Kit Reed eschews the outlining and planning for letting the story come from the inside. Letting the story bubble up from the author's depth. She informs all aspects of what it takes to become a writer from personal anecdotes and from the experiences of others that she is privy to.

[Michael Brantley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found these to be a great book for writers of any genre, even though it is geared towards fiction. This would be a fine book to teach a creative writing class. Anyone looking some good foundations and exercises would benefit from reading it.