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Book Review of Writing for Story : Craft Secrets of Dramatic Nonfiction

Writing for Story : Craft Secrets of Dramatic Nonfiction
reviewed on
Helpful Score: 1


This is an excellent text for learning how to properly write narrative nonfiction. Franklin provides two of his Pulitzer Prize-winning short stories, "Mrs. Kelly's Monster," and "The Ballad of Old Man Peters" in their original context, as well as annotated versions in the back of the book showing the techniques he uses to structure a story.

His technique includes an original way to write an outline, a simple three-step process, structuring the rough drafts and finally polishing.

Others have better methods of polishing (namely, Zinser in his "On Writing Well") but Franklin's methods teach the novice writer the techniques for getting started and improving their overall writing.