Some of the best and most thought-provoking craft essays available, period. Boswell deftly weaves personal narrative with lessons on the mysteries of literary fiction in a way that asks me to return to this book again and again, for inspiration and direction, but also because, as I grow and change as a writer, so the essays and what they mean to me change as well. There are three that are essential reading, in my humble opinion: "The Half-Known World", "Process & Paradigm" and "Narrative Spandre...

The worst part about this book was the author's notion that a writer should not be organized. Like Annie Dillard in The Writing Life, Boswell emphasizes that the writer should not have a clear understanding, and certainly not an outline, of characters, plot, themes, etc. One page 21, Boswell notes, “A story may fail because the writer has made up his mind about the characters before any words reach the page.” Can neither Boswell nor Dillard comprehend an author who is able to imagine the skeleto...

This is a really fine book on craft, up there with Charles Baxter's Burning Down The House but geared more toward practical application. A couple of the essays are too specific to be helpful to everyone (there's one on detective fiction and one on political fiction), but overall I found the book to be thought-provoking, warm, and full of good advice.

Exactly the book I needed to read now. Rereading it confirmed the decision I made over the weekend to step back from my 300 page first draft of ASHFALL #4 and try a different approach. If the final book is any good, Boswell gets some of the credit.

Excellent book on the art of reading and writing the sublter forms of literary fiction. Great analysis, great examples, great writing. Worth reading whether you're writing or not. No formulas here.

This is a really, really good craft book. The basic premise--that in writing fiction, we should start by writing a half-known world, giving the story time to teach us what it wants us to say before we start imposing our ideas onto it--really resonated with me. Boswell de-emphasizes "practical" suggestions (like lists and writing exercises) and encourages the writer to let the story take the lead.

Charming, straightforward and good-humored like Boswell himself. Keeps his ideas about writing fiction grounded in the texts of stories and novels he loves, resulting in my to-read and to-re-read lists growing. "Politics and Art in the Novel" and "You Must Change Your Life" were my favorite essays. "On Omniscience" seemed to lack the power (and not just emotional power) that I remembered from when Boswell's delivered it as a lecture.There's definitely a bias to realist, psychologically-driven fi...

This book was weird because as I was reading it, I didn't really care for it and didn't think the advice was that helpful. However, afterwards, when thinking about writing and writing a paper on writing, I found Boswell's words creeping into my head and on to the paper. His book proved to be the most helpful and his words stuck with me without me even knowing it. After writing a paper, I found a lot I too away from his book. Always half know the worrld you are writing about. To fully know it is

One of the best books on writing fiction that I've ever read. Boswell's essays approaches each topic with self-deprecating wisdom, and gives practical and accessible advice for any level writer. I found his essay "Politics and Art in the Novel" especially enlightening.Highly recommended.

Warning!The following anecdote will tell you next to nothing about the content of this book.Once I had a boyfriend that was freakishly worried that I would, "run off with a librarian or a writer". I, of course, acted extremely insulted by this assumption and found myself to be quite convincing at times.And then tonight, as I'm sitting in my daughters room waiting for her to fall asleep this book fell open and I noticed one of the notes I'd jotted in the margin of page 1. The note is a small hear...

Great series of essays on some of the more subtle elements of the writing craft. My favorites were: "The Half-Known World", "Narrative Spandrels", "Private Eye Point of View", and "You Must Change Your Life."Definitely recommended for fiction writers seeking something new in a craft book.

Loved his essays on craft. Inspiring. I'm getting my pen and paper out right now.

Robert Boswell's The Half Known World is a great read for anyone interested in writing "literary" fiction and the first two chapters are a great read for anyone period. Chapter one is the book's cornerstone. Here Boswell inveighs against creative writing classes that have students making character lists, about birthdays, jobs, etc. This reminds me very much of Flannery O'Connor who insisted on the "mystery of personality" as the core of good stories. Anything that kills mystery for readers and w...

I'm honestly not sure what to say about this book. Yes, I learned a lot by reading it. (The chapters on developing characters who are "vivid, specific, and unforgettable" are particularly good.) But some of the material in the book is quite disturbing. I'm thinking of the chapter on urban legends, which features urban legends that repeat a lot of racist tropes, and a quoted passage on page 145 in which the n-word features repeatedly. I realize that the author included these materials so that he

I read one essay the day I processed this book at the library and liked it so much that I ordered the book from my local bookstore. I cited the essay in my own essay, too. Fucking fantastic orientation -- very clear cut yet sparse, beautiful prose. Yeah, I have yet to pick up the book, because I have no money. But I will. Sorry, Walden Pond. I know it's been there for weeks.

I would recommend this book to anyone who thinks they ever want to write anything. Seriously. Non fiction, fiction, short stories, memoirs, novels, anything that has something resembling a plot. And also people who feel like they have no idea what they're doing in their lives. And at the end of the day, isn't that kind of all of us?

Extremely readable book about writing. Good for us writing neophytes.

One of the best books I've read on technique in writing fiction. Boswell specifically addresses himself to those of us trying to create literature: "a slippery term, but for the moment let's call it 'fiction that aspires to be art'." Thus this book is at the opposite end of the spectrum from how-to-write-a-blockbuster-novel type books, the the tomes filled with story-plotting algorithms and character-trait spreadsheets. Literature, Boswell says, in words echoing those of Flannery O'Connor in he...

There is some good writing advice here, despite the lack of diversity in the examples used. You can tell the age of the author by the over-reliance on cannonical works--the usual suspects such as Melville, O'Connor, Hemingway, Fitzgerald. Indeed, this book is very much written like an old-school English professor wrote it--it veers more academic than something suitable for a popular audience. The prose might be too dense/analytic for someone just starting out as a writer, or someone without a de...

I read most of this in 2009, so I guess it's legit.The best book on writing I have read in a long time. Maybe ever? I love his discussions of published works. Everything he says is very straight forward and insightful. It made me think differently about many elements of fiction. Highly recommended.