Jack Heffron

I found this book's writing prompts only moderately useful, because they involve many topics that I don't find directly relevant to story ideas, such as why one doesn't want to write or what one's beliefs on some issue are.

They're as good as anything in forcing one to write, about anything; and then the mind has a way of popping out thoughts that may prove unexpectedly relevant or useful to one's story, even directly involved in it. But...I'd rather move on and look at more interesting show more writing prompts.

Not recommended if the reader would like to write fiction, in which case I enthusiastically recommend The Writer's Idea Thesaurus, a book of much more interesting and offbeat prompts. show less

One of my favorite writing books so far. Filled with more prompts than you can imagine, this will be one book I will return to over and over again as I find myself stumped in writing.

Heffron does an amazing job in creating a book about everything imaginable and drawing not only examples from popular literature but creating ideas for writers to use to create their works as well. The includes, but is not limited to, writing about all kinds of love, heartache, pain, and joy; events in life show more including birth, death and marriage; tips on how to begin and end; character development and relationships; and so many more things it’s hard to grasp them all in one reading. show less

I was underwhelmed, even though I'm quite interested in the topic. My favorite three stories were: "Letter to a Young Article Writer" (Donald M. Murray), "Lessons of a Lifetime" (James Michener), and "Why Stories Fail" (Ben Nyberg). These were among the most practical and direct. Michener extolls a bias toward action... "first, learn to master the English sentence in all its richness of expression and variation in structure... Second, acquire an individualized vocabulary on at least three show more social levels, including modern street lingo... Third, familiarize yourself with the fine books that have already been published... I was classically trained... Fourth, use every device in the repertory to get to know people in the publishing business." He continues to talk about how easy it was to get published in his day relative to now. show less

While you can find many of the suggestions here in other books on self-editing, you'll also find advice that moves in new directions. There's a section on how to apply other people's suggestions to your own work that talks about the ways in which you can dig through surface-level criticism to get to the really helpful information underneath it. Many of Heffron's prompts in the section "Mining for Diamonds" focus on various ways to look at a piece of writing, pick out what's working and what show more isn't, and go from there.

Do you want help generating ideas? Evaluating your ideas? Making them serve the greater needs of your specific writing projects? What about using them to help you overcome various problems you'll encounter while writing--such as difficult beginnings, stuck middles, and troubled endings? The book follows up its instruction with helpful questions you can ask yourself, and expands on those with prompts and exercises to help you apply what you've learned to a specific piece of writing.

This book isn't meant for the seasoned pro, but novice and intermediate writers can learn a lot from it. My only minor gripe is that, in the beginning of the book, Heffron has developed a world-weary tone that focuses not on the wonder of writing, but rather on the mistakes that apprentice writers tend to make over and over again. In some ways this is good--he spends plenty of space on concrete suggestions and prompts meant to help you spot and conquer these issues. On the other hand, it's less inspiring and uplifting than the tone he takes in his previous book.

This is a wonderful book that could help most writers to improve their writing. Heffron is such a fixture in the editing world that you'll find his name somewhere in most of the writers' books out there--he really knows what he's doing, and he's sharing that valuable information with us.

Full review at ErrantDreams show less