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What our customer's say!

"Brilliant, pages 84 to 87 alone justify the price of the book", I have always been told I'm a "good writer" and I have always wanted to "write" (specifically, make up stories and put them on paper. And despite starting with Aristotle's Poetics in high school, I guess I just didn't get it. Even so, I have spent most of my adult life in jobs that were dependent on writing and reasoning skills but, despite the number of stories in my head, never knew what to do with them.

So thank you, Nancy Kress for telling me how to go about writing a story. It could be that I'm just dense, but the reading I've been doing lately (like Noah Lukeman's "The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile" and "Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction--and Get It Published" by by Susan Rabiner and Alfred Fortunato, both excellent, five-stars from me, at least) has been positively enlightening. And "Beginnings, Middles, and Endings" is one of the best. Frankly, it's hard to rave too much about this book, because there's no much to rave about. It's clear, crisp, orderly, incredibly organized (especially when you consider that she's dealing with what is essentially how to tell a story, no small task in itself). But even more, is enormous fun to read and leads inevitably to that great AH-HA! moment, somewhere in pages 84 - 87.

In general, the two series "Elements of Fiction Writing" and the Writer's Digest books on writing fiction are excellent and, in addition to being downright enlightening, are just pure, huge fun. For the first time in my life, I feel as if I know what I'm doing. Too bad it took so long, but there I was one morning, standing in front of the mirror lost in the thousand yard stare when all of a sudden my writing focus burst out at me like a super-nova. And ever since then, my life has simply made sense. Now THAT'S a mid-life crisis.

"Big help", This book I read in christmas and it has been a very good help for me to write the end of a book I am working with. In fact if you write a beginning you have the end. That's what the books says. Now I have given the book to two in my writing group and they also think it is excellent. I never saw any other book on this subject.

"Great Basic Guide", This book is terrific for people who are just starting to try to write. It breaks down every initial stumbling block of the craft into small pieces in ways that are easy for inexperienced writers to understand and model. For more experienced writers, it might be useful to see the mechanical process for things one already understands (even innately). However, this is not a stunningly useful book for writers with more than a little experience.

"Extraordinary...", I read "Beginnings, Middles, and Ends" right after reading the (in my opinion) horrid "How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy" by Orson Scott Card, which seemed to me to be puffed up drivel. Ms. Kress's book was like a breath of fresh air. Her suggestions are helpful, her examples are wonderful without being self-promoting. She has a number of self-guided exercises that were basic and also, as a plus for beginners, build up writing confidence. If you are a beginner, or even intermediate writer, I would suggest not bothering with most of the books on the market on writing and read Ms. Kress's book first. I am a published writer of dark fantasy writing my first novel and found it extremely helpful. Highly recommended.

"Marvelous Short-Cut to Learning to Write Fiction", John Irving once commented that his experience at writing workshops & conferences taught him things about writing (e.g., voicing) that he would eventually have picked up anyway, but that he saved a lot of time by not having to learn it the hard way. That's the way I feel about Nancy Kress's wonderful Beginnings, Middles and Ends.

First of all -- and this matters -- Kress is a world-class writer of fiction herself. She's famous in the science fiction community, and she deserves to be. So when she, of all people, gives clues about creating good plots, one should listen. She's that marvelous (and rare) combination, a stunning writer who can also teach.

This book uses a very methodical approach, speaking of the different parts of a piece of fiction separately and specifically addressing how they interact. Each chapter really deserves to be read several times, as the attitudes she recommends for writers can solve problems all by themselves. At the end of each chapter is a set of exercises that significantly improve one's ability to interpolate the lessons.

Much of what she says in her book I was beginning to discover on my own, but to see it put into print solidifies and sharpens my view. Personally I was writing several different stories over the time during which I read the book, and I found that it helped instantly. I'm actually stuck on one or two stories right now, and I'm going to dive back into the Kress book to see how she can help me; I know she can.

Read this reviews before You buy...

"From Inspiration to Novel, a complete thought process", Sentence structure, parts of speech, character, scenes, revisions, POV's, design, climax, development, progression, motivation, inspiration, technique, delivery, prologue, epilogue, all the way to last hurrah, Kress uncovers the bare bones of writing with an easy to read style.

Definitely not a college-level study piece, B,M,& E will cover what you need to know if you are already in the process of writing and find yourself stuck in a particular ditch. The layout of the book is favorable to the subject, starting with Beginnings, followed with Middles, and finishing with Endings, though each segment blends well into the lessons of the others.

This is an excellent book for non-college level beginners, or those who need to refresh their ancient college studies with some new blood. This book tends to be helpful no matter what level you are on, making it a must-have in any writer's collection.

Well written, non-condescending, helpful for those who already have an inkling of what they are doing, and a particularly good piece if you are stuck on your "middles", I highly recommend buying a copy of Beginnings, Middles, & Ends if you intend to write for any length of time. Enjoy!


"Buy it", Fast read with excellent information that is backed up with clear examples and exercises. Highly recommend.

"How About "Broken Cadence"? The Timing "Fit" Reflects Life", Say your Aunt Linda and Uncle Mike are traditionalists, sentimentalists. They first met at a romantic seside, cliff-overlook restaurant and vowed to dine there on every one-month anniversary for the rest of their lives. They do so the first two months, then mysteriously stop. You're surprised--but you KNOW that on their first one-YEAR anniversary, now that they're married, they will go back. It arrives. Nothing happens. Again, you're surprised. You chalk it off. Then, the following month they start fulfilling their monthly vow, and do so, regularly, thereafter. At this point you say, nothing surprises me anymore. That's broken cadence. That's life. (This is a pattern--life-like "broken cadence"--that I tried to adhere closely to in my own novel, Six Hours Past Thursday.) ##### It's this hugely challenging problem that is the ONLY major missing puzzle-piece to Beginnings, Middles, and Ends. Otherwise, this book is a stunningly sound blueprint for logical story development. ##### But, until you can figure a way to successfully overlay an Aunt Linda / Uncle Mike-type time-sequence, "fit" onto the principles this book sets forth, I think you are always going to have a plot-development, pacing problem.

"For writing the `traditional plotted story'", This book is intended for writers who struggle with story structure. It is much more systematic and objective than Stephen King's `On Writing' in the sense that Nancy Kress gives a lot of practical advice. The book is divided into three major parts, each devoted to one of the story parts in the title. Kress highlights common problems and suggests solutions, providing exercises at the end of each chapter. These are aimed at developing more conscious thought over the manner in which established writers conduct their `beginnings, middles & ends'. I think that writers like Stephen King would repudiate this as being too artificial.

I found it particularly helpful when Kress wrote about the `implicit promise' delivered by the author at the beginning of each story. Delivering an implicit promise at the beginning and fulfilling it at the end is a great formula for writing a successful story. However, it must be noted that this is a formula that works for the `traditional plotted story', exemplified by the stuff that you can read in most fiction magazines. A much wilder, less-framed genre is what Kress calls the `contemporary literary short story', exemplified by Hemingway's `A Clean, Well-Lighted Place', which I would translate into `the kind of story that, by the time you finish reading it, you're surprised it's already over.' If you're into writing that kind of story, this book is not for you.

In this review I've focused on short stories because that's what interests me, but actually most of the book is devoted to novel-writing. One more word of caution: Throughout the book, Kress sticks to examples about a story featuring Jane, Martha and Sam, a troublesome family of characters, and their antics. By the `Endings' part, I was bored to death by the trio and had to struggle against my will to toss the book aside whenever they appeared.


"How to keep the tension going in your story", This book is all about the structure and flow of a story. Nancy will show you how to hook the reader, how to dance through the crazy twists and turns that the reader will devour page after page, and how to leave them wanting to hand your book or story to a friend saying "you must read this!

Mandatory for any author's bookshelf.