Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Resource
Review: This is a tremendous tool for the aspiring writer. In it, the great Ayn Rand presents her basic vision of the craft of fiction writing. The material is apparently gleaned from a lecture series the author gave at her home in the late fifties. Though dated, the advise is still tremendously useful to anyone who seeks to write better fiction. I read this book after my first novel was accepted for publication. After reading each important instruction from Rand, I found myself reviewing my own work and wishing I had made this information part of my subconscious prior to setting about the writing. I believe that my future work will be much better as a consequence of reading this book. What greater compliment can we pay?As others have noted, it is hard to read anything from Rand without feeling beat about the head and shoulders with her philosophy and egotism. In reflecting on her life and work, I have great compassion for the tragedies she endured and great admiration for her determination. I wish I could have talked to her and somehow helped her out of her militant atheism. But I seriously doubt if she would have listened to me or changed. In any case, this is wonderful and important material, which I recommend to anyone who desires to write serious fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Resource
Review: This is a tremendous tool for the aspiring writer. In it, the great Ayn Rand presents her basic vision of the craft of fiction writing. The material is apparently gleaned from a lecture series the author gave at her home in the late fifties. Though dated, the advise is still tremendously useful to anyone who seeks to write better fiction. I read this book after my first novel was accepted for publication. After reading each important instruction from Rand, I found myself reviewing my own work and wishing I had made this information part of my subconscious prior to setting about the writing. I believe that my future work will be much better as a consequence of reading this book. What greater compliment can we pay? As others have noted, it is hard to read anything from Rand without feeling beat about the head and shoulders with her philosophy and egotism. In reflecting on her life and work, I have great compassion for the tragedies she endured and great admiration for her determination. I wish I could have talked to her and somehow helped her out of her militant atheism. But I seriously doubt if she would have listened to me or changed. In any case, this is wonderful and important material, which I recommend to anyone who desires to write serious fiction.
Rating: 
Summary: Surprisingly helpful
Review: You have to ignore the megalomania ("In regard to precision of language," says Rand, "I think I myself am the best writer today.") If you can do that, and ignore also her limited choices of the great authors, there is some real gold here. What I found extremely useful were the tips on how to handle exposition. This is the problem where an author has to disclose huge lumps of information to the reader, while keeping it in the context of the story, the conversation and keeping it unobtrusive. Her practical examples "do this, not this", such as, "Miss Kensington, get these bills out immediately! We're late again on our payments" rather than "Miss Kensington, our business is experiencing a downturn due to the recession and we are late on all our payments as a result" is clear and helpful. Her section on "not showing your seams" is also good. There's a lot of practical advice on starting with your plot-theme (and woe unto you if you have none) that can help anyone write better. I like this book, along with Ursula LeGuin's Steering the Craft, for writing technique. Le Guin's is good for language and creativity. Rand's is one of the best for engineering the girders and struts that have to be underneath any piece of great writing.
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