Rating: 
Summary: If you aspire to become a SF author...
Review: ...you must read this. This short book was actually a pleasant surprise to me. While reading it I felt as if I was talking to Card one on one. The book provides very valuable advice on writing, ideas, and tips on how to break into the field. This book was more than I expected, because it offers more than tips on how to write...it gives you an insight to Card's mind and his creative process. Which hopefully will provide you with assurance that you are on the right path, and the motivation to pursue it.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but not quite for me...
Review: 3 1/2 stars.
Pros: This book is a great book for beginners in writing. Very informative, and I especially enjoyed the section about publishing your own books. This is a short paragraph, I know, but it still acounts for three stars.
Cons: For more experienced writers (I'm fourteen, and have just experimented a little) Which I'm afrais include myself, this is repetative, and probably a little tedious. I understand where he's comming from, and, frankly, it isn't Card's fault. To write a book, specific only to writing a genre, you can only include basic things, vague, general, things. You can't tell somebody how to write a book becase a. Everybody's unique, and you'd be surpressing creativity on their part, and b. You'd probably be wrong. Some techniques work for some, and some other techniques, work for some other people. I still recommend buying this book, especially since it's now dirt cheap.
Rating: 
Summary: The best from the best
Review: Being a long time fan of OSC, and having once had a desire to write, I was really excited to pick up this book. I love it, could not put it down. It offered many tips from the trade. Best of all, and this is more than worth the money, it has once again inspired me to write.Now, I'm not going to become the next OSC by reading this book, and there is no single book that will teach you how to become a wonderful writer (especially not in under 200 pages), but this is a great book to get you going. It is no small wonder that this won Card another Hugo award. There are other books in the series. I can't wait to pick them up.
Rating:
Summary: Inspired my Enthusiasm
Review: Card is a master. This book will not make you a master of SF like he is, but it will make you a SF writer. Every time I get discouraged (rejections, writers block, etc,) I read a bit of this book to remind me what I should be doing and inspire my drive again. It is not the greatest resource in the world for people wanting to be published; it is a resource for those who want to tell a story and tell it well enough to be published (even if it never is).
Rating:
Summary: Concise, clear, practical, insightful.
Review: I am a beginning writer of speculative fiction who has always felt unhappy with his stories. Reading this book has given me insight into certain aspects of planning and development that have really been lacking. Among the most useful advice in the book, for me, is the emphasis Card placed on world and character creation before writing; both will change and be refined during the writing of the story, but without spending the time to create them and ask questions of them prior to the story's writing, both end up thin and less believable. Too often I have found myself trying to write a story arond a great Idea or Event with little to no preparation beyond the initial inspiration, only to find the finished work thin and lacking. This book does not teach you to become a great writing of speculative fiction; what it does is illuminate where your stories might be lacking, where you should spend more time in development, and it lists what kinds of groups and organizations can help you improve both your writing and your stories. For under 140 pages, it is absolutely the best book of its kind. Even if you don't intend to write much SF&F, reading this book will make you a more critical reader of the genre. One last note: this book will help you improve your Sci Fi and Fantasy stories, it is *not* designed to improve your general writing of fiction. There are other great books out there that specifically address such things as Character creation and development, plot, setting, grammar and style, ect., so such topics are ommitted in this book except where some advice can be given that is specific to SF&F.
Rating:
Summary: Excelent, it gave me alot of ideas
Review: I believe this book is a must for any writer, not just for science fiction and fantasy writers. In particular, the chapter on story construction, I believe, is for every writer, but let me start at the start. Chapter One, The Infinite Boundary
This chapter just explains the differences between science fiction and fantasy. A nice introduction, however all it does is make you understand a bit more about the genre you plan to write in. Being Australian, it had references to magazines and anthologies that I perhaps have a very slim chance of reading, and if I ever do get a chance to, I'd probably have to morgage the house to afford them.
Hence, I guess this chapter wasn't much use. Chapter 2, World Creation.
This, and the next chapter, are what makes the book worth it. It empasises the fact that your world within your story has to make sense. It has to have rules. Chapter 3, Story Construction
After, no during, this section, I just got out my pen and started jotting down all these ideas I had for my story. Maybe that is why I am raving so much about this book - because it helped me, and it helped me immediatly. I think my stories will be so much more from having read this. Chapter 4, Writing Well
Also another good chapter. This chapter made me think about how I had handled some aspects of my story, and gave me a few ideas on how to improve. However, over all this chapter is mostly common sense. Chapter 5, The Life and Business of Writing
This chapter was not much use to me. it mainly concerns with the opertunities within the American market, something which I hope to crack through one day, but after being an established writer in Australia ;) However, don't put the book down! There was a nice little idea called the "Wise Reader", which I think i might try! Overall, Orson Scott Card is a VERY readable writer. And the fact that this book is only 140 pages long, I got through it in just over an hour, so it wont delay you from writing for too long!!!
Rating:
Summary: Lots of good but very basic writing advice
Review: I can only presume that Card sees a lot of really terrible stories at writing workshops. While the advice in this book is great, it's also all very basic, and most of it should be obvious to people who have read a significant amount of fiction. I would recommend this book only for extremely inexperienced authors who haven't yet learned the basics of good writing.
Rating: 
Summary: An unneccessary toolbox of the obvious
Review: I've never taken any writing classes aside from the standard high school and college requirements. I read a lot, and I'm starting to write a lot too. If I'm extremely lucky and bust my hump for the next few decades, maybe I'll even enjoy the merest hint of the success Orson Scott Card has found as an amazingly talented writer. Unfortunately, this book isn't going to help me get there. There's nothing in here that I didn't already know, and like I said I haven't got any special experience. How to Write... isn't so much a how-to book as a shopping list of the most obvious information a fiction writer needs to know. In fact, that information is so obvious that most ordinary people know it intuitively, even if they've never written a page of fiction in their lives. For example, the advice you are given to help you create logical, consistent worlds is something not much more complex then "Create logical, consistent worlds". The section on story structure will only give you blatantly obvious advice as well, stuff like it's bad to reveal the solution too early on in a mystery and that you should think about a character's motivation for moving forward through the events of your tale. Do you really need to read an entire book to tell you these things? Probably not. There's nothing in here that will make you say "Of course! This is what my stories have been lacking!" If anything, it will make you feel vastly better about being a writer, because if this is all there is to it (and I suspect that's not the case), writing must be a piece of cake. There are a few valuable pieces of advice in the book such as where to go to get your stories published and how to further your career as a writer- but these gems only tend to be a paragraph or two, not very detailed and not really worth the price of admission. There are many other books entirely devoted to the useful subjects Card is only able to give you a glimpse of, and your money is most likely better spent on those. I recognize the merit of being told the obvious at certain points to keep yourself focused, and in that regard this book may serve you well. However, those looking for hard information and valuable writing exercises should pass this selection by or prepare themselves for sore disappointment.
Rating:
Summary: Uncle Orson tells you how to write science fiction & fantasy
Review: If you are familiar with Orson Scott Card's Hatrack River site, you know that there is nobody in the field of science fiction and fantasy who is more committed to helping new writers. If that is news to you then certainly his resume as a writer is well known to any one interested in writing in this field. This is one of the thinner books on writing you are going to fine and that is because Uncle Orson is extremely focused in explaining his craft. Consequently, there are but five sections to this volume in The Writer's Digest Genre Writing Series. (1) The Infinite Boundary looks at the spectrum covered by science fiction and fantasy with some attention to the distictions between the two as well. (2) World Creation details how to build, populate and dramatize your new world, including working out all the necessary elements such as history, language, geography and customs. (3) Story Construction deals with finding the right character for an idea or the right idea for a character (and do not forget about "the MICE quotient"). (4) Writing Well is a collection of fundamental tips, otherwise known as the "don't do this at home" section. (5) The Life and Business of Writing deals both generally with the business but also the specifics of science fiction and fantasy. I find his use of examples, especially when he lays out a series of variations on a theme, to be helpful because they demonstrate in practice what his theoretical points and show how many additional ideas each idea generates. Perhaps most importantly, Uncle Orson is having a conversation with you; he is neither lecturing nor pontificating. His non-fiction is as readily as his award-winning fiction, and that should come as a surprise to no one. There are other books better suited to getting into the nuts and bolts of constructing brave new worlds, but I have yet to find a better book at covering the basics than this one.
Rating:
Summary: SF, YES... F, NO
Review: If you are trying to write about science fiction, this is an average book. I am an aspiring fantasy writer and was duped by the title. The meager fantasy entries do not constitute adding the word "Fantasy" to the cover. I also got a bit annoyed with the flow of ideas; every line is based on how the author came up with ideas and each suggestion stemmed directly from something he had wrote. The book read more like a promotional book than a How-To. I was left more stifled than inspired. To this date, the best book on writing I have ever read is "If You Can Talk, You Can Write" (Joel Saltzman) and I recommend it for all genres of aspiring writers.
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