This book is designed for the beginner as well as for those who have had some practice and have achieved some measure of proficiency in the art of short story writing. Those who never attempted to do professional writing in fiction will find a number of helpful analyses of short story forms and a constructive study of techniques together with suggested exercises that will slowly, step by step, develop their creative power and sense of mastery. The more advanced writer will gain increased insight and progressive control of the various forms so that he will after a time learn to do consciously and habitually and with assured skill what until then he may have been doing blindly, haphazardly, following a fumbling, unformulated process of trial and error. - Introduction.