Making Shapely Fiction

Author: Jerome Stern
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393077691
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 443

Book Description
A deft analysis and appreciation of fiction—what makes it work and what can make it fail. Here is a book about the craft of writing fiction that is thoroughly useful from the first to the last page—whether the reader is a beginner, a seasoned writer, or a teacher of writing. You will see how a work takes form and shape once you grasp the principles of momentum, tension, and immediacy. "Tension," Stern says, "is the mother of fiction. When tension and immediacy combine, the story begins." Dialogue and action, beginnings and endings, the true meaning of "write what you know," and a memorable listing of don'ts for fiction writers are all covered. A special section features an Alphabet for Writers: entries range from Accuracy to Zigzag, with enlightening comments about such matters as Cliffhangers, Point of View, Irony, and Transitions.

Micro Fiction

Author: Jerome H. Stern
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393039689
Category : Flash fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 150

Book Description
Ten years ago, Jerome Stern, director of the writing program at Florida State, initiated the World's Best Short Short Story Contest. Stories were to be about 250 words long; first prize was a check and a crate of oranges. Two to three thousand stories began to show up annually in Tallahassee, and National Public Radio regularly broadcast the winner. But, more important, the Micro form turned out to be contagious; stories of this "lack of length" now dot the literary magazines. The time seemed right, then, for this anthology, presenting a decade of contest winners and selected finalists. In addition, Stern commissioned Micros, persuading a roster of writers to accept the challenge of completing a story in one page. Jesse Lee Kercheval has a new spin on the sinking of the Titanic; Virgil Suarez sets his sights on the notorious Singapore caning; George Garrett conjures up a wondrous screen treatment pitch; and Antonya Nelson invites us into an eerie landscape. Verve and nerve and astonishing variety are here, with some wild denouements. How short can a Micro be, you wonder. Look up Amy Hempel's contribution, and you'll see.

Making Shapely Fiction

Author: Jerome H. Stern
Publisher: W. W. Norton
ISBN: 9780393029291
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Book Description
A guide to writing fiction covers dialogue, action, narrative, scene, point of view, and style, and offers advice on writing more spontaneously

On Moral Fiction

Author: John Gardner
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480409219
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
“Fearless, illuminating” criticism from a New York Times–bestselling author and legendary teacher, “proving . . . that true art is moral and not trivial” (Los Angeles Times). Novelist John Gardner’s thesis in On Moral Fiction is simple: “True art is by its nature moral.” It is also an audacious statement, as Gardner asserts an inherent value in life and in art. Since the book’s first publication, the passion behind Gardner’s assertion has both provoked and inspired readers. In examining the work of his peers, Gardner analyzes what has gone wrong, in his view, in modern art and literature, and how shortcomings in artistic criticism have contributed to the problem. He develops his argument by showing how artists and critics can reintroduce morality and substance to their work to improve society and cultivate our morality. On Moral Fiction is an essential read in which Gardner presents his thoughtfully developed criteria for the elements he believes are essential to art and its creation. This ebook features an illustrated biography of John Gardner, including original letters, rare photos, and never-before-seen documents from the Gardner family and the University of Rochester Archives.

The Art and Craft of Fiction

Author: Michael Kardos
Publisher: Macmillan Higher Education
ISBN: 1319032931
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Book Description
Brief, practical, and affordable, The Art and Craft of Fiction gives aspiring writers all they need, in a friendly voice that students love. Michael Kardos focuses on technique and presents fiction writing as a teachable (and learnable) art. With an organization built on methods and process rather than traditional literary elements, Kardos helps students begin their stories, write strong scenes, use images and research detail, revise for aesthetics and mechanics, and finish and polish their own stories. Instructors trust The Art and Craft of Fiction to help structure their course, and reinforce and complement their teaching points with examples and exercises. A brief fiction anthology at the back of the book includes 15 selections that instructors praise for their usefulness in the creative writing classroom.

Writing Fiction

Author: Janet Burroway
Publisher: Little Brown
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 428

Book Description
The most widely used and respected book on writing fiction, Writing Fiction guides the writer from first inspiration to final revision. Supported by an abundance exercises, this guide/anthology explores and integrates the elements of fiction while offering practical techniques and concrete examples. A focus on the writing process in its entirety provides a comprehensive guide to writing fiction, approaching distinct elements in separate chapters while building on what has been covered earlier. Topics include free-writing to revision, plot, style, characterization, dialogue, atmosphere, imagery, and point of view. An anthology of diverse and contemporary short stories followed by suggestions for discussion and writing exercises, illustrates concepts while offering variety in pacing and exposure to this increasingly popular form. The book also discusses key issues including writing workshops, using autobiography as a basis for fiction, using action in stories, using dialogue, and maintaining point of view. The sixth edition also features more short short stories than any previous edition and includes quotation boxes that offer advice and inspirational words from established writers on a wide range of topics--such as writing from experience, story structure, openings and endings, and revision. For those interested in developing their creative writing skills.

Out There

Author: Kate Folk
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0593231465
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Book Description
A thrilling new voice in fiction injects the absurd into the everyday to present a startling vision of modern life, “[as] if Kafka and Camus and Bradbury were penning episodes of Black Mirror” (Chang-Rae Lee, author of My Year Abroad). “Stories so sharp and ingenious you may cut yourself on them while reading.”—Kelly Link, author of Get In Trouble With a focus on the weird and eerie forces that lurk beneath the surface of ordinary experience, Kate Folk’s debut collection is perfectly pitched to the madness of our current moment. A medical ward for a mysterious bone-melting disorder is the setting of a perilous love triangle. A curtain of void obliterates the globe at a steady pace, forcing Earth’s remaining inhabitants to decide with whom they want to spend eternity. A man fleeing personal scandal enters a codependent relationship with a house that requires a particularly demanding level of care. And in the title story, originally published in The New Yorker, a woman in San Francisco uses dating apps to find a partner despite the threat posed by “blots,” preternaturally handsome artificial men dispatched by Russian hackers to steal data. Meanwhile, in a poignant companion piece, a woman and a blot forge a genuine, albeit doomed, connection. Prescient and wildly imaginative, Out There depicts an uncanny landscape that holds a mirror to our subconscious fears and desires. Each story beats with its own fierce heart, and together they herald an exciting new arrival in the tradition of speculative literary fiction.

A Room of One's Own

Author: Virginia Woolf
Publisher: Modernista
ISBN: 9180949509
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 111

Book Description
Virginia Woolf's playful exploration of a satirical »Oxbridge« became one of the world's most groundbreaking writings on women, writing, fiction, and gender. A Room of One's Own [1929] can be read as one or as six different essays, narrated from an intimate first-person perspective. Actual history blends with narrative and memoir. But perhaps most revolutionary was its address: the book is written by a woman for women. Male readers are compelled to read through women's eyes in a total inversion of the traditional male gaze. VIRGINIA WOOLF [1882–1941] was an English author. With novels like Jacob’s Room [1922], Mrs Dalloway [1925], To the Lighthouse [1927], and Orlando [1928], she became a leading figure of modernism and is considered one of the most important English-language authors of the 20th century. As a thinker, with essays like A Room of One’s Own [1929], Woolf has influenced the women’s movement in many countries.

Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves

Author: Carolyn Chute
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
ISBN: 0802191932
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 725

Book Description
“An intellectual page-turner” set in a secretive countercultural community by the author of The Beans of Egypt, Maine (O, The Oprah Magazine). It’s the height of summer 1999, when local Maine newspaper the Record Sun receives numerous tipoffs from anonymous callers warning of violence, weapons stockpiling, and rampant child abuse at the nearby homeschool on Heart’s Content Road. Hungry to break into serious journalism, Ivy Morelli sets out to meet the mysterious leader of the homeschool, Gordon St. Onge—referred to by many as “The Prophet.” Soon, Ivy ingratiates herself into the sprawling Settlement, a self-sufficient counterculture community that many locals suspect to be a wild cult. Despite her initial skepticism—not to mention the Settlement’s ever-growing group of pregnant teenage girls—Ivy finds herself irresistibly drawn to Gordon. Then, a newcomer—a gifted, disturbed young girl with wild orange hair—joins the community, and falls into a complicated relationship with the charismatic Prophet. When the Record Sun finally runs its piece on the leader of the Settlement, lives will be changed both within and beyond the community, in this novel by a writer described by the New York Times Book Review as “a James Joyce of the backcountry, a Proust of rural society.”

The Swan Book

Author: Alexis Wright
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501124781
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
Originally published: Australia: Giramondo, 2013.