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9780321195371

Deepening Fiction A Practical Guide for Intermediate and Advanced Writers

by ;
  • ISBN13:

    9780321195371

  • ISBN10:

    032119537X

  • Edition: 1st
  • Format: Paperback
  • Copyright: 2004-10-05
  • Publisher: Pearson

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Summary

This intermediate/advanced guide to writing fiction emphasizes the revision process and uses craft discussions, exercises, and diverse examples to show the artistic implications of writing choices. This book addresses the major elements of fiction. Numerous examples, questions, and exercises throughout the book help readers reflect upon and explore writing possibilities. The mini-anthology includes a variety of interesting, illustrative, and diverse stories-North American and international, contemporary and classic, realistic and experimental.

Table of Contents

PREFACE xi
PART ONE Intermediate and Advanced Approaches to Fiction-Writing 1(216)
1 Developing and Complicating Characters
3(25)
Generating Characters
3(7)
Inhabiting Characters
5(2)
Representing Characters
7(2)
Character History/Background/Connections
9(1)
Story Analysis and Questions: "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere"
10(2)
Connecting Character to Story
12(3)
Motivation and Action
13(1)
Active and Passive Main Characters
14(1)
Relating Characters to Each Other
15(2)
Story Analysis and Questions: "The Forest"
17(1)
Complicating Characters
18(5)
Sympathetic and Unsympathetic Characters
19(1)
Rethinking "Heroes," "Victims," and "Villains"
19(3)
Restraint in Writing Emotion
22(1)
Story Analysis and Questions: "Powder"
23(1)
Revision: Bringing Characters into Focus
24(2)
Character Exercises
26(2)
2 Reintroducing Third-Person POVs
28(24)
The Centrality of POV
28(3)
Real-World POV Decisions
29(1)
Complicating POV: Beyond First, Second, and Third
30(1)
Aspects of Third-Person POV
31(4)
Story Analysis and Questions: "The Niece"
35(2)
Variations of Common POV Choices
37(8)
Objective Narrators
37(2)
Close Third-Person POV (Third Person Limited)
39(3)
Discerning Third-Person POV (Third Person Flexible)
42(1)
Degrees of Omniscience
43(2)
Story Analysis and Questions: "Inferno I, 32"
45(1)
Effectively Breaking POV Rules
46(1)
Story Analysis and Questions: "Gooseberries"
46(2)
Revision: Making Subtle POV Shifts
48(2)
POV Exercises
50(2)
3 The Uses of First and Second Person
52(19)
Stories that Require First-Person Narrators
52(2)
Aspects of First-Person POV
54(4)
Motives for Telling the Story
58(4)
Understanding the Past
59(1)
Applying Perspective
60(2)
Story Analysis and Questions: "The Turkey Season"
62(2)
The Versatility of Second Person
64(2)
Disguised First Person
65(1)
Direct Address and Second-Person Narrators
66(1)
Story Analysis and Questions: "Trauma Plate"
66(1)
Revision: Making Major POV Changes
67(2)
POV Exercises
69(2)
4 Plot, Narrative Drive, and Alternative Story Structures
71(23)
Reclaiming the Pleasures of Plot
71(4)
Classical Plot Structures
72(2)
Plots and Subplots
74(1)
Story Analysis and Questions: "Father"
75(2)
Narrative Drive and Meaning
77(4)
Forward and Backward Movement
79(1)
Actual and Emotional Plots
80(1)
Story Analysis and Questions: "Photograph of Luisa"
81(1)
Advancing Plot Through Dialogue and Exposition
82(3)
Plot in Literary and Genre Writing
85(1)
Alternate and Experimental Structures
86(3)
Nonlinear Story Structures
86(2)
Image as Structure
88(1)
Story Analysis and Questions: "Graffiti"
89(1)
Revision: How Structure Emerges through Multiple Revisions
90(2)
Plot and Structure Exercises
92(2)
5 Time in Fiction: Scene, Summary, Flashbacks, Backstory, and Transitions
94(19)
Setting the Story's Time Span
94(2)
Scene and Summary in Draft and Revision
96(6)
Action, Description, and Dialogue
97(1)
Compelling Summaries
98(2)
Summary Within Scenes
100(2)
Story Analysis and Questions: "The Eve of the Spirit Festival"
102(2)
Moving Through Time
104(5)
White Space and Transitional Phrases
104(2)
Flashbacks and Backstory
106(3)
Story Analysis and Questions: "The Rooster and the Dancing Girl"
109(1)
Revision: Experimenting with Time
110(2)
Time Exercises
112(1)
6 Discovering the Story's Subject: Material and Subject Matter
113(22)
Ways for Writers to Identify Their Own Material
113(6)
Repetition and Variation in a Writer's Material
115(2)
The Difference Between a Subject and a "Theme"
117(1)
Psychological and Situational Subject Matters
117(2)
Story Analysis and Questions: "A Wagner Matinee"
119(2)
Taking Risks with Subject Matter
121(9)
Ordinary Subject Matter: Beyond the Trivial
121(2)
Dramatic Subject Matter: Power vs. Sentiment
123(2)
Transgressive Subject Matter: Crossing Boundaries
125(1)
Nonrealistic Subject Matter: The Literary Fantastic
126(4)
Story Analysis and Questions: "Car Crash While Hitchhiking"
130(1)
Revision: Discovering the Story's True Subject
131(2)
Subject Matter Exercises
133(2)
7 Macrosetting, Microsetting, and Detail
135(16)
Reseeing Familiar Settings
135(1)
Macrosetting, Microsetting, and Detail
136(1)
Essential and Arbitrary Settings
137(3)
Maximalist Settings
137(2)
Minimalist Settings
139(1)
Story Analysis and Questions: "The Fence Party"
140(2)
The Possibilities of Detail
142(3)
Point of View and Detail
142(2)
Symbolic Detail
144(1)
Story Analysis and Questions: "Pilgrims"
145(2)
Revision: Inhabiting Places
147(2)
Setting Exercises
149(2)
8 Society, Culture, and Context: Research and the Imagination
151(19)
Creating Context
151(4)
Using Research to Enlarge Subject Matter
152(1)
Work and Leisure
153(2)
Story Analysis and Questions: "Orientation"
155(4)
Art, Science, and Other Fields of Inquiry
156(3)
Story Analysis and Questions: "Di Grasso: A Tale of Odessa"
159(6)
History, Biography, and Other Cultures
160(3)
Religion and Politics
163(2)
Story Analysis and Questions: "Civil Peace"
165(2)
Revision: Contextualizing the Story
167(1)
Society, Culture, and Context Exercises
168(2)
9 Style and Dialogue
170(23)
The Writer's Style
170(9)
Word Choice
171(2)
Tone and Vision
173(1)
Figurative Language
174(2)
Sentence and Paragraph Work
176(3)
Story Analysis and Questions: "The Cures for Love"
179(2)
Dialogue and Subtext
181(4)
Dialogue Rhythms and Styles
182(2)
Dialogue Tags and Accompanying Actions
184(1)
Story Analysis and Questions: "A Conversation with My Father"
185(2)
Revision: Line Editing
187(4)
Style and Dialogue Exercises
191(2)
10 Revision: Beginnings, Middles, and Endings
193(24)
The Writing Room
193(5)
Giving and Receiving Criticism: The Workshop
195(1)
Ways of Reentering a Story
196(2)
Structural Revision
198(1)
Beginnings
199(3)
The Creative Beginning and the Literal Beginning
200(1)
Setting Up the Story
201(1)
Story Analysis and Questions: Three Beginnings
202(3)
Middles
205(1)
Endings
205(2)
Inevitable Surprises
206(1)
Story Analysis and Questions: Three Endings
207(3)
Common Pitfalls in Beginnings and Endings
210(3)
Revision Exercises
213(4)
PART TWO Anthology of Stories 217(164)
Chinua Achebe,
"Civil Peace"
219(4)
Isaac Babel,
"Di Grasso: A Tale of Odessa"
223(3)
Andrea Barrett,
"The Forest"
226(16)
Charles Baxter,
"The Cures for Love"
242(12)
Jorge Luis Borges,
"Inferno I, 32"
254(1)
Willa Cather,
"A Wagner Matinee"
255(6)
Lan Samantha Chang,
"The Eve of the Spirit Festival"
261(9)
Anton Chekhov,
"Gooseberries"
270(8)
Julio Cortázar,
"Graffiti"
278(3)
Adam Johnson,
"Trauma Plate"
281(11)
Denis Johnson,
"Car Crash While Hitchhiking"
292(4)
Yasunari Kawabata,
"The Rooster and the Dancing Girl"
296(3)
John L'Heureux,
"Father"
299(4)
Margot Livesey,
"The Niece"
303(12)
Alice Munro,
"The Turkey Season"
315(12)
Daniel Orozco,
"Orientation"
327(5)
Julie Orringer,
"Pilgrims"
332(13)
ZZ Packer,
"Drinking Coffee Elsewhere"
345(15)
Grace Paley,
"A Conversation with My Father"
360(4)
Melissa Pritchard,
"Photograph of Luisa"
364(7)
Elizabeth Tallent,
"The Fence Party"
371(6)
Tobias Wolff,
"Powder"
377(4)
PART THREE The Writing Process and the Writing Life 381(25)
Talent and Habit
383(6)
Advice and Experience from the Community
384(2)
Strategies for Developing and Maintaining Work Habits
386(3)
Writer's Block
389(7)
Advice and Experience from the Community
390(3)
Strategies for Overcoming Writer's Block
393(3)
Rejection, Publication, and Endurance
396(10)
Advice and Experience from the Community
398(4)
Strategies for Flourishing in the Writer's Life
402
APPENDICES
Appendix A: A Writer's Glossary
406(4)
Appendix B: Suggestions for Further Reading
410(4)
Appendix C: Author Biographies
414(8)
CREDITS 422(1)
INDEX 423

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