Deepening Fiction A Practical Guide for Intermediate and Advanced Writers

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ISBN: 9780321195371 | 032119537X
Cover: Paperback
Copyright: 10/5/2004

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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.

PREFACE

PART ONE Intermediate and Advanced Approaches to Fiction-Writing

(216)

1 Developing and Complicating Characters

(25)

Generating Characters

(7)

Inhabiting Characters

(2)

Representing Characters

(2)

Character History/Background/Connections

(1)

Story Analysis and Questions: "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere"

(2)

Connecting Character to Story

(3)

Motivation and Action

(1)

Active and Passive Main Characters

(1)

Relating Characters to Each Other

(2)

Story Analysis and Questions: "The Forest"

(1)

Complicating Characters

(5)

Sympathetic and Unsympathetic Characters

(1)

Rethinking "Heroes," "Victims," and "Villains"

(3)

Restraint in Writing Emotion

(1)

Story Analysis and Questions: "Powder"

(1)

Revision: Bringing Characters into Focus

(2)

Character Exercises

(2)

2 Reintroducing Third-Person POVs

(24)

The Centrality of POV

(3)

Real-World POV Decisions

(1)

Complicating POV: Beyond First, Second, and Third

(1)

Aspects of Third-Person POV

(4)

Story Analysis and Questions: "The Niece"

(2)

Variations of Common POV Choices

(8)

Objective Narrators

(2)

Close Third-Person POV (Third Person Limited)

(3)

Discerning Third-Person POV (Third Person Flexible)

(1)

Degrees of Omniscience

(2)

Story Analysis and Questions: "Inferno I, 32"

(1)

Effectively Breaking POV Rules

(1)

Story Analysis and Questions: "Gooseberries"

(2)

Revision: Making Subtle POV Shifts

(2)

POV Exercises

(2)

3 The Uses of First and Second Person

(19)

Stories that Require First-Person Narrators

(2)

Aspects of First-Person POV

(4)

Motives for Telling the Story

(4)

Understanding the Past

(1)

Applying Perspective

(2)

Story Analysis and Questions: "The Turkey Season"

(2)

The Versatility of Second Person

(2)

Disguised First Person

(1)

Direct Address and Second-Person Narrators

(1)

Story Analysis and Questions: "Trauma Plate"

(1)

Revision: Making Major POV Changes

(2)

POV Exercises

(2)

4 Plot, Narrative Drive, and Alternative Story Structures

(23)

Reclaiming the Pleasures of Plot

(4)

Classical Plot Structures

(2)

Plots and Subplots

(1)

Story Analysis and Questions: "Father"

(2)

Narrative Drive and Meaning

(4)

Forward and Backward Movement

(1)

Actual and Emotional Plots

(1)

Story Analysis and Questions: "Photograph of Luisa"

(1)

Advancing Plot Through Dialogue and Exposition

(3)

Plot in Literary and Genre Writing

(1)

Alternate and Experimental Structures

(3)

Nonlinear Story Structures

(2)

Image as Structure

(1)

Story Analysis and Questions: "Graffiti"

(1)

Revision: How Structure Emerges through Multiple Revisions

(2)

Plot and Structure Exercises

(2)

5 Time in Fiction: Scene, Summary, Flashbacks, Backstory, and Transitions

(19)

Setting the Story's Time Span

(2)

Scene and Summary in Draft and Revision

(6)

Action, Description, and Dialogue

(1)

Compelling Summaries

(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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Deepening Fiction A Practical Guide for Intermediate and Advanced Writers

Summary

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials