Synopses & Reviews
This anthology of 58 articles, interviews, memoirs, and critical and personal essays gives students convenient and affordable access to a wide variety of important selections that discuss the theory and practice of fiction writing. The readings are accompanied by questions that encourage critical reading, as well as writing activities that invite creative responses. A compact writing workshop included guides students in drafting and revising their stories.
Synopsis
This anthology of 58 articles, interviews, memoirs, and critical and personal essays gives students convenient and affordable access to a wide variety of important selections that discuss the theory and practice of fiction writing. The readings are accompanied by questions that encourage critical reading, as well as writing activities that invite creative responses. A compact writing workshop included guides students in drafting and revising their stories.
Table of Contents
Preface Introduction PART I. THE CRAFT OF FICTION 1. Realist, Romantic, and Avant-Garde TraditionsFoundations of Fiction Flannery O’Connor, Writing Short Stories / John Gardner, Basic Skills, Genre, and Fiction as Dream / Rust Hills, Slick Fiction and Quality FictionDefining and Understanding Narrative / Frank O’Connor, Introduction to The Lonely Voice / Francine Prose, Learning from Chekhov / Ursula Le Guin, Some Thoughts on NarrativeRomance and Fabulation / Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hawthorne on Romance / Henry James, James on Hawthorne’s Romances / Frank Norris, A Plea for Romantic Fiction / Robert Scholes, Fabulation and RomanceModernist and Postmodernist Fiction / William Gass, Philosophy and the Form of Fiction / Annie Dillard, Fiction in Bits / Raymond Federman, Fiction Today or the Pursuit of Non-Knowledge / Philip Stevick, Form, Antiform, and Neoform: Verbal Collage 2. Craft and Elements of Fiction Fiction’s Periodic Table / E. M. Forster, Aspects of Fiction / Elizabeth Bowen, Notes on Writing a Novel / Wayne Booth, Types of Narration / Leon Surmelian, Scene and Summary / Eudora Welty, Some Notes on TimeThe Stuff of Life and Character / R. V. Cassill, Character / Robin Hemley, The Transformation Process / David Huddle, Issues of Character: The Saint at the TypewriterCautionary Tales / Kit Reed, What to Leave Out and What to Put In / Ben Nyberg, Why Stories Fail / Jerome Stern, Don’t Do This: A Short Guide to What Not to DoA More Nurturing Approach to Revision / Jesse Lee Kercheval, Revision / David Madden, Point of View / David Michael Kaplan, Revising Your Prose for Power and PunchA WRITER’S WORKSHOP: INVENTION AND REVISION / Guided Writing Exercises—Invention / Developing a Character’s Inner Life / Character Riffs / Craft Exercises—Revision PART II. CONTEXTS FOR FICTION WRITING 3. The Writer’s Life Writers’ Lives / Ernest Hemingway, Hunger Was Good Discipline / James Baldwin, Autobiographical Notes / Virginia Woolf, A Writer’s DiaryGrowing Up and Growing Into the Writing Life / Bernard Malamud, Long Work, Short Life / Carol Bly, Writing Whole Literature / Dorothy Allison, Believing in Literature / Anne Lamott, Introduction to Bird by BirdMetaphors for the Writing Life / Annie Dillard, The Writing Life / Victoria Nelson, The Master-Slave Relationship / Tim O’BrienN, The Magic ShowThe Fiction Writer and Politics / E. L. Doctorow, False Documents / Charles Baxter, Dysfunctional Narratives, Or ‘Mistakes Were Made’ / Nadine Gordimer, Three in a Bed: Fiction, Morals, and PoliticsThe Fiction Writer and Popular Culture / Jonathan Franzen, Perchance to Dream / David Foster Wallace, E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction / Janet Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck 4. The Teaching and Learning of Fiction WritingNow, Class … Lorrie Moore, How to Become a Writer / Alexander Neubauer, Interview with Jane Smiley / Raymond Carver, Creative Writing 101 / Bonnie Friedman, The Paraffin Density of Wax WingsReading as a Writer / R. V. Cassill, Reading as a Writer / Richard Ford, Reading / Rita Mae Brown, An Annotated Reading ListPedagogies for Fiction Writing: Theory and Practice / David Lodge, Creative Writing: Can It/Should It Be Taught / Madison Bell, Introduction to Narrative Design / Joe David Bellamy, The Theory of Creative Writing I and II / John Casey, DogmaCreative Writing in the Academy / Andrew Levy, Back Home Again: Bobbie Ann Mason’s ‘Shiloh’ / D. G. Myers, The Elephant Machine / John Aldridge, The New Assembly-Line Fiction Appendix A: A Modified Smiley: Revision, Craft, and Analytic Method in the Writing Workshop Appendix B: The Stories Referred to in the Readings Index of Authors and Titles