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The Writer's Bookshelf
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Creating Fiction, edited by Julie Checkoway
Visit the workshops of 23 of the best fiction-writing teachers in the country. Learn how to revise from Pulizer Prize-winner Jane Smiley. Find new ways to evoke time & place from Richard Russo. National Book Award-winner Charles Johnson offers a passionate discussion of the writer's apprenticeship. Lan Samantha Chang presents strategies for structuring stories. John Barth, one of the most influential writers & theorists of the past 40 years, explores elements of storytelling. |
In Creating Fiction--edited by Julie Checkoway, & published in a partnership between AWP & Story Press--all key elements of fiction writing are covered, from plot to characterization to point of view. But the contributors go much further, exploring even finer points of the craft, such as:
- using personal experience & emotions to create more meaningful fiction
- managing tone & inference to guide your readers' responses
- getting the most from minor characters
- controlling your readers' sympathies
- relying on fewer details to suggest the larger world of the story
- recognizing strengths & weaknesses of your writing style
To illustrate their instruction, the contributors quote both classic & contemporary writers, such as Raymond Carver, Flannery O'Connor, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dylan Thomas, Eudora Welty, & Katherine Anne Porter. Throughout the book, the importance of reading--of mastering the form through careful study of great writing--is stressed.
The chapters each end with exercises to help you implement what you've learned. In a special section, you'll find forty additional exercises from AWP members who have contributed their favorites.
Through the insights of some of today's most accomplished writers & teachers, you'll discover new techniques to help you create more powerful fiction. Creating Fiction is just $17, paperback, plus $3.50 postage.
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