Creating Fiction - Hardcover

Associated Writing Programs

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1884910408 ISBN 13: 9781884910401

Publisher: Writer's Digest Books, 1999

Synopsis

Visit the workshops of twenty-three of the best fiction-writing teachers in the country. Learn how to revise from Pulitzer Prize-winner Jane Smiley. Find new ways to evoke time and place from Richard Russo, author of Nobody's Fool. National Book Award - winner Charles Johnson offers a passionate discussion of the writer's apprenticeship. Lan Samantha Chang, author of the acclaimed story collection Hunger, presents strategies for structuring stories. John Barth, one of the most influential writers and theorists of the past forty years, explores elements of storytelling. Creating Fiction is a partnership between Story Press and the Associated Writing Programs, an organization of nearly three hundred college and university writing programs. The contributors, members of the AWP, have taught thousands of students the art and craft of telling stories. Now their experience and wisdom can be found in one comprehensive book.

About this title

From the Publisher

Synopsis
Readers learn how to revise and edit from Jane Smiley. They find ways to evoke time and place from Richard Russo. Charles Johnson offers a passionate discussion of the writer’s apprenticeship. Lan Samantha Chang presents strategies for structuring stories; Charles Baxter explores tone and emphasis. W.D. Wetherell shows how to develop minor characters.

The contributors to "Creating Fiction"--members of the Associated Writing Programs--have won awards such as the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Magazine Award. They have led workshops, published stories and novels, and now their experience and wisdom can be found in one landmark book.

Each chapter ends with three exercises. Forty more, culled from teachers across the country, appear in a special section at the end of the book. "Creating Fiction" will engage and delight readers at any level of experience.

From the Author

A landmark collection, a must for serious writers.
If you never have the chance to study with Jane Smiley, John Barth, Charles Johnson, Richard Russo, George Garrett and the host of talented others who teach in creative writing workshops across this country, what have you been missing? CREATING FICTION, from Story Press and the Associated Writing Programs, finally gives writers everywhere access to the best-kept secrets about craft from the best writers in America. In twenty-three never-before-published and specially-commissioned chapters, Pulitzer Prize Winners and National Book Award winners share with you what they have shared with their own students: What gives rise to a story in the first place? Should you write about what you know or what you don’t know? How do you craft believable dialogue? How do you create and sustain dramatic tension? What is voice anyway? How do you structure the novel or short story collection? What should you expect when you send your work out to be published? CREATING FICTION is a landmark and definitive collection. Jane Smiley teaches revision; John Barth teaches plot; Richard Russo teaches setting; Charles Johnson offers a passionate discussion of the writer’s apprenticeship. Exercises at the end of each chapter, and forty additional exercises at the end of the book, direct writers to apply the insights of the chapter to their own work. Contributors include: Charles Baxter, Carrie Brown, John Gregory Brown, David Bouchier, Lan Samantha Chang, Stephen Dixon, Kim Edwards, Philip Gerard, Robin Hemley, Bret Lott, Michael Martone, Karen McElmurray, Alyce Miller, Valerie Miner, Alberto Rios, Debra Spark, Sylvia Watanabe, W.D. Wetherell, and Lynna Williams.

Editor Julie Checkoway is the director of the creative writing program at the University of Georgia and the President of the Associated Writing Programs, a Washington-based organization which includes nearly 300 creative writing programs, writers’ conferences and festivals, and 16,000 writers, teachers, students, editors, and publishers nationwide.

Edition details

• Publisher: Writer's Digest Books
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1884910408
• ISBN 13: 9781884910401
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 294
• Editor: Checkoway Julie