Confident with the basics of your craft? Looking to take your writing to the next level? Advanced Fiction gives you the tools to hone your skills by thinking more deeply and systematically about deploying them on the page. Friendly and down-to-earth, Amy Weldon guides you through the realities of craft and process, combining a broad anthology of landmark stories with instruction on the more advanced aspects of fiction writing.
Featuring interactive prompts, exercises and suggestions for further reading, this book guides you from larger philosophical issues to subtler technical ones, from topics as diverse as the intricate principles of storytelling to navigating artistic and political landscapes conscientiously and building a writing career.
Beginning with a brief recap of the basics, the text goes on to examine:
- The psychology of writing and revising
- Practical methods for drafting and notebook-keeping
- Taking personal and technical risks with ideas, images, and forms
- Making responsible decisions about representing identities, bodies, and histories on the page
- Complex craft concepts such as world-building, structure, time, and moving from short forms to novels
Placing students' own work in conversation with established stories, the accompanying anthology selections range widely in culture, technique and time period, including authors of dystopia, historical fiction, satire, and fiction in translation as well as literary realists tackling themes like economic inequality, climate change, and identity.
Thoughtful and essential, this book provides excellent guidance for students and budding authors on the complexities of fiction writing from the beginning of a writing project – short story or novel – to the end.
Author(s): Amy E. Weldon
Series: Bloomsbury Writer's Guides and Anthologies
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 323
City: London
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
Credits List
Chapter 1: What Makes Advanced Fiction Writing “Advanced?”
Student Craft Studio: Shannon Baker, “Habits”
Writing-Mind, Ethics, and Curiosity
Craft Studio: James Joyce (1882–1941), “Araby” (from Dubliners, 1914)
Divining the Source: Why Do You Write?
Chapter 2: Getting It Down: Self-Organizing, From Mind to Page
Screens and the Artist’s Self
Notebooks and Journals
Typing, Scribbling, Editing, and Cutting
Clotheslines, Envelopes, Files for Bits and Pieces
Computers: My Basic System
Chapter 3: Mystery, Conviction, Form, and Risk
The Terrain of Risk, Part One: The Page
The Terrain of Risk, Part Two: The Political World
The Terrain of Risk, Part Three: Your Own World
Student Craft Studio: Levi Bird, “On Stable Ground”
Why Do We Write? Because Life Is Short
Craft Studio: Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935), “The Yellow Wallpaper” (New England Magazine, 1892)
Chapter 4: Writing in Color: Culture, Identity, and Art
Starting the Conversation: Showing Up
Writing across Difference: It’s for Everyone
Writing the Other, or Writing in Color
But Who Are You?
Stereotypes: Beyond the Magical Negro, Tiny Tim, and the Gay Best Friend
Writing across the Aisle: The Political Other
Student Craft Studio: Ian Wreisner, “The New Chicago”
Writing in Color: Starting the Process
Putting It into Practice: Some Techniques for “Writing the Other”
Craft Studio: Rebecca Makkai, Chapter 1 of The Great Believers (2018)
Chapter 5: Invisible Engines: Purpose, Psychic Distance, and Point of View
What’s This Really About? Drawing Your Story’s Heart
Too Close? Too Far? Just Right: Psychic Distance
Student Craft Studio: Andrew Tiede, “Till Death”
Keeping Your Distance—by Accident
Keeping Your Distance—on Purpose
Who’s at the Controls: Point of View
Intimacy, Verb Tense, and Point of View
The Sound of the Second Person
Atmospheres: Point of View as Subtext
Verb Tenses and You: Shifts and Options
Staging Significance: What’s at Stake?
Moving through Time: Structure, Diagrams, and Subliminal Coordinates
Craft Studio: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (b. 1977), “The American Embassy” (2003)
Chapter 6: Building a World: For Your Readers and Yourself
Step One: What Do You Know—or Not?
Step Two: What Do You—And Your Readers—Need to Know?
Step Three: Solve Your New Problems
Student Craft Studio: Joel Murillo, Cracker Jack
Step Four: Start the Info-Drip: Establish Figure and Ground
Step Five: Build a Real Character—from the Inside
The Room Where It Happens: Place and Its Pressures
Student Craft Studio: Kari Myers, “Fields of Ash”
Why Are You Hurting Me? Violence and Fiction
Craft Studio: Angela Carter (1940–92), “The Tiger’s Bride” from The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1979)
Chapter 7: Trust the Process: Revising, Editing, and Writing at Length
More Like This/This Stops Me
Seeing a Character: Description as Process
Teacher Craft Studio: Amy Weldon, “The Serpent”
Information Order: When Do We Need to Know What?
“I’m Bored Here”: What to Cut, and Why
Beginnings and Endings: Establishing Authority
The First Sentence: Packing and Unpacking
Energy and Sound: Weaving a Writerly Voice
Writing (and Revising) at Length: Moving from Stories to Novels
A Workshop Story: Colson Whitehead, Novel Time, and My Real Main Character
Pitfalls and Signposts: More Revision Problems
Linked Story Collections
Novellas: Not Too Long, Not Too Short . . .
Is This Really a Novel?
Little Arias: Handing Off the Mike in Novel Time
Doing the Thing: Writing Novels in the Real World
Chapter 8: Creative Writing and Your Future
Thinking about the Future: Build Your Foundations
Level One: Your Information Ecosystem
Level Two: Writing-Related Jobs and Publication Credits on Campus
Level Three: The Wider Writing World
Student Career Studio: Andrew Chan (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Class of 2008): Web Editor at The Criterion Collection and Freelance Writer (The New Yorker and Others)
Other Former Creative Writing Students Say . . .
MFA Studio: Keith Lesmeister (MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars, 2014; Author, We Could’ve Been Happy Here; Editor, Cutleaf Journal (cutleafjournal.com); Co-Director, Luther College Writers Festival; Instructor of English at Northeast Iowa Community
“East of Ely” by Keith Lesmeister
Thinking about Publication: From Stories to Collection
Finding an Agent
How Books Get Born
Control What You Can: Or, Riding the Emotional Rollercoaster
Dr. Weldon’s Fiction Prescriptions
Anthology Section
Notes
Index
