The Art of Fiction

The Art of Fiction
Author: John Gardner
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2010-08-18
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0307756718

This classic guide, from the renowned novelist and professor, has helped transform generations of aspiring writers into masterful writers—and will continue to do so for many years to come. John Gardner was almost as famous as a teacher of creative writing as he was for his own works. In this practical, instructive handbook, based on the courses and seminars that he gave, he explains, simply and cogently, the principles and techniques of good writing. Gardner’s lessons, exemplified with detailed excerpts from classic works of literature, sweep across a complete range of topics—from the nature of aesthetics to the shape of a refined sentence. Written with passion, precision, and a deep respect for the art of writing, Gardner’s book serves by turns as a critic, mentor, and friend. Anyone who has ever thought of taking the step from reader to writer should begin here.

The Art of Fiction

The Art of Fiction
Author: David Lodge
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2012-04-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1448137799

In this entertaining and enlightening collection David Lodge considers the art of fiction under a wide range of headings, drawing on writers as diverse as Henry James, Martin Amis, Jane Austen and James Joyce. Looking at ideas such as the Intrusive Author, Suspense, the Epistolary Novel, Magic Realism and Symbolism, and illustrating each topic with a passage taken from a classic or modern novel, David Lodge makes the richness and variety of British and American fiction accessible to the general reader. He provides essential reading for students, aspiring writers and anyone who wants to understand how fiction works.

The Art of Time in Fiction

The Art of Time in Fiction
Author: Joan Silber
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Total Pages: 120
Release: 2009-06-23
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 9781555975302

Fiction imagines for us a stopping point from which life can be seen as intelligible," asserts Joan Silber in The Art of Time in Fiction. The end point of a story determines its meaning, and one of the main tasks a writer faces is to define the duration of a plot. Silber uses wide-ranging examples from F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chinua Achebe, and Arundhati Roy, among others, to illustrate five key ways in which time unfolds in fiction. In clear-eyed prose, Silber elucidates a tricky but vital aspect of the art of fiction.

Why We Write

Why We Write
Author: Meredith Maran
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2013-01-29
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0452298156

Twenty of America's bestselling authors share tricks, tips, and secrets of the successful writing life. Anyone who's ever sat down to write a novel or even a story knows how exhilarating and heartbreaking writing can be. So what makes writers stick with it? In Why We Write, twenty well-known authors candidly share what keeps them going and what they love most—and least—about their vocation. Contributing authors include: Isabel Allende David Baldacci Jennifer Egan James Frey Sue Grafton Sara Gruen Kathryn Harrison Gish Jen Sebastian Junger Mary Karr Michael Lewis Armistead Maupin Terry McMillan Rick Moody Walter Mosley Susan Orlean Ann Patchett Jodi Picoult Jane Smiley Meg Wolitzer

The Art of History

The Art of History
Author: Christopher Bram
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2016-07-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1555979394

One has to look no further than the audiences hungry for the narratives served up by Downton Abbey or Wolf Hall to know that the lure of the past is as seductive as ever. But incorporating historical events and figures into a shapely narrative is no simple task. The acclaimed novelist Christopher Bram examines how writers as disparate as Gabriel García Márquez, David McCullough, Toni Morrison, Leo Tolstoy, and many others have employed history in their work. Unique among the "Art Of" series, The Art of History engages with both fiction and narrative nonfiction to reveal varied strategies of incorporating and dramatizing historical detail. Bram challenges popular notions about historical narratives as he examines both successful and flawed passages to illustrate how authors from different genres treat subjects that loom large in American history, such as slavery and the Civil War. And he delves deep into the reasons why War and Peace endures as a classic of historical fiction. Bram's keen insight and close reading of a wide array of authors make The Art of History an essential volume for any lover of historical narrative.

The Art of Writing Fiction

The Art of Writing Fiction
Author: Andrew Cowan
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2013-11-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317861523

The Art of Writing Fiction guides the reader through the processes of creative writing from journal-keeping to editing, offering techniques for stimulating creativity and making language vivid. Readers will master key aspects of fiction such as structure, character, voice and setting. Andrew Cowan provides an insightful introduction that brings his own well-crafted prose style to bear on the processes and pleasures of writing fiction, offering practical and personal advice culled from his own experience and that of other published writers. He lays open to the reader his own notes, his writing, and the experiences from his own life that he has drawn on in his fiction allowing the reader to develop their own writing project alongside the author as they go through the book.

The Art of Subtext

The Art of Subtext
Author: Charles Baxter
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Total Pages: 120
Release: 2013-07-16
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1555970966

Charles Baxter inaugurates The Art of, a new series on the craft of writing, with the wit and intelligence he brought to his celebrated book Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction. Fiction writer and essayist Charles Baxter's The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot discusses and illustrates the hidden subtextual overtones and undertones in fictional works haunted by the unspoken, the suppressed, and the secreted. Using an array of examples from Melville and Dostoyevsky to contemporary writers Paula Fox, Edward P. Jones, and Lorrie Moore, Baxter explains how fiction writers create those visible and invisible details, how what is displayed evokes what is not displayed. The Art of Subtext is part of The Art of series, a new line of books by important authors on the craft of writing, edited by Charles Baxter. Each book examines a singular, but often assumed or neglected, issue facing the contemporary writer of fiction, nonfiction, or poetry. The Art of series means to restore the art of criticism while illuminating the art of writing.

The Art of Criticism

The Art of Criticism
Author: Henry James
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 524
Release: 1986-06-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0226391973

A collection of "the most important" of Henry James' Prefaces; "his studies of Hawthorne, George Eliot, Balzac, Zola, de Maupassant, Turgenev, Sainte-Beuve, and Arnold; and his essays on the function of criticism and the future of the novel."--P. [4] of cover.