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What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers

Paperback Engels 2010 9780205616886
Verwachte levertijd ongeveer 9 werkdagen

Samenvatting

Organized by the elements of fiction and comprised primarily of writing exercises, this text helps students hone and refine their craft with a practical, hands-on approach to writing fiction.

This text features several exercises on each particular aspect of fiction—characterization, point of view, plot, dialogue, etc. Every exercise is introduced by an opening paragraph that provides insight into and information on that element of fiction. The introduction is followed by instructions for completing the exercise, the “objective” of the exercise, and frequently by a student example. The text is rounded out by an anthology of contemporary and highly teachable short fiction.

Specificaties

ISBN13:9780205616886
Taal:Engels
Bindwijze:Paperback

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&lt;&gt; <strong>Contents</strong> <p>Preface <br></p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>PART ONE</p> <p>Beginnings</p> <p> 1. First Sentences: Beginning in the Middle</p> <p> 2. Second Sentences as Different Paths</p> <p> 3. Ways to Begin a Story, from Robie Macauley</p> <p> 4. Begin a Story with a “Given” First Line, from William Kittredge</p> <p> 5. Free Associating from Random Sentences, from DeWitt Henry</p> <p> 6. Person, Place, and Song, from Ron Carlson</p> <p> 7. Stirring Up a Fiction Stew</p> <p> 8. The Newspaper Muse: Ann Landers and the National Enquirer</p> <p> 9. Taking Risks <br></p> <p>PART TWO</p> <p>Characterization</p> <p> 10. Oh! . . . That Sort of Person</p> <p> 11. What Do You Know About Your Characters?</p> <p> 12. Props</p> <p> 13. What Do Your Characters Want?</p> <p> 14. Making Heroes Flawed, from Douglas Bauer</p> <p> 15. Creating a Character’s Background, Place, Setting, and Milieu, from Robie Macauley</p> <p> 16. Put Your Characters to Work</p> <p> 17. The Morning After</p> <p> 18. He/She: Switching Gender <br></p> <p>PART THREE</p> <p>Perspective, Distance, and Point of View</p> <p> 19. First Person or Third</p> <p> 20. John Gardner on Psychic Distance</p> <p> 21. Shifts in Point of View</p> <p> 22. An Early Memory, Part One: The Child as Narrator</p> <p> 23. An Early Memory, Part Two: The Reminiscent Narrator</p> <p> 24. The Unreliable Narrator</p> <p> 25. Family Stories, Family Myths</p> <p>PART FOUR</p> <p>Dialogue</p> <p> 26. Speech Flavor, or Sounding Real, from Thalia Selz</p> <p> 27. Telling Talk: When to Use Dialogue or Summarized Dialogue</p> <p> 28. Who Said That?</p> <p> 29. The Invisible Scene: Interspersing Dialogue with Action</p> <p> 30. A Verbal Dance: Not Quite a Fight</p> <p>PART FIVE</p> <p>The Interior Landscape of Your Characters</p> <p> 31. The Interior Landscape of Vision and Obsession</p> <p> 32. What Mayhem or Scene Is Happening Elsewhere?</p> <p> 33. “I Know Just What She’ll Say”</p> <p> 34. Mixed Motives and Maybes</p> <p> 35. The Need to Know: The Solace of Imagination</p> <p> 36. The Inside/Outside Story</p> <p> 37. Five Years from Now.....</p> <p> 38. Dream Work</p> <p> 39. The Power of “Seemed” and “Probably”</p> <p>PART SIX</p> <p>Plot</p> <p> 40. The Skeleton</p> <p> 41. From Situation to Plot</p> <p> 42. Peter Rabbit and Adam and Eve: The Elements of Plot, from Thomas Fox Averill</p> <p> 43. What If? How to Develop and Finish Stories</p> <p> 44. There’s a Party and You’re Invited, from Margot Livesey</p> <p> 45. So, What Happened?</p> <p> 46. Flash Forward: or Little Did I Know</p> <p> 47. Plot Potential</p> <p> 48. Back Story as Narrative Summary: Who’s Coming to Stay the Night</p> <p> 49. The End Foretold</p> <p>PART SEVEN</p> <p>The Elements of Style</p> <p> 50. A Style of Your Own, from Rod Kessler</p> <p> 51. Taboos: Weak Adverbs and Adjectives</p> <p> 52. Word Packages Are Not Gifts</p> <p> 53. Practice Writing Good, Clean Prose, from Christopher Keane</p> <p>PART EIGHT</p> <p>A Writer’s Toolbox</p> <p> 54. Handling the Problems of Time and Pace, from Robie Macauley</p> <p> 55. The Pet Story: Exposition, from Ron Carlson</p> <p> 56. Bringing Abstract Ideas to Life</p> <p> 57. Transportation: Getting There isn’t Half the Fun—It’s Boring</p> <p> 58. Naming the Diner, Naming the Diet, Naming the Dog</p> <p> 59. Transitions: Or White Space Does Not a Transition Make</p> <p> 60. How to Keep a Narrative Moving Forward</p> <p> 61. Noises Off: The Beauty of Extraneous Sound, from Laurence Davies</p> <p> 62. Separating Author, Narrator, and Character, from Frederick Reiken</p> <p> 63. Time Travel</p> <p> 64. Stairs: Setting and Place</p> <p> 65. Titles and Keys <br></p> <p>PART NINE</p> <p>Invention and a Bit of Inspiration</p> <p> 66. Illustrations, from Margot Livesey</p> <p> 67. Bully</p> <p> 68. Far away Places</p> <p> 69. Story Swap: From Jordan Dann and the Aspen Writers’ Foundation</p> <p> 70. Humor: an Intact Frog</p> <p> 71. Sunday: Discovering Emotional Triggers</p> <p> 72. Kill the Dog</p> <p> 73. Five Different Versions: And Not One Is a Lie</p> <p> 74. What You Carry</p> <p> 75. Psycho: Creating Terror</p> <p> 76. One in the Hand</p> <p> 77. Notes and Letters</p> <p> 78. The Chain Story <br></p> <p>PART TEN</p> <p>Revision: Rewriting Is Writing</p> <p> 79. Opening Up Your Story</p> <p> 80. Gifts to Yourself</p> <p> 81. Show and Tell: There’s a Reason It’s Called Storytelling, from Carol-Lynn Marrazzo</p> <p> 82. A Little Gardening, A Little Surgery</p> <p> 83. Magnifying Conflict, from David Ray</p> <p> 84. What’s at Stake? from Ken Rivard</p> <p> 85. It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over</p> <p> 86. The Double Ending: Two Points in Time</p> <p> 87. In-Class Revision <br></p> <p>PART ELEVEN</p> <p>Sudden, Flash, Micro, Nano: Writing the Short Short Story</p> <p> 88. Sudden Fiction, from James Thomas</p> <p> 89. Write a Story Using a Small Unit of Time</p> <p> 90. Solving for X, from Ron Carlson</p> <p> 91. The Journey of the Long Sentence</p> <p> 92. He said/She said: But About What!</p> <p> 93. Rules of the Game</p> <p> 94. Ten to One, from Hester Kaplan</p> <p> 95. Make a List</p> <p> 96. Questions. Some Answers</p> <p> 97. How to . . . . . .</p> <p> 98. Nanofictions</p> <p>PART TWELVE</p> <p>Learning from the Greats</p> <p> 99. Finding Inspiration in Other Sources—Poetry, Nonfiction, etc.</p> <p> 100. The Sky’s the Limit: Homage to Kafka and García Márquez, from Christopher Noël</p> <p> 101. Learning from the Greats</p> <p> 102. Borrowing Characters</p> <p> 103. What Keeps You Reading?</p> <p> 104. The Literary Scene Circa 1893, 1929, 1948, or?, from George Garrett <br></p> <p>PART THIRTEEN</p> <p>Notebooks, Journals, and Memory</p> <p> 105. Who Are You? Somebody!</p> <p> 106. People From the Past: Characters of the Future</p> <p> 107. An Image Notebook, from Melanie Rae Thon</p> <p> 108. Journal Keeping for Writers, from William Melvin Kelley</p> <p> 109. Creative Wrong Memory</p> <p> 110. Let Us Write Letters</p> <p>PART FOURTEEN</p> <p>A Collection of Short Short Stories</p> <p>LINDA BREWER 20/20 <br></p> <p>ANTONIA CLARK Excuses I Have Already Used</p> <p>BRIAN HINSHAW The Custodian</p> <p>MARIETTE LIPPO Confirmation Names</p> <p>MELISSA MCCRACKEN It Would’ve Been Hot</p> <p>JUDITH CLAIRE MITCHELL My Mother’s Gifts</p> <p>PAMELA PAINTER The New Year</p> <p>GRACE PALEY Wants</p> <p>BRUCE HOLLAND ROGERS How Could a Mother</p> <p>ELIZABETH TALLENT No One’s a Mystery</p> <p>LUISA VALENZUELA Vision Out of the Corner of One Eye</p> <p><strong>PART FIFTEEN</strong></p> <p><strong>A Collection of Short Stories </strong></p> <p>CHARLES BAXTER Gryphon</p> <p>RON CARLSON Some of Our Work with Monsters</p> <p>RAYMOND CARVER Cathedral</p> <p>SANDRA CISNEROS Eleven</p> <p>MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM White Angel</p> <p>DAGOBERTO GILB The Pillows</p> <p>PAM HOUSTON How to Talk to a Hunter</p> <p>HESTER KAPLAN WOULD YOU KNOW IT WASN’T LOVE?</p> <p>BOBBIE ANN MASON Shiloh</p> <p>THOMAS MCNEELY Sheep</p> <p>ALICE MUNRO Five Points</p> <p>ZZ Packer Brownies</p> <p>RICHARD RUSSO The Whore’s Child</p> <p>JENNIFER SHAFF Leave of Absence</p> <p>KATE WHEELER Under the Roof <br></p> <p>Selected Bibliography <br></p> <p>About the Contributors of Exercises <br></p> <p>Credits <br></p> <p>Index</p>

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        What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers