wood james how fiction works farrar straus and giroux 2008

There are also those eminently practical books such as Brian Shawver’s The Language of Fiction, which instruct the writer in fiction mechanics such as how to choose among the different conventions for communicating characters’ inner thoughts and how to punctuate dialogue when they speak aloud. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel and Henry James’s prefaces to his works, and there are modern classics such as Gardner’s The Art of Fiction and the essays collected in Charles Baxter’s Burning Down the House. There are creative writing textbooks and less formally organized books that consider several of the formal elements of fiction writing at once-point of view, characterization, narrative structure, etc.-and others that examine only one. Some share generic features with self-help books, offering encouragement and exercises, together with advice about how to deal with the psychological travails of the writing life: writer’s block, envy, self-doubt, fear of rejection, and so on. Focused as it is on the craft of literary fiction, the scope of this essay excludes many fine works of criticism, craft books focused on the conventions of other genres (e.g., the romance novel), and those purporting to offer formulas for commercial success.Ĭraft books come in many forms. Studying craft texts helps the novice student to learn the concepts and language of fiction writing from a practitioner’s point of view and, hopefully, to make more informed aesthetic choices in their own writing. The purpose of a craft analysis is, as John Gardner explains in On Becoming a Novelist, to help the student “read to see how effects are achieved, how things are done, sometimes reflecting on what would have done in the same situation and on whether way would have been better or worse, and why” (45). Craft guides reflect this difference, for although a craft analysis may carefully examine a literary work, its aim is generally not to place that text in the context of a historical period or artistic movement, to uncover its ideological investments, or to develop interpretations through critical approaches derived from poststructuralist, psychoanalytic, materialist, or feminist theory. Though these courses are often taught in English departments, the needs of writers differ from those of literature students. T his essay examines resources for the study of the craft of fiction writing, focusing on works of interest to teachers and students of creative writing and to librarians seeking to develop collections to support creative writing courses.

Wood james how fiction works farrar straus and giroux 2008