Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft

by Janet Burroway, Elizabeth Stuckey-French, Ned Stuckey-French

Overview

This updated edition of the classic, comprehensive guide to creative writing features new topics and writing prompts, contemporary examples, and more.

A creative writer’s shelf should hold at least three essential books: a dictionary, a style guide, and Janet Burroway’s Writing Fiction. This best-selling classic is the most widely used creative writing text in America, and for decades it has helped hundreds of thousands of students learn the craft. Now in its tenth edition, Writing Fiction is more accessible than ever for writers of all levels—inside or outside the classroom.

This new edition continues to provide advice that is practical, comprehensive, and flexible. Moving from freewriting to final revision, Burroway addresses “showing not telling,” characterization, dialogue, atmosphere, plot, imagery, and point of view. It includes new topics and writing prompts, and each chapter now ends with a list of recommended readings that exemplify the craft elements discussed. Plus, examples and quotations throughout the book feature a wide range of today’s best and best-known creators of both novels and short stories.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226616728
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	12/22/2022
Series:	Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	254
Sales rank:	63,677
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Janet Burroway is the author of plays, essays, poetry, children’s books, and eight novels, including The Buzzards, Raw Silk, Opening Nights, Cutting Stone, and Bridge of Sand. She also edited the essay collection A Story Larger than My Own for the University of Chicago Press. She is Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor Emerita at Florida State University. She lives in Chicago and Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Elizabeth Stuckey-French is professor of English at Florida State University. Ned Stuckey-French (1950–2019) was associate professor of English at Florida State University and director of the FSU Certificate Program in Publishing and Editing.
Janet Burroway is the author of plays, poetry, children’s books, and eight novels, including Raw Silk, The Buzzards, Opening Nights, Cutting Stone, and Bridge of Sand. Her Writing Fiction is the most widely used creative writing text in America. Recent works include the plays Sweepstakes, Medea with Child, and Parts of Speech, which have received readings and productions in New York, London, San Francisco, Hollywood, Chicago, and various regional theatres; a collection of essays, Embalming Mom; and her memoir, Losing Tim. The recipient of the Florida Humanities Council’s 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing, she is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor Emerita of the Florida State University.

Table of Contents

Preface

1 Whatever Works: The Writing Process
2 Seeing is Believing: Showing and Telling
3 Building Character: Characterization, Part I
4 The Flesh Made Word: Characterization, Part II
5 Long Ago and Far Away: Fictional Setting
6 The Tower and The Net: Plot and Structure
7 Call Me Ishmael: Point of View
8 Is and Is Not: Comparison
9 Play It Again, Sam: Revision and Theme

Acknowledgments
Index