Cover of Writing Fiction, Tenth Edition
Writing Fiction, Tenth Edition A Guide to Narrative Craft
by Janet Burroway, Elizabeth Stuckey-French and Ned Stuckey-French
University of Chicago Press, 2019
Cloth: 978-0-226-61655-1 | Paper: 978-0-226-61669-8 | Electronic: 978-0-226-61672-8
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226616728.001.0001

AVAILABLE FROM

University of Chicago Press (cloth, paper, ebook)
ABOUT THIS BOOKAUTHOR BIOGRAPHYREVIEWSTABLE OF CONTENTS

ABOUT THIS BOOK

More than 250,000 copies sold!

A creative writer’s shelf should hold at least three essential books: a dictionary, a style guide, and Writing Fiction. Janet Burroway’s best-selling classic is the most widely used creative writing text in America, and for more than three 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. Burroway’s tone is personal and nonprescriptive, welcoming learning writers into the community of practiced storytellers. Moving from freewriting to final revision, the book 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, allowing for further study. And the examples and quotations throughout the book feature a wide and diverse range of today’s best and best-known creators of both novels and short stories.

This book is a master class in creative writing that also calls on us to renew our love of storytelling and celebrate the skill of writing well. There is a very good chance that one of your favorite authors learned the craft with Writing Fiction. And who knows what future favorite will get her start reading this edition?

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

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.

REVIEWS

“Scrupulously written by a first-rate novelist who . . . gives tips, offers sensitive commentary, and exceptions to what may pass for ‘rules’ in writing.”
— Praise for a previous edition, Frederick Busch, Los Angeles Times

“Marvelously clear-headed.”
— Praise for a previous edition, Joan Fry, Poets and Writers

“The tenth edition of Janet Burroway’s classic 1982 book guides fiction writers of all levels through the entire creative process, with updated exemplary passages and advice from contemporary authors, and sections on current issues such as distraction, appropriation, different genres, and young adult fiction. Chapters focus on characterization, setting, plot and structure, point of view, and revision, and each closes with a list of suggested readings and writing prompts that allow for further study.”
— Best Books for Writers, Poets & Writers

TABLE OF CONTENTS


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226616728.003.0001
[Process;Journal;Freewriting;Prompts;Critic;Reading;Theme]
Most writers find the prospect of the blank page daunting, and with good reason: writing exposes your inner self, your thoughts and feelings, to the outside world. Yet writers keep writing, and there are a number of useful techniques to keep the process on track. At the heart of the matter is “allowing" rather than “making" yourself write. Many writers find it useful to start with a journal in which they save ideas that they jot down as freewriting or freedrafting. Some use prompts or trigger lines as a way to refresh their creative impulse. On the whole it is important to still the inner critic until the first draft is down and only then to allow the critical mind, your own or others’ to inspect and suggest. Some writers have difficulty settling on a subject, so this chapter suggests several common story shapes to pursue. Above all, writers read, and learning to read as a writer, attentive to the skills and techniques of accomplished authors, will deepen the writer’s understanding, including the way all the elements of fiction reveal its theme.


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226616728.003.0002
[Show-don't-tell;Significant detail;Emotion;Filtering;Active voice;Rhythm;Mechanics]
Among the advice given to writers of fiction, the most frequently voiced is probably “show, don’t tell.” This chapter attempts to show what that admonition entails and how to achieve it. At its core is the concept of significant detail, in which the text creates a mental image by addressing itself to one of the five senses. If the reader can “see” a scene (or smell, hear, taste, feel it), it will be through detail. If that detail also suggests an abstract quality or a judgment, it will also be significant. Significant details, often difficult to achieve where the emotions are concerned, will repay the effort of their invention. One way to achieve this is by seeing through the eyes of a character. It also contributes to a scene’s vividness to use active rather than passive verbs, and is useful to try to suggest the speed and atmosphere of the rhythm of the scene. Correctly the grammatical mechanics of the language signifies professionalism to an editor.


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226616728.003.0003
[Character;Direct and indirect;Dialogue;Subtext;Pacing;Format;Vernacular;Appearance;Action;Thought]
Character can be portrayed both directly and indirectly. This chapter deals with the direct methods, those that correspond to the techniques of significant detail in that they appeal to one or more of the five senses. The greater part of the chapter concerns dialogue, because “hearing” human speech is a crucial and complicated part of character presentation. Dialogue can further be divided into “direct,” where we overhear the words the character says, and “indirect,” where the words are presented by an authorial voice. The speech can also be summarized. When dialogue presents the possibility of change, it operates as action. When it reveals the motives and feelings not explicitly stated, the text contains subtext. A writer can reveal conflict in “no dialogue” which one character is repeatedly saying “no” to another, and can distill the dialogue in order to direct its pacing. However, on the whole it is preferable to avoid the misspelling of vernacular, because it makes the characters seem stupid. In addition to speech, character can be directly presented through their appearance or movement and their action, and also by revealing their thoughts—again either directly or indirectly.


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226616728.003.0004
[Indirect methods;Conflict between methods;Credibility;Purpose;Complexity;Change;Crowd;Summary]
Character can be presented indirectly either though the author’s analysis and judgment, or through that of another character. In the former case, readers are probably intended to agree with the author’s assessment, in the latter perhaps not. If a writer uses several of the methods of presentation either direct or indirect, a conflict between the methods themselves can enrich character—for example, presenting a character who looks and acts composed but is mentally in chaos. Characters should be credibly representative of a type, but will be most effective if they also show individual purpose and complexity. Their purpose will be revealed through their desires, and the relative morality of those desires; the desires themselves may be in conflict. Paramount is the capacity to change, which is the driver of plot and action. Presenting characters through significant detail, even if there is a group or crowd and only a few are represented, will contribute to the vividness of the fiction. The chapter ends with a summary of the methods discussed in Chapters 3 and 4.


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226616728.003.0005
[Setting;Atmosphere;Conflict with setting;Alien place;Familiar place;Summary;Scene;White space;Flashback;Slow motion]
Fictional setting is comprised of a place, a time (including year, season, time of day and so forth), and atmosphere (including weather). If the central character is uncomfortable in or anguished by his situation in time and place, there will automatically be a conflict to mine in the story itself. Further, the setting may provide a suggestive, even a more or less overt symbolic clue to the meaning of the text. A character’s perception of the setting will inevitably be informed by whether she or he is familiar with the place. Time is a complex and slippery aspect of narrative. It can be drastically condensed through summary, or explored at length through the intricate, intimate detail of a scene. Often modern writers will use white space—a break in the text—to indicate a new setting. Flashback can fill in necessary segments of the past—but it is important that these not overpower the narrative of the present tense. Often a scene seen in “slow motion” can indicate a degree of heightened intensity, just as such a scene in film can indicate great strength, speed, grief or longing.


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226616728.003.0006
[Plot;Structure;Form;Conflict;Crisis;Resolution;Power;Connection;Short story;Novel]
The most familiar description of plot is that it must have a conflict, crisis and resolution (following on Aristotle’s dictum that a story must have a beginning, middle and end). But there are multiple ways of looking at story structure to account for the insights that literature offers. For instance, the story may be seen as a journey of the protagonist. Its form may be likened to a battle in which the balance of power shifts from one side to another. More importantly it may have its emotional effect by portraying the connections and disconnections of human beings to each other. In any of these images of story structure, the pattern will show a rising action or movement, a moment of crisis or change, and a denouement or resolution. Although the words “story” and “plot” are often used interchangeably, they may be differentiated because the former describes a series of chronological events, the latter a causal chain. Contrarily, though critics see many essential differences between the short story and the novel, all of these are elaborations from the basic fact that a story is short and a novel is long. This chapter ends with a description of common story genres.


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226616728.003.0007
[Person;Omniscient;Objective;Monologue;Epistolary;Stream of conciousness;Distance;Diction;Consistency;Appropriation]
Point of view is the most complex and difficult of fictional elements, and the one that most indicates professional skill. It helps understand the concept if it is broken down into four questions: Who speaks? To whom? In what form? At what distance? The issue of “who speaks” requires a decision about whether the narrative voice is in the first, second or third person, and whether that voice is omniscient or to some degree limited, which might mean objective. The voice will address itself to either the convention of “the reader” or to a particular character or characters. This will in turn determine the form, which might involve the convention of “the reader” or some other written or spoken category, such as a monologue or a journal. Distance might be literal, as in place or time, or it may represent the diction of the speaker, informal or formal. However these questions are answered, it is important to understand that the author’s choice of viewpoint is a kind of contract, and once established, should be used throughout. Although it is important not to exploit the voice of another ethnicity, the goal of fiction is empathy, and the imagination is free.


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226616728.003.0008
[Metaphor;Simile;Dead metaphor;Cliche;Allegory;Symbol;Objective correlative]
Metaphor is at the base of all literature. Whether a simile, using the words “like” or “as,” or a metaphor without those words, comparing one thing to another is a key component of learning, and of both poetry and prose. The value of comparison is that in saying that this is that or is like that, we are aware of both the difference and the similarity between the things compared; the insight comes in the tension between this double awareness. Some comparisons in English have become so common that they are “dead metaphors” and in effect acquire new meanings, and these enrich the language. On the other hand, some are familiar but have not yet acquired a new meaning—and these we call clichés, a literary fault to avoid, as are mixed and far-fetched metaphors. When an entire fiction is presented as a metaphor, it is an allegory; if a single image is carried through a story to reveal some aspect of its meaning, it becomes a symbol. Thomas Eliot used the term “objective correlative” to signify a particular type of such symbols, where an object comes to represent, and to reveal and remind us of a particular emotion.


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226616728.003.0009
[Re-vision;Criticism;Workshop;Theme;Message]
It is usual to dread revision; it is also usual to find it productive and exciting. Often the best thing to do is to walk away from a manuscript that isn’t, or isn’t quite, working. When you come back to it with fresh eyes you may find that re-vision is possible and the problems solvable. Often also the fresh eyes of a workshop or writing group can help—and in that case it’s important to listen greedily, reflect on what you’ve heard, and then reject what seems unhelpful. You may find that you write long and need to cut, or skeletally and need to fill in. Clarity and originality are always goals. Sometimes the mere act of retyping will provide fresh insight. All of the elements in this book will appear in a story in some degree, and their interconnectedness will gradually reveal, to the writer and ultimately to the reader, a theme—not a “message” but a complicated abstraction arrived at through the presentation of a convincing alternative reality.

Book published by University of Chicago Press, 2019. Page maintained by BiblioVault.