Brief, practical, and affordable, The Art and Craft of Fiction gives aspiring writers all they need, in a friendly voice that students love. Michael Kardos focuses on technique and presents fiction writing as a teachable (and learnable) art. With an organization built on methods and process rather than traditional literary elements, Kardos helps students begin their stories, write strong scenes, use images and research detail, revise for aesthetics and mechanics, and finish and polish their own stories. Instructors trust The Art and Craft of Fiction to help structure their course, and reinforce and complement their teaching points with examples and exercises. A brief fiction anthology at the back of the book includes 15 selections that instructors praise for their usefulness in the creative writing classroom.

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.

Once Upon a Time, it was NOW... While a historian stands firmly planted in the present and looks back into the past, a historical novelist has a more immediate task: to set readers in the midst of bygone events and lead them forward, allowing them to live and feel the wonderment, fear, hope, triumph, and pain as if they were there. In The Art and Craft of Writing Historical Fiction, best-selling author James Alexander Thom (Follow the River, From Sea to Shining Sea, Sign-Talker) gives you the tools you need to research and create stories born from the past that will move and inspire modern readers. His comprehensive approach includes lessons on how to: Find and use historical archives and conduct physical field research Re-construct the world of your novel, including people and voices, physical environments, and cultural context Achieve verisimilitude in speech, action, setting, and description Seamlessly weave historical fact with your own compelling plot ideas With wit and candor, Thom's detailed instruction, illuminating personal experience, and invaluable insights culled from discussions with other trusted historical writers will guide you to craft a novel that is true to what was then, when then was now.

COMM The field of how-to-write books is crowded, but if you want to beef up your collection, this is a good choice. Author and editor Seidman writes about the practical aspects of the craft in a straightforward and clever way. As an editor, he is well versed in what publishing houses are looking for, and he is also familiar with the major stumbling blocks authors face when submitting work. Seidman's first section on writing includes many good hints and exercises for getting work into shape. Part 2, on networking, discusses writers' groups, conferences, and professional readers and how to use them. Part 3, 'The Business of Publishing,' is a guide to the business end of writing. The section on contract negotiation alone is worth the price of the book.

This national bestseller is "a significant contribution to discussions of the art of fiction and a necessary challenge to received views about whose stories are told, how they are told and for whom they are intended" (Laila Lalami, The New York Times Book Review). The traditional writing workshop was established with white male writers in mind; what we call craft is informed by their cultural values. In this bold and original examination of elements of writing—including plot, character, conflict, structure, and believability—and aspects of workshop—including the silenced writer and the imagined reader—Matthew Salesses asks questions to invigorate these familiar concepts. He upends Western notions of how a story must progress. How can we rethink craft, and the teaching of it, to better reach writers with diverse backgrounds? How can we invite diverse storytelling traditions into literary spaces? Drawing from examples including One Thousand and One Nights, Curious George, Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, and the Asian American classic No-No Boy, Salesses asks us to reimagine craft and the workshop. In the pages of exercises included here, teachers will find suggestions for building syllabi, grading, and introducing new methods to the classroom; students will find revision and editing guidance, as well as a new lens for reading their work. Salesses shows that we need to interrogate the lack of diversity at the core of published fiction: how we teach and write it. After all, as he reminds us, "When we write fiction, we write the world."

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 & Craft of the Short Story explores every key element of short fiction, including story structure and form; creative and believable characters; how to begin and where to end; and the generation of ideas; as well as technical aspects such as point of view; plot; description and imagery; and theme. Examples from the work of a wide variety are used. The author includes five of his own stories to demonstrate these topics.