Deepening Fiction: A Practical Guide for Intermediate and Advanced Writers 1st Edition

Hi,I have read at least twenty books on the craft of writing. (Someday, I will be a world-famous novelist.)Anyway, this book is truly wonderful, I would not say that if I did not mean it. For one, it features something I have wanted to see for years and years: the first draft of a work, then revisions, more revisions, and its final form.Invaluable, in that it shows the work methods, the honing, the forming, and of course the published version.And a good section on POV, laying out the general rules of each, their advantages and difficulties, etc.A lot of interesting short stories, along with analyses of each.This book is one of three that I really feel are worth the time to read and re-read.(The other two? Elements of Style, of course. And Stephen King's, 'On Writing'.If your goal is to be a published writer of fiction, buy this book. So many books on how to write fiction are a waste of time and a horrible reason to turn a tree into paper, this one is worth it.Dan Elliott Jr.

Book was like new

Along with Janet Burroway's "Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft", one of the most widely used textbooks in university creative writing programs, Sarah Stone's "Deepening Fiction" is a great addition to the library of anyone who wants to improve their skill set in creative writing. While neither book is cheap, Stone's text has numerous examples of well written stories, along with writing exercises and examples of results from the use of a variety of writing techniques. With literally thousands of how-to books on the market, along with Burroway's, Stone's is a safe bet to help you improve your writing and not remain a dusty purchase on your bookshelf like all the rest.

Content is ok but binding unacceptable. New book came with pages falling off.

I am using this for an advanced writing course taught by the author. So far it is a great book with lots of helpful direction for writing fiction.

.Reviewed by C.J.Singh (Berkeley, California).DEEPENING FICTION assumes the reader has already studied an introductory text on the fiction-writing craft such as Mark Baechtel's  Shaping the Story  or Janet Burroway's  Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft . (I recently posted my reviews of the Bachtael and the Burroway books on amazon.)Although DEEPENING FICTION is designed primarily as a textbook for advanced courses, I found it entirely accessible for self-teaching. It could very well serve as the focus book of a study group as it poses intelligently worded discussion questions on each of the twenty-two stories in its anthology section. Among these stories, sixteen are by contemporary writers.In the preface, the authors observe: "More experienced writers are ready to understand just how much writing is revision, how much we develop the shape and meaning of the story over multiple drafts. Our goal is to help writers connect craft to the particular work they are wrestling with. ... The long middle stretch of the writing apprenticeship--between initial learning of the basic concepts and the production of meaningful, memorable works free of inconsistencies and clichés--can be a hard one. ... It's one thing to learn the difference between scene and summary and quite another to figure out what parts of a particular story to render as scene, what as summary, and how these choices influence the story's meaning."Scene, summary, flashbacks, backstory, and transitions are the topics constituting chapter 5, which presents illuminating story analyses of Lan Samantha Chang's "The Eve of the Spirit Festival" and Yasunari Kawabata's "The Rooster and the Dancing Girl."Chapter 1 reviews issues in complexifying characters, with illustrations from Tobias Wolff's "Powder" and ZZ Packer's "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere."Chapters 2 and 3 take on complexifying point of view beyond first, second, third, with story analyses of Margot Livesey's "The Niece," Jorge Luis Borges's "Inferno, I, 32," and Anton Chekov's "Gooseberries." As an example of stories that require first-person narrators, Alice Munro's "The Turkey Season" is analyzed. "Orientation," by Daniel Orozco, a frequently anthologized story to exemplify second-person point of view (as done in Burroway's textbook) is persuasively analyzed instead as a monologue. Second-person narration is illustrated by Adam Johnson's "Trauma Plate." The authors note that this is the only short story "we know of, in fact, uses first, second, and third person." Johnson contributes several substantial paragraphs explaining his point-of-view choices in revising successive drafts of the story.Chapter 4 discusses alternative plot structures by analyzing John L. Heureux's "Father," Melissa Pritchard's "Photograph of Luisa," and Julio Cortazar's "Graffiti."Other chapters include discussions of style and dialogue by analyses of Charles Baxter's "The Cures for Love" and Grace Paley's "A Conversation With My Father."The chapter on revision discusses the beginnings and endings of three stories each, all included in the anthology. It concludes with a summary "Common Pitfalls in Beginning ad Endings." For detailed discussion of revision, I recommend David Kaplan's "REVISION: A Creative Approach to Writing and Rewriting Fiction," which includes three of the author's own stories in several stages of redrafting.This book teaches the fiction-craft skills of an MFA-level course, delivering the promise of its subtitle: A Practical Guide for Intermediate and Advanced Writers. -- C. J. Singh