Introduction |
Bret Anthony Johnston |
Getting Started |
Germs |
John Dufresne |
Writing Prompts |
Joyce Carol Oates |
Nothing But The Truth |
Christopher Castellani |
Fiction through Artifacts… |
Thisbe Nissen |
The Importance of Being Envious |
Tom Robbins |
Mourning Falls |
Daniel Wallace |
A Postcard from the Velvet Revolution |
Rachel Cline |
What If It Was More Than That |
Lee Martin |
The Title Game |
Dan Chaon |
Living to Tell, Telling to Live |
Norma E. Cantu |
My Favorite Fiction Writing Exercise |
Alan Cheuse |
How to Name the World |
Bret Anthony Johnston |
Untold Stories |
Dorothy Allison |
Bullies I Have Known |
C. Michael Curtis |
Our Ever Curious Minds |
Tom Barbash |
Adopt a Myth |
Tom Bligh |
Character |
On Character |
Bret Anthony Johnston |
Writing as Parlor Game |
Debra Spark |
Object of Affection: Prose Exercises |
R.T. Smith |
Nonfiction Time Travel Exercise |
Kyoko Mori |
Your Five Seconds of Shame! |
Steve Almond |
Interviewing Your Character |
Ann Packer |
From Autobiography to Fiction |
Jason Brown |
Putting Characters into Action |
Varley O’Connor |
Subversive Details and Characterization |
Lee Martin |
Writing Exercise: Complex Characters |
Eric Goodman |
Two Literary Exercises |
Melissa Pritchard |
Get Closer: Exposing Your Characters… |
Julia Fierro |
Through Your Character’s Eyes |
Michael Knight |
Point of View |
On Point of View |
Bret Anthony Johnston |
Narrative Strategies of the Storyteller… |
Thane Rosenbaum |
Exercise on Point-of-View |
Elizabeth Strout |
The Point of Point-of-View |
Paula Priamos |
An Exercise in Writing Memoir |
James Brown |
What Do You Want Most in Life |
Vu Tran |
Point-of-View Exercise |
Susan Straight |
Two Exercises |
Tom Grimes |
The Chicken Crossed the Road |
Katherine Min |
Walking a Mile in Their Shoes |
Amy Hassinger |
The Glory of Gossip |
Bret Anthony Johnston |
Plot and Narrative |
On Plot and Narrative |
Bret Anthony Johnston |
The Five Modes |
Dan Pope |
Thickening Your Plots |
Jacob Appel |
The Pleasure Principle |
Josh Emmons |
From Anecdote to Story |
Elizabeth McCracken |
Seeing the Scene |
Adam Johnson |
The Particular Gesture: Writing Sex Scenes |
Michelle Wildgen |
Creating the Memory Map… |
Danielle Trussoni |
Rewriting the Clichés |
Aimee Phan |
Useful Lies |
Robert Boswell |
From Imagination to Plot |
Vanessa Furse Jackson |
What Every Fiction Writer… |
Bret Anthony Johnston |
On Plot |
Michelle Wildgen |
Props |
Nick Arvin |
Dialogue and Voice |
On Dialogue and Voice |
Bret Anthony Johnston |
Dynamic Dialogue: Three Exercises |
Jewell Parker Rhodes |
He Said What |
Colette Sartor |
Character and Situation Through Dialogue |
Richard Bausch |
On Dialogue |
Katherine Min |
The Thing About Dialogue |
Bret Anthony Johnston and Robert Torres, Illustrator |
Using Summary, Indirect, and Direct Dialogue |
Robert Rosenberg |
Dialogue: Master of Multitasking… |
Kate Myers Hanson |
The Foreign Voice |
Jose Skinner |
A Dialogue Exercise |
Michael Jayme Becerra |
Descriptive Language and Setting |
On Descriptive Language and Setting |
Bret Anthony Johnston |
Destroying What You Love |
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum |
A Stranger Comes to Town |
Rebecca Johns |
The Monster in the Attic |
Jonathan Liebson |
Simultaneous Actions in Fiction |
DeWitt Henry |
Learning to Lie |
Mark Winegardner |
Artistic Perspective |
Nick Arvin |
All About Rhythm |
Paul Lisicky |
Emotion in Fiction |
Margot Livesey |
Revision |
On Revision |
Bret Anthony Johnston |
The First Draft of Anything |
Don Lee |
On the Wheel: Revising the Personal Essay |
John Smolens |
Silences and Blank Spaces |
René Steinke |
Re-Seeing in Revision |
Jason Brown |
Revise/Re-Envision/Re-Invent |
Holiday Reinhorn |
Hiding the “I” in Fiction and Nonfiction |
Marlin Barton |
Shopping for Conflict in the Second Draft |
Merrill Feitell |
The Right Word In Tails |
Stephen D. Marlowe |
Acknowledgments |
Daily Warm-Ups |
Notes on Contributors |