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| Preface | |
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| Intermediate and Advanced Approaches to Fiction-Writing | |
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| Developing and Complicating Characters | |
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| Generating Characters | |
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| Inhabiting Characters | |
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| Representing Characters | |
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| Character History/Background/Connections | |
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| Story Analysis and Questions: "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" | |
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| Connecting Character to Story | |
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| Motivation and Action | |
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| Active and Passive Main Characters | |
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| Relating Characters to Each Other | |
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| Story Analysis and Questions: "The Forest" | |
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| Complicating Characters | |
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| Sympathetic and Unsympathetic Characters | |
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| Rethinking "Heroes," "Victims," and "Villains" | |
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| Restraint in Writing Emotion | |
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| Story Analysis and Questions: "Powder" | |
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| Revision: Bringing Characters into Focus | |
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| Character Exercises | |
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| Reintroducing Third-Person POVs | |
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| The Centrality of POV | |
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| Real-World POV Decisions | |
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| Complicating POV: Beyond First, Second, and Third | |
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| Aspects of Third-Person POV | |
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| Story Analysis and Questions: "The Niece" | |
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| Variations of Common POV Choices | |
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| Objective Narrators | |
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| Close Third-Person POV (Third Person Limited) | |
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| Discerning Third-Person POV (Third Person Flexible) | |
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| Degrees of Omniscience | |
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| Story Analysis and Questions: "Inferno I, 32" | |
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| Effectively Breaking POV Rules | |
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| Story Analysis and Questions: "Gooseberries" | |
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| Revision: Making Subtle POV Shifts | |
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| POV Exercises | |
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| The Uses of First and Second Person | |
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| Stories that Require First-Person Narrators | |
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| Aspects of First-Person POV | |
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| Motives for Telling the Story | |
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| Understanding the Past | |
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| Applying Perspective | |
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| Story Analysis and Questions: "The Turkey Season" | |
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| The Versatility of Second Person | |
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| Disguised First Person | |
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| Direct Address and Second-Person Narrators | |
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| Story Analysis and Questions: "Trauma Plate" | |
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| Revision: Making Major POV Changes | |
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| POV Exercises | |
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| Plot, Narrative Drive, and Alternative Story Structures | |
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| Reclaiming the Pleasures of Plot | |
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| Classical Plot Structures | |
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| Plots and Subplots | |
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| Story Analysis and Questions: "Father" | |
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| Narrative Drive and Meaning | |
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| Forward and Backward Movement | |
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| Actual and Emotional Plots | |
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| Story Analysis and Questions: "Photograph of Luisa" | |
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| Advancing Plot Through Dialogue and Exposition | |
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| Plot in Literary and Genre Writing | |
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| Alternate and Experimental Structures | |
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| Nonlinear Story Structures | |
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| Image as Structure | |
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| Story Analysis and Questions: "Graffiti" | |
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| Revision: How Structure Emerges through Multiple Revisions | |
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| Plot and Structure Exercises | |
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| Time in Fiction: Scene, Summary, Flashbacks, Backstory, and Transitions | |
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| Setting the Story's Time Span | |
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| Scene and Summary in Draft and Revision | |
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| Action, Description, and Dialogue | |
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| Compelling Summaries | |
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| Summary Within Scenes | |
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| Story Analysis and Questions: "The Eve of the Spirit Festival" | |
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| Moving Through Time | |
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| White Space and Transitional Phrases | |
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| Flashbacks and Backstory | |
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| Story Analysis and Questions: "The Rooster and the Dancing Girl" | |
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| Revision: Experimenting with Time | |
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| Time Exercises | |
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| Discovering the Story's Subject: Material and Subject Matter | |
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| Ways for Writers to Identify Their Own Material | |
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| Repetition and Variation in a Writer's Material | |
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| The Difference Between a Subject and a "Theme" | |
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| Psychological and Situational Subject Matters | |
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| Story Analysis and Questions: "A Wagner Matinee" | |
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| Taking Risks with Subject Matter | |
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| Ordinary Subject Matter: Beyond the Trivial | |
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| Dramatic Subject Matter: Power vs. Sentiment | |
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| Transgressive Subject Matter: Crossing Boundaries | |
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| Nonrealistic Subject Matter: The Literary Fantastic | |
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| Story Analysis and Questions: "Car Crash While Hitchhiking" | |
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| Revision: Discovering the Story's True Subject | |
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| Subject Matter Exercises | |
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| Macrosetting, Microsetting, and Detail | |
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| Reseeing Familiar Settings | |
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| Macrosetting, Microsetting, and Detail | |
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| Essential and Arbitrary Settings | |
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| Maximalist Settings | |
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| Minimalist Settings | |
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| Story Analysis and Questions: "The Fence Party" | |
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| The Possibilities of Detail | |
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| Point of View and Detail | |
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| Symbolic Detail | |
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| Story Analysis and Questions: "Pilgrims" | |
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| Revision: Inhabiting Places | |
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| Setting Exercises | |
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| Society, Culture, and Context: Research and the Imagination | |
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| Creating Context | |
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| Using Research to Enlarge Subject Matter | |
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| Work and Leisure | |
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| Story Analysis and Questions: "Orientation" | |
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| Art, Science, and Other Fields of Inquiry | |
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| Story Analysis and Questions: "Di Grasso: A Tale of Odessa" | |
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| History, Biography, and Other Cultures | |
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| Religion and Politics | |
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| Story Analysis and Questions: "Civil Peace" | |
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| Revision: Contextualizing the Story | |
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| Society, Culture, and Context Exercises | |
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| Style and Dialogue | |
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| The Writer's Style | |
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| Word Choice | |
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| Tone and Vision | |
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| Figurative Language | |
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| Sentence and Paragraph Work | |
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| Story Analysis and Questions: "The Cures for Love" | |
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| Dialogue and Subtext | |
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| Dialogue Rhythms and Styles | |
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| Dialogue Tags and Accompanying Actions | |
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| Story Analysis and Questions: "A Conversation with My Father" | |
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| Revision: Line Editing | |
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| Style and Dialogue Exercises | |
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| Revision: Beginnings, Middles, and Endings | |
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| The Writing Room | |
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| Giving and Receiving Criticism: The Workshop | |
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| Ways of Reentering a Story | |
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| Structural Revision | |
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| Beginnings | |
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| The Creative Beginning and the Literal Beginning | |
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| Setting Up the Story | |
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| Story Analysis and Questions: Three Beginnings | |
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| Middles | |
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| Endings | |
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| Inevitable Surprises | |
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| Story Analysis and Questions: Three Endings | |
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| Common Pitfalls in Beginnings and Endings | |
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| Revision Exercises | |
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| Anthology of Stories | |
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| "Civil Peace" | |
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| "Di Grasso: A Tale of Odessa" | |
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| "The Forest" | |
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| "The Cures for Love" | |
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| "Inferno I, 32" | |
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| "A Wagner Matinee" | |
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| "The Eve of the Spirit Festival" | |
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| "Gooseberries" | |
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| "Graffiti" | |
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| "Trauma Plate" | |
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| "Car Crash While Hitchhiking" | |
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| "The Rooster and the Dancing Girl" | |
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| "Father" | |
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| "The Niece" | |
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| "The Turkey Season" | |
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| "Orientation" | |
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| "Pilgrims" | |
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| "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" | |
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| "A Conversation with My Father" | |
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| "Photograph of Luisa" | |
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| "The Fence Party" | |
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| "Powder" | |
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| The Writing Process and the Writing Life | |
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| Talent and Habit | |
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| Advice and Experience from the Community | |
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| Strategies for Developing and Maintaining Work Habits | |
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| Writer's Block | |
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| Advice and Experience from the Community | |
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| Strategies for Overcoming Writer's Block | |
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| Rejection, Publication, and Endurance | |
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| Advice and Experience from the Community | |
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| Strategies for Flourishing in the Writer's Life | |
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| Appendices | |
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| A Writer's Glossary | |
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| Suggestions for Further Reading | |
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| Author Biographies | |
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| Credits | |
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| Index | |