| Introduction | p. ix |
| Thinking About Fiction | p. 1 |
| Going to See the Elephant: Our Duty as Storytellers | p. 2 |
| The Trigger: What Gives Rise to a Story? | p. 13 |
| Other Bodies, Ourselves: The Mask of Fiction | p. 28 |
| Creative Adventures: The Fiction Writer's Apprenticeship | p. 34 |
| Characterization | p. 43 |
| Icebergs, Glaciers, and Arctic Dreams: Developing Characters | p. 44 |
| Extras, Chorus, Supernumeraries, and Walk-Ons: Bringing Minor Characters to Life | p. 57 |
| Location, Location, Location: Depicting Character Through Place | p. 67 |
| Sympathy for the Devil: What to Do About Difficult Characters | p. 81 |
| Point of View | p. 95 |
| Casting Shadows, Hearing Voices: The Basics of Point of View | p. 96 |
| A Container of Multitudes, Or When "I" Isn't "Me": The Art of First Person | p. 107 |
| And Eyes to See: The Art of Third Person | p. 115 |
| Plot, Structure, and Narrative | p. 125 |
| Incremental Perturbation: How to Know Whether You've Got a Plot or Not | p. 126 |
| Time and Order: The Art of Sequencing | p. 135 |
| An Architecture of Light: Structuring the Novel and Story Collection | p. 148 |
| The Lingerie Theory of Literature: Describing and Withholding, Beginning and Ending | p. 164 |
| Style and Voice | p. 181 |
| You're Really Something: Inflection, Tone, and Pitch | p. 182 |
| A Mystified Notion: Some Notes on Voice | p. 197 |
| Minimalism and Maximalism: A Question of Style | p. 207 |
| The Conjurer's Art: The Rules of Magical Realism and How to Break Them | p. 219 |
| The Comic Point of View: Putting Humor in Your Fiction | p. 231 |
| Revising, Editing, and Marketing | p. 243 |
| What Stories Teach Their Writers: The Purpose and Practice of Revision | p. 244 |
| Eleven Style Considerations You Can't Live Without: Editing and Polishing | p. 256 |
| On Sending Out and Getting Back: Publishing Fiction | p. 263 |
| Forty Additional Writing Exercises | p. 273 |
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