Author Description

The impulse to shape language into coherent stories is shared by all people; cultures define common ground in the stories, legends, and myths - some written, some oral - of their storytellers. But the fiction writer has to shape the natural storytelling impulse into a printed book that readers will enjoy. Using a series of linked exercises, novelist and teacher Jack Hodgins challenges writers to address the central questions of their craft, including the user of setting, building a character, the difference between a plot and series of events, the narrator's persona, metaphors and symbols, and revising. Readable, encouraging, and inspiring, the book contains deliberately useful quotes from other writers, including Margaret Atwood, Jane Austen, John Cheever, Laura Esquivel, William Faulkner, Vladimir Nabokov, Eudora Welty, and many, many more.