Making Shapely Fiction »

Jerome Stern, a professor of English and popular culture, is the author of an acclaimed book on writing, Making Shapely Fiction. His incisive monologues are regularly heard on National Public Radio.

A deft analysis and appreciation of fiction—what makes it work and what can make it fail.

Acknowledgements

PART I. THE SHAPES OF EICTION

Facade

Juggling

Iceberg

Last Lap

Trauma

Specimen

Gathering

A Day in the Life

Onion

Journey

Visitation

Aha!

Bear at the Door

Snapshot

Blue Moon

Explosion

PART II. A CAUTIONARY INTERLUDE

Write What You Know

Don't This: A Short Guide to What Not to Do

PART III. FROM ACCURACY TO ZIGZAG: AN ALPHABET FOR WRITERS OF FICTION

Accuracy

Advice

Allegory

Allusion

Ambiguity

Anti-hero

Archetype

Atmosphere

Avant-garde

Bathos

Beginnings

Catharsis

Character

Cliche

Cliff-hanger

Coincidence

Comedy

Convention

Crisis

Description

Dialect

Dialogue

Diction

Didacticism

Documents/Diaries/Letters

Endings

Epigram

Epilogue

Epiphany

Episode

Exposition

Fable

Fairy Tale

Farce

Flashback

Formula

Frame Story

Freytag's Pyramid

Genre

Grotesque

Hero

Imagery

Imagination

Immediacy

Interior Monologue

Intrigant

Irony

Legend

Local Color

Melodrama

Metafiction

Metaphor and Simile

Mise-en-scene

Motif

Myth

Names

Narrative

Narrator

Naturalism

Negative Positive Knowledge

Novel

Objective Correlative

Parable

Parody

Pathetic Fallacy

Picaro

Places and Place Names

Plot

Poetic Justice

Point of View

Position

Premise

Profanity/Obscenity

Psychic Distance

Reading

Realism

Red Herring

Resolution

Revision

Roman a Clef

Romance

Satire

Scene

Science Fiction

Sentimentality

Sex

Short Novel

Short Story

Showing and Telling

Stereotype

Stories within Stories

Stream of Consciousness

Structure

Style

Subtlety

Suspense

Suspension of Disbelief

Symbolism

Tension

Texture

Theme

Title

Tour de Force

Transitions

Trust Your Material

Voice

Workshops

Zigzag

PART IV. READABLES: WHERE TO LEARN MORE