Advanced Fiction

Confident with the basics of your craft? Looking to take your writing to the next level? Advanced Fiction gives you the tools to hone your skills by thinking more deeply and systematically about deploying them on the page. Friendly and down-to-earth throughout, Amy Weldon guides you through the realities of craft and process, combining a broad anthology of landmark stories with instruction on the more advanced aspects of writing.

Featuring interactive prompts, exercises and suggestions for further reading, this book offers logically progressive chapters on larger philosophical issues and subtler technical ones, from topics as diverse as the intricate principles of storytelling to navigating artistic and political landscapes conscientiously, as well as professional advice. Beginning with a brief recap of the basics, the text goes on to examine:

- The psychology of writing and revising
- Practical methods for drafting and notebook-keeping
- Taking personal and technical risks with ideas
- Making responsible authorial decisions about representing identities, bodies, identities and histories
- Complex craft concepts such as world-building, structure, time, shorter and longer fiction principles

Placing developing work in conversation with established stories, the accompanying anthology selections range widely in culture, technique and time period: Flannery O'Connor, James Baldwin and Tobias Wolff are included alongside authors of the new weird, historical fiction, corporate satire and fiction in translation, as well as those using literary realism to discuss themes such as economic inequality, personal difference, climate change, and transidentities.

Thoughtful and essential, this book provides excellent guidance for students and budding authors on the more detailed complexities of fiction writing from the beginning of a writing project - short story or novel - to the end.