Writing Fiction

This updated edition of the classic, comprehensive guide to creative writing features new topics and writing prompts, contemporary examples, and more.
A creative writer's shelf should hold at least three essential books: a dictionary, a style guide, and Janet Burroway's Writing Fiction. This best-selling classic is the most widely used creative writing text in America, and for decades it has helped hundreds of thousands of students learn the craft. Now in its tenth edition, Writing Fiction is more accessible than ever for writers of all levels-inside or outside the classroom.
This new edition continues to provide advice that is practical, comprehensive, and flexible. Moving from freewriting to final revision, Burroway addresses "showing not telling," characterization, dialogue, atmosphere, plot, imagery, and point of view. It includes new topics and writing prompts, and each chapter now ends with a list of recommended readings that exemplify the craft elements discussed. Plus, examples and quotations throughout the book feature a wide range of today's best and best-known creators of both novels and short stories.

Janet Burroway is the author of plays, essays, poetry, children's books, and eight novels, including The Buzzards, Raw Silk, Opening Nights, Cutting Stone, and Bridge of Sand. She also edited the essay collection A Story Larger than My Own for the University of Chicago Press. She is Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor Emerita at Florida State University. She lives in Chicago and Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Elizabeth Stuckey-French is professor of English at Florida State University. Ned Stuckey-French (1950-2019) was associate professor of English at Florida State University and director of the FSU Certificate Program in Publishing and Editing.