The way of the writer : reflections on the art and craft of storytelling /
Organized into six accessible, easy-to-navigate sections, The Way of the Writer is both a literary reflection on the creative impulse and a utilitarian guide to the writing process. Johnson shares his lessons and exercises from the classroom, starting with word choice, sentence structure and narrati...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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New York :
Scribner,
[2016].
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| Edition: | First Scribner edition. |
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Table of Contents:
- I. Who is the writer?
- In the beginning...
- The apprentice novels
- A day in the life
- The writing space
- The artist as shape-shifter
- The quesion of vision
- II. The process of writing
- A boot camp for creative writing
- Words
- In defense of our language
- Telling it long and telling it short
- Opening sentences: a hundred rays of light
- On craft and revision
- The challenge of voice
- How we sound
- Nature gives us no metaphors
- Scene and dialogue
- The importance of plot
- Storytelling and the alpha narrative
- On the novel and short story
- The essay
- The risks we take
- III. What helps the writer?
- On teachers and mentors
- The wounds that create our work
- The first readers
- Writers and editors
- On reading
- The virtues of journalism
- Practical literary advice
- IV. The writer as teacher
- The literary duet: creative writing and critical theory
- The creative-writing teacher as soul catcher
- Writing and teaching, or From Mr. Hyde to Dr. Jekyll
- V. The writing life and the duties of the writer
- The art of book reviewing
- In translation
- On screenwriting
- Editing and small presses
- VI. Philosophy and the writer
- Writing well is thinking well
- The writer and philosophy
- Fiction and the liberation of perception
- New fiction novelists
- Science fiction and the philosophical novel
- Sartre and the nothingness of being
- The truth-telling power of fiction
- Afterword: Notes from a former student / by Marc C. Conner.