{"id":81,"date":"2011-01-11T20:38:30","date_gmt":"2011-01-11T20:38:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/?p=81"},"modified":"2011-03-08T18:06:18","modified_gmt":"2011-03-08T18:06:18","slug":"the-craft-of-fiction-how-to-become-a-novelist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/?p=81","title":{"rendered":"THE CRAFT OF FICTION: HOW TO BECOME A NOVELIST"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Craft of Fiction: <em>How to become a novelist<\/em><\/p>\n<p>by Jonathan Falla<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve been a professional author for thirty years, writing film and stage drama, three published novels, short stories and essays. <em>The Craft of Fiction <\/em>grew out of the St Andrews University summer school, of which I\u2019m the teaching director. The school runs for a month, providing a thorough introduction to the skills of fiction.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0The book covers all the essential topics: narrative structure, character and conflict, plotting and dialogue, landscape and interior description, editing\u2026 and so on. There are numerous exercises, with examples ranging from the 14<sup>th<\/sup> century to the 21<sup>st<\/sup>, including novels, narrative poems, film\u2026 even painting. My emphasis is on strong narrative, in which every aspect of the writing contributes to the drive of the story \u2013 such that even a delicate, meditative tale can be a compelling read.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0Even if you are not actually writing, I hope you\u2019ll find the book of interest as a study of how a professional novelist approaches his work.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0For details, please see:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jonathanfalla.co.uk\/\">www.jonathanfalla.co.uk<\/a> \u2013 my own website<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.studymates.co.uk\/\">www.studymates.co.uk<\/a> \u2013 the publishers of <em>The Craft of Fiction<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.st-andrews.ac.uk\/\">www.st-andrews.ac.uk<\/a> \u2013 for a look at the Creative Writing Summer Programme.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Craft of Fiction: How to become a novelist by Jonathan Falla I\u2019ve been a professional author for thirty years, writing film and stage drama, three published novels, short stories and essays. The Craft of Fiction grew out of the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/?p=81\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,52],"tags":[39,38,41,40,21,159,13,42,19,36],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-novels","category-writing-guides","tag-creative-writing","tag-fiction","tag-film","tag-narrative","tag-novel","tag-poetry","tag-scotland","tag-st-andrews-university","tag-stage","tag-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":170,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions\/170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}