Turning life into fiction /
Robin Hemley.
- New, updated and expanded ed.
- St. Paul, Minn. : Graywolf Press, c2006.
- 327 p. ; 23 cm.
Introduction : experience versus the imagination : a transformation -- 1. Journals : recording and generating ideas -- 2. Finding your form : choosing between memoir and novel, transforming anecdotes into stories -- 3. Focusing real life : imposing order on experience through characterization, plot, point of view, and other elements of craft -- 4. Real people : transforming real people into fictional characters, creating composite characters -- 5. Real stories : writing stories of family, childhood, jobs, and other true experiences; finding story ideas in the media, in dreams, in chance discoveries -- 6. Real places : creating fictional settings from actual places -- 7. Writing (and rewriting) with authority : weaving research into fiction, gaining distance on material, revising fiction -- 9. Legal and ethical concerns : using real names and people -- what writers can and cannot do.
"In Turning Life into Fiction, Robin Hemley offers a highly entertaining and in-depth manual - including writing exercises - on how to convert real life into good storytelling. He covers a wide range of subjects, including how to record and generate ideas from daily life and how to write effectively using true anecdotes, real places, and real people. A self-proclaimed liar and thief, Hemley also addresses the legal and ethical concerns of borrowing experience from the lives of strangers and loved ones."--BOOK JACKET
1555974449 (alk. paper) 9781555974442
Fiction--Technique--Problems, exercises, etc. Autobiography--Problems, exercises, etc. Creative writing--Problems, exercises, etc. Novela --Técnicas-- Arte de escribir. Creación literaria, artística, etc.