000 02548cam a22003253u 4500
001 76688
003 UtSlPG
005 20260610134756.0
006 m
007 cr n
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010 _a22018668
040 _aUtSlPG
041 7 _aen
_2iso639-1
050 4 _aPN
100 1 _aHoffman, Arthur Sullivant,
_d1876-1966
245 1 0 _aFundamentals of fiction writing
264 1 _aSalt Lake City, UT :
_bProject Gutenberg,
_c2025
300 _a1 online resource :
_bmultiple file formats
336 _atext
_btxt
_2rdacontent
337 _acomputer
_bc
_2rdamedia
338 _aonline resource
_bcr
_2rdacarrier
500 _aRelease date is 2025-08-16
508 _aAl Haines
520 _a"Fundamentals of fiction writing" by Arthur Sullivant Hoffman is a guidebook on writing fiction written in the early 20th century. It centers on how to craft stories that genuinely grip readers by creating and preserving an absorbing illusion. Emphasizing clarity, simplicity, and individuality over rigid technique, it offers practical, market-aware advice on plot, character, style, and audience. The opening of the book lays out the author’s purpose, credentials, and method: an editor’s-eye view that treats the reader as a core part of the art process. He argues that modern teaching overvalues technique and imitation, and that real success comes from simplicity, clearness, and maintaining the story’s illusion. He distinguishes straight fiction from fiction-as-vehicle (philosophy, instruction, sermon), warns how easily illusion is broken, and shares an illustrative writer’s letter rejecting formulaic “Ford-like” stories. He then proposes three audience strategies (ignore, target, or broaden) and urges writers to study real human reactions. Practical chapters catalog common breakers of illusion—unfamiliar words, foreign phrases, showy allusions, odd names, dialect, authorial intrusions, inconsistencies—and explain how to ensure clarity in names, dialogue, and scene logic. He also cautions against overstrain, advocating brevity, varied sentence length, relief scenes, and simpler plots (with special notes on frames and mystery stories), before moving into a discussion of convincingness. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
534 _pOriginally published:
_cIndianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1922
653 _aFiction -- Technique
856 4 _uhttps://archive.org/details/artoffiction0000besa
856 4 0 _uhttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76688
999 _c117413
_d117413