The New Yorker Fiction
by The New Yorker · Various
Authors published in The New Yorker read their own recently published short stories aloud, one per episode. Useful for hearing how contemporary literary short fiction is paced, voiced, and structured, straight from the writers themselves.
More resources on Fiction & Novel
Lit Century
Host Catherine Nichols and guests choose one book for each year of the twentieth century (Nella Larsen's Passing, 1936, Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls, 1966; Mohandas Gandhi's Indian Home Rule, 1909) and talk about it in its historical and literary context. Tune in to find out what the 20th century was all about.
1984
George Orwell's 1949 novel following Winston Smith, a clerk rewriting history in a one-party state that controls citizens through surveillance, propaganda and Newspeak. Readers can analyse how the novel portrays totalitarian power, language and truth, and why its vocabulary shaped modern political debate.
Aspects of the Novel
Forster's 1927 Cambridge lectures on how novels work, organized around story, people, plot, fantasy, prophecy, pattern, and rhythm. Introduces the flat-versus-round character distinction and gives a vocabulary for discussing narrative structure critically.
The Art of Fiction
Fifty short essays, first published as newspaper columns, each examining one technique — point of view, interior monologue, unreliable narration, time-shift — through a passage from an English or American novel. Builds a working critical vocabulary.
writersdigest.com
WritersDigest.com is a comprehensive resource for writers, featuring craft articles, writing prompts, market guides, contests, and publishing tips to help aspiring and established authors improve their craft and get published.
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Campbell's 1949 comparative study of myth, arguing that hero stories across cultures follow one pattern he calls the monomyth: departure, initiation, return. The source of the structural template later adopted widely by novelists and screenwriters.