--- title: Fiction Writing description: Fiction writing is the art of creating imagined stories, characters, and settings. Learners will understand the core elements of narrative craft, including plot, voice, theme, and pacing, to produce original prose works. category: literature-writing subcategory: creative-writing difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced url: /subject/fiction-writing --- # Fiction Writing Fiction writing is the art of creating imagined stories, characters, and settings. Learners will understand the core elements of narrative craft, including plot, voice, theme, and pacing, to produce original prose works. ## Available Resources 3 Books • 2 Courses • 4 Websites ## Courses ### 1. Brandon Sanderson's Creative Writing Lectures Learn fiction-writing from master storyteller Brandon Sanderson! This course covers plot, character, worldbuilding & more. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSH_xM-KC3ZvzkfVo_Dls0B5GiE2oMcLY **Tags:** fiction-writing, plotting, characterization, worldbuilding, genre-fiction ### 2. Creative Writing: The Craft of Plot In this course aspiring writers will be introduced to perhaps the most elemental and often the most challenging element of story: plot. We will learn what keeps it moving, how it manipulates our feelings, expectations, and desires. We will examine the choices storytellers make to snag our imaginations, drag them into a fictional world, and keep them there. We will learn how to outline and structure a plot, discuss narrative arc, pacing and reversals and reveal the inevitable surprise: connecting the beginning, middle and end. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Duration:** 4 weeks of study, 1-2 hours/week | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.coursera.org/learn/craft-of-plot **Tags:** courses, personal-development, communication ## Websites ### 1. Mythcreants Long-running craft blog and podcast by Chris Winkle and Oren Ashkenazi, analyzing story structure, worldbuilding, character arcs and common failure modes in published speculative fiction. Posts diagnose why specific scenes work or collapse, giving writers repeatable revision criteria. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://mythcreants.com/ **Tags:** fiction-writing, worldbuilding, story-structure, speculative-fiction, writing-craft ### 2. Writing Excuses Podcast founded by working genre novelists including Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal and Dan Wells, with hundreds of archived episodes on plot, character, revision and career. Each short episode closes with a writing exercise to apply immediately. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://writingexcuses.com/ **Tags:** fiction-writing, writing-craft, genre-fiction, revision, worldbuilding ### 3. Helping Writers Become Authors K.M. Weiland's long-running craft blog and podcast covering story structure, character arcs, outlining and scene construction. Readers get a consistent structural vocabulary of beats, arcs and act turns for diagnosing why a draft stalls and revising it. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/ **Tags:** story-structure, character-arc, creative-writing, outlining, revision ### 4. 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. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://writersdigest.com **Tags:** websites, personal-development, communication ## Podcasts ### 1. The Writer Files **Author:** Kelton Reid “Learn how acclaimed writers keep the ink flowing, the cursor moving, and avoid writer’s block.”Each week, host Kelton Reid chats with guests like Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah, on life after becoming a laureate; #1 New York Times bestselling author, Emily Henry on her past life as a YA mid-lister; Celebrated author, Walter Mosley, on his conflicted feelings after winning a National Book Award; NY Times bestselling author, Lisa Scottoline, on what she learned from literary lion Philip Roth; #1 NY Times bestselling author Dennis Lehane on what he borrowed from Clint Eastwood; and bestselling author, Matt Haig, on the proces... **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** en | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://thepodglomerate.com/shows/the-writer-files/ **Tags:** writing-process, author-interviews, writers-block, publishing ### 2. The Creative Penn **Author:** Joanna Penn Weekly podcast and blog by author-entrepreneur Joanna Penn, with interviews on writing craft, self-publishing, book marketing, audiobooks, and running an independent author business. Listeners learn how indie authors publish, distribute and sell their books and build lasting income from their writing. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** en-US | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.thecreativepenn.com/blog/ **Tags:** self-publishing, book-marketing, indie-authors, author-business, creative-writing ## Books ### 1. Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story **Author:** Ursula K. Le Guin Ten short chapters on the mechanics of narrative prose - sentence sound, punctuation, verb tense, person and point of view, crowding and leaping - each with examples from published fiction and an exercise. Revised 2015 edition, 160 pages. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0544611616?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** fiction-craft, prose-style, narrative-technique, point-of-view, writing-exercises ### 2. Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft **Author:** Janet Burroway, Elizabeth Stuckey-French, Ned Stuckey-French Widely used college textbook on fiction craft, covering point of view, characterization, setting, plot and revision through short chapters, exercises and anthologized stories. Readers learn to analyze published fiction and apply those techniques when drafting and revising their own stories. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0321277368?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, creative-writing ### 3. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft **Author:** Stephen King Stephen King's part memoir, part practical manual: an account of his early life and career followed by direct advice on vocabulary, grammar, style, dialogue, revision and the daily writing habit. Readers come away with a concrete toolbox and working routine for producing fiction. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0671024256?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, creative-writing --- *This content is part of Dantes.io - Your Treasure Map to Knowledge* *Curated by humans at Dantes.io. Personal study use welcome; republishing this curation requires permission (team@dantes.io).* View this page online: https://dantes.io/subject/fiction-writing