The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers

In 1958, by popular demand, Ayn Rand gave an informal course on the art of fiction to a group of friends and acquaintances in her own living room. Using only a few handwritten notes over the course of twelve sessions, the legendary author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged covered in comprehensi [...]
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In 1958, by popular demand, Ayn Rand gave an informal course on the art of fiction to a group of friends and acquaintances in her own living room. Using only a few handwritten notes over the course of twelve sessions, the legendary author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged covered in comprehensive and provocative detail all the essentials of writing and reading fiction. Now, for the first time, the edited transcripts of these remarkable sessions are available to readers and aspiring writers. In The Art of Fiction, Ayn Rand discusses how a writer combines abstract ideas with concrete action and description to achieve a unity of theme, plot, characterization, and style--the four essential elements of fiction. She explains how the seemingly causeless phenomenon of literary "inspiration" is a function of a writer's conscious thinking; how to develop a voice of one's own ("You cannot borrow another man's soul, and you cannot borrow his style"); and why all works of fiction--from great literature to detective stories--express a specific code of values ("Every writer is a moral philosopher"). Here, too, are Ayn Rand's illuminating sentence-by-sentence analyses of passages from writers like Victor Hugo and Thomas Wolfe, illustrative rewrites of scenes from her own works, and fascinating rules for building dramatic plots and characters with depth.