The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History
A Handbook on Craft, Art, and History
- 184 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
A comprehensive guide to the speculative sub-genre of alternate history fiction, this book maps the unique terrain of this vibrant mode of storytelling and then explains how to write it. First giving a concise conceptual overview and the critical tools to differentiate the different forms of counterfactual fiction, Jack Dann lays out the 'tricks of the trade' such 'Heinleining', how to create recognizable 'divergent points' and how to employ paratextual elements and 'layering' to overcome readers' unfamiliarity with invented counterfactual events and cultures. Alongside this, Dann takes you step-by-step through a complete short story to demonstrate, line-by-line, how alternative history fiction works. As well as Dann's exacting methodology for writing professional quality alternate history stories, this book also features a live-on-the-page Q&A with some of the most esteemed alternate history writers working today, including Kim Stanley Robinson, John Birmingham and Lisa Goldstein among many others, who will detail their own particular hacks, theories, processes, methods and strategies. Combining extensive and deep knowledge of the field with accessible writing advice, this is the ultimate guidebook to the broad and complex sub-genre of counterfactual and alterative history fiction.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Halftitle Page
- Title Page
- Dedication Page
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- 1 A Few Introductory Notes and Thoughts about Alternate History and the Slippery Slope of Fiction
- 2 Let’s Examine What We’re Talking about
- 3 Thinking about History and Your Readers
- 4 Taking a Break from Me: “White City” by Lewis Shiner
- 5 Craft Problems and Solutions
- 6 The Tactics of Creating Counterfactual Texts: A Roundtable Q & A
- 7 A Very Personal Meditation on Writing: Or How I Do It … and Think about It
- 8 A Very Few Last Words about … You
- Bibliography
- About the Author
- About the Roundtable Q & A Contributors
- Index
- Imprint