Overview
- Explores some of the evolutionary, philosophical, and psychological reasons why causality is so important to fiction.
- Offers a practical guide to one of fiction-writing's oldest and most fundamental skills.
- Author holds both a Ph.D. in philosophy and an MFA in creative writing.
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Table of contents (9 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This book explores and defends George Saunders’ causal thesis that successful stories are those that establish causation well. The book includes an in-depth discussion of causation’s role in several different key craft elements of fiction writing and examines different theories of causation and their implications for causation in fiction. Other discussions include the role of causation in building suspense, character and causation, causation in dialogue and connections between fiction and counterfactuals (or hypotheticals). The book also considers a number of objections to the causal thesis and offers a reply.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Frances Howard-Snyder is a Philosophy Professor at Western Washington University and has co-authored a logic textbook. She has also published numerous articles on ethics and philosophy of religion. She has an MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop, and has published stories in The Magnolia Review, Silver Pen, Halfway Down the Stairs, as well as other publications. For more information, see franceshowardsnyder.com.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Cause and Effect in Fiction
Authors: Frances Howard-Snyder
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-52712-8
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-52711-1Published: 04 April 2024
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-52712-8Published: 03 April 2024
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XI, 103
Topics: Literature, general, Philosophy, general, Creative Writing