Brooks & Warren, The Scope of Fiction · 1:03am May 9th, 2016
Remember when I plugged one of Brooks & Warren's books about what stories do & how they work, Understanding Fiction? And remember how enough of you bought it that the price for a used copy on Amazon shot up to $70 right after I made my post?
Last week I discovered they published a condensed version in 1960 called The Scope of Fiction. This is based on the 2nd (1959) edition of Understanding Fiction. The chapter list below has stars next to the ones included in The Scope of Fiction. Each chapter has about 2/3 of the stories given in that chapter in the bigger book. It includes the opening commentary for each chapter, which are all slightly different than in the 3rd edition.
1. Intentions & elements of fiction
* 2. What plot reveals
* 3. What character reveals
* 4. What theme reveals
5. The new fiction (metafiction)
6. Fiction & human experience (writers write about how they developed their stories)
7. Stories for reading (great stories without comments)
IMHO the only important stuff missing from The Scope of Fiction is chapters 1 & 6. Chapter 1 is more basic than 2-4, so you can probably do without that, too. Chapter 6 was in the 2nd but not the 1st edition, which had "Special Problems" and "Technical Problems & Principles in the Composition of Fiction" instead.
Best of all, right now Amazon has 5 used copies for 1 cent plus $3.99 shipping! There are also a few copies of the full Understanding Fiction, 3rd edition for $14 right now.
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Looks like italics tags don't work in titles, B.H.
We used to need a fiction scope: now we've got shipping goggles.
(Comes of replacing all those vacuum tubes with transistors)
3931972 Looks like your brain fails to interpret the tags correctly. You may need an upgrade.
What did it go from to $70?
3934483 I think it was around $35 at first.