Contents -- Introduction -- Openings: Ways of Starting the Story -- Exercise: And So We Begin -- Sentences: Doing the Dusty Work -- Exercise: How Sentences Work -- Dialogue: The Reader as Eavesdropper -- Exercise: Think of Your Ears as Magnets -- Putting It in Context: Foreground Needs Background -- Exercise: But Why Did the Queen Die? -- Implicit Narrative: Achieving Subtlety while Avoiding Confusion -- Exercise: Presence and Absence -- Characters: Flawed Heroes and Sympathetic Villains -- Exercise: Making Heroes Flawed -- High Events: The Treatment of Dramatic Moments -- Exercise: The Richness of the Resonance -- Sentiment versus Sentimentality: The First, Always -- the Second, Never -- Exercise: No Cheating Allowed -- Closings: Ways of Ending the Story -- Exercise: Finally -- Conclusion -- Works Cited or Discussed.