Starting the writing process -- Building fictional worlds through evocation -- How characters are different from people -- Fictional characters, imagined and observed -- Call me Ishmael: introducing a character -- Characters: round and flat, major and minor -- Mechanics of writing dialogue -- Integrating dialogue into a narrative -- And then: turning a story into a plot -- Plotting with the Freytag pyramid -- Adding complexity to plots -- Structuring a narrative without a plot -- In the beginning: how to start a plot -- Happily ever after: how to end a plot -- Seeing through other eye: point of view -- I, me, mine: first-person point of view -- He, she, it: third person point of view -- Evoking setting and place in fiction -- Mowgli-the wolf child -- Pacing in scenes and narratives -- Building scenes -- Should I write in drafts -- Revision without tears -- Approaches to researching fiction -- Making a life as a fiction writer.