{"product_id":"2940045740272","title":"The Elements of Fiction","description":"\u003cp\u003eIt was John Gardner, the legendary teacher of the craft, who voiced my challenge. The elements of fiction, he said, like the words in a language, are finite.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOh, are they? I thought, and set about collecting them. Or, more precisely, I set about collecting authors’ quotes about them.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis endeavor set out as a cheat sheet, a short list of those elements I recognized and documented (by quotes), but soon it took on a life of its own and grew beyond all reasonable proportions.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTen years later (and about ten years ago) and at about 400 pages, I was done looking; even though I could, truly, still look for and find more elements and quotes to support them. By then, the project had served its purpose and it had made me (at least to my satisfaction) a better writer.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis collection of quotes—I call it a survey—has been lying dormant on my hard drive for a few years now, and I thought perhaps this would be a good time to share the spoils.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ulf Wolf","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47110345228528,"sku":"2940045740272","price":0.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940045740272_p0.jpg?v=1763682704","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940045740272","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}