James Wood's "How Fiction Works" is simultaneously a wonderful and horrible starting guide for what to pay attention to as you embark in fiction writing. His use of examples can be inaccessible to those who are not familiar with the authors, but his use of example quotes is helpful in identifying some of his more challenging concepts.
This book works to serve as a step-by-step guide of considerations for fiction writers and readers, giving the reader a better vocabulary to discuss primarily realism or "lifeness" in fiction. He looks at characters, language, narration, narrative styles, detail, dialogue, and convention along with the history of literature that led us to what we recognize as a contemporary novel. This book focuses less on making a clear argument, instead dissecting the contradicting approaches to fiction by notable authors. If there is any concise argument to be found here, it's that Wood does not believe in a right or wrong way to approach fiction, just good and bad writing (all of which can only be delineated through context).
Perhaps what stood out most to me is the recurring theme Wood brings up: fiction makes us better at noticing life and articulating our experiences. He gives countless examples of authors describing the mundane, the extravagant, the pure, the horrific, all of which involve close attention to human experiences in the "real world." For Wood, literature is not only a tool for escape, but a way to call attention to what we tend to overlook in our daily lives.
