Chapter 3 situates Edith Wharton’s guidebook The Writing of Fiction within a culture of advice that traverses the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The essay argues that Wharton’s text formulates relational, comparative aesthetics that place contemporary modernist experimentation (such as stream of consciousness narration) within novelistic traditions developed the nineteenth century. Additionally, The Writing of Fiction emphasizes twentieth-century novelistic investigation of character subjectivity that challenges nineteenth-century novels’ portrayals of characters in relation to their historical conditions. While Wharton’s guidebook has often been read as a reflection upon her own writing practices, this essay submits that within a genre of advice about writing, Wharton’s guidebook addresses a wider conceptual field: the novel’s exploration of character identity within modernity.