The most comprehensive book on writing that I own is Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft by Janet Burroway. I started thumbing through it the other day, looking for what Burroway had to say about how to begin a book. I didn’t find exactly what I was looking for. Rather, I found a discussion on conflict that approached it from an intriguing aspect. The traditional narrative arc of a … [Read more...]

Back when I was in my twenties and living in New York, a favorite conversation starter among my friends was: If the apocalypse happened tomorrow, what three books would you save? My first two were easy—the dictionary (preferably Webster’s) and the collected works of Shakespeare. (Size was not a consideration.) Having put in my vote for those two, I let others argue about books on farming and … [Read more...]

I overwrite at times. I don’t mean long phrase-upon-phrase, clause-upon-clause, description-upon-description sentences as, say, Virginia Woolf does. If I were capable of writing sentences like this from Mrs. Dalloway— The British middle classes sitting sideways on the tops of omnibuses with parcels and umbrellas, yes, even furs on a day like this, were, she thought, more ridiculous, more unlike … [Read more...]

I wrote a post a few months ago about how a children’s movie used an important plotting technique—that is, when a protagonist solves one problem, she or he should be confronted by a worse problem. Now advice from a documentary filmmaker, whose mother is a student of mine. Ginny was frustrated with the plotting of her latest novel, so her son told her he’d read it and see if he had any … [Read more...]

Further on the subject of practice. It may not necessarily make perfect (although a cat practicing the art of sleeping does appear to reach perfection), but practice does make better. And more practice makes better faster. That was, more or less, my daughter’s conclusion after completing an assignment for her high-school sociology class, which required her to do something for thirty days. She … [Read more...]