The Art of Fiction, A Review

I promised to review How to Write a Damn Good Novel II, Advanced Techniques, by James N. Frey, but I feel that today's review is more important for those sniffing out good craft books.

Along with How to Write a Damn Good Novel and The Art of Dramatic Writing, I think John Gardner's The Art of Fiction should be required reading for any introductory Fiction Writing course.  It comes laden with superb exercises (conveniently condensed in the back of the book), exercises specifically honed to work on only a handful of aspects at once.  This solid book will likely introduce you (I mean you specifically not you as in "one") to new vocabulary, because Gardner doesn't fear sounding erudite.  He's writing for a group that wants to be the upper crust and will not settle for "mere fiction" but strive for art.

That being said, many creative writing teachers will tell you that all genre writing is "mere fiction," a thought echoed by Gardner, who lumps pornographers and cheap thriller writers together in the same sentence.  However, in today's modern market for writing, mere fiction will not get you onto the shelves.  People want their fantasy to comment on their real world problems, their thrillers to show that the world is scarier than a riding a rollercoaster in Hell while blindfolded and seated next to some black widow demon with wings - but that this world can STILL be conquered by hope and perseverance (and maybe a little luck).  People want characters that actually are impacted by the events around them.  If you pick up any Stephen King or Dean Koontz book, you'll be able to figure that out.

Here's the bottom line: The Art of Fiction will give you concrete examples and advice on how to write more than mere fiction, and all in the wonderful tone of one of the greatest writing instructors of the Twentieth Century.  His book also pinpoints common errors and failures in order to direct students through the maze of writing.  In addition, Gardner will arm you with the tools you need to analyze Kafka-esque novels, and the firm grounding to see that the novelist's job is not dead, not discarded, not outmoded.

Pick up a copy, start reading, and throw out all thoughts you once had of settling for "mere fiction." Life's too short, as John Gardner knew.  Once you have digested some of his words, set yourself at the typewriter (I can't be the only one who likes the machine gun fire of mechanical creation) and get to work writing - some of his exercises are fabulous pre-writing warmups.

The Art of Dramatic Writing, A Review

This series will kick off with a review of The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri.  Readers will remember that I featured this book in a short story, which can be found here.

Lajos Egri's book, while focusing on the art of becoming a playwright, is very probably the most important book on craft I've ever read.  If you want to write a novel, but haven't started yet, here's my advice: write down all the notes and ideas you have, but do not set a word of it to paper until you've read The Art of Dramatic Writing.  If you read no other book on craft - you'd better read more books on craft, but this is THE place to start.  The word premise gets tossed around in most of the books this series will feature, but no one drives it home like Lajos Egri.  "The Premise is a tyrant who permits you to go only one way - the way of absolute proof."

There are many other useful chapters about orchestration, unity of opposites, crafting a smoothly rising conflict, but the work he does on premise, first of all, is straight up ballsy.  He wrote a book that overturned thousands of years of how people look at writing by taking a scientific approach to it.  Bear in mind that it was written in the 1930s so some of the science (germ theory/medicine) is highly dated, but his points are not invalidated.  So what is a premise?  In short, a premise is the heart and brain of your novel; without it you are doomed to write an insipid story.  The premise is what the story aims to prove.  Let's look at a few examples:
Macbeth - Ruthless ambition leads to ruin
Romeo and Juliet - Great Love transcends hate and death
Ender's Game - The burden of leadership requires isolation and suffering
Mistborn - Tyranny leads to revolt.

Now if you look at some of these, you might be able to draw a different premise, but that premise will have the same elements mentioned in my own premises.  In short, a premise is the absolute synopsis of the story.  Let's look at Macbeth: Ruthless ambition leads to ruin.  There are three parts to every good premise, 1) Character (Ruthless Ambition, Lady and Lord Macbeth), 2) Promise of Conflict (leads to -> something will challenge the Ruthless Ambition or an opportunity will present itself, which leads inevitably to conflict), 3) Resolution (Ruin, Macbeth's death).  Every truly great story has these three elements included in the premise.  With a clear premise, your story will have much better odds at being successful in telling the story you want to tell.  Without a premise, you're sunk.

All in all, I will go on record saying that the single greatest failure of my undergraduate creative writing curriculum was that this was not required reading.  If you read the book and take its advice to heart, it will save you the years of stumbling around in your own stories that I spent wasted in my own.

What the rest of this year will look like.

So far this year has featured new themes every month, mostly centered around humor, but since I've been reading a lot of craft books over the last year and a half, I figured I'd share my findings.  So, for the remainder of the year (or until I run out of books on craft), each week will feature a new review of a book on craft.  The posts will be uploaded on Fridays at noon PDT.  Here's a list of what the next few weeks will look like in no particular order.

1. The Art of Dramatic Writing, Lajos Egri
2. How to Write a Damn Good Novel, James N. Frey
3. How to Write a Damn Good Novel II: Advanced Techniques, James N. Frey
4. The Key, James N. Frey
5. The Art of War for Writers, James Scott Bell
6. On Becoming a Novelist, John Gardner
7. The Art of Fiction, John Gardner
8. How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy, & Science Fiction; ed. Williamson
9. Characters & Viewpoint, Elements of Writing; Writer's Digest Book series.
10. How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy, Orson Scott Card
11. Writing the Breakout Novel, Donald Maass
12. Getting Your Book Published for Dummies, Zackheim
13. Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft

The list will get longer as the year progresses.  The reviews will consist of what was useful, what was not, and whether or not it should be required reading for Undergraduate Creative Writing.