NOTES ON CRAFT FOR BEGINNER WRITERS

“It’s always wrong of course to say that you can’t do this or you can’t do that in fiction. You can do anything you can get away with, but nobody has ever gotten away with much.”

-Flannery O’Connor

If you’re a beginner writer and in need of some insight to get started, especially when it comes to inspiration, some seminal texts to explore include Stephen King’s “On Writing,” “One Writer’s Beginnings,” by Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor’s letters, “The Habit of Being.” We get the low-down firsthand from our favorite writers, straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. Inspiration and details from a writer’s life are always helpful and are, if nothing else, interesting. It’s always a good idea to write what you know. Eudora Welty writes in her autobiography, “One Writer’s Beginnings,” that, at around age six, she became physically aware of the word. The first word that became real to her, by watching it rise in the west, was “moon.” In a chapter on listening, Welty describes her transformation into an observer. All writers must observe their surroundings, listening to conversations while remaining semi-detached. According to Welty, “Getting my distance, a prerequisite of my understanding of human events, is the way I begin work.”

If you’re looking for something to read from an intellectual scholar/critic that feels a bit removed, try this staple used in all Creative Writing courses of higher education: John Gardener’s “The Art of Fiction.” One of the most important and helpful terms you’ll ever learn when beginning to write fiction is “verisimilitude” as described by Gardner. This is the suspension of disbelief where the reader is drawn into a world they completely believe and go with as if flowing downstream. If you’re going to write fiction—as unreal and fabulist as it may be—it has to be consistent so your reader is willing to go on this journey. Think of your work of fiction as a dream. When you’re dreaming, no matter how unrealistic and bizarre the circumstances, you actually believe what’s happening. This is what a short story or novel should feel like, even if it’s supernatural fiction. So, how does one achieve verisimilitude in their writing? According to Gardner, “In all the major genres, vivid detail is the lifeblood of fiction.”

Writers—regardless of their literary voice—are usually always writing about themselves. Character motivation comes from the writer’s motivation (just as when James Baldwin eloquently stated in an interview towards the end of his life: “Every writer knows that, if you listen to me or I listen to you—whatever I’m describing—I’m describing myself.”) It’s just like Gustave Flaubert’s famous declaration: “Madame Bovary, c’est moi.” So, what are some of our favorite characters, and what drives them? Victor Hugo’s Quasimodo wanted to be seen as a man and not a monster (the same goes for the Elephant Man), while Ernest Hemingway’s protagonist in “The Old Man and the Sea” was railing against death. By catching the elusive fish, he was seeking immortality (the same can be said for Melville’s “Moby Dick.”) Our favorite adventurer, Huck Finn, clearly wanted fun and, with that, achieved freedom, experience, and acceptance.

According to Gardner’s “The Art of Fiction,” fiction should be a continuous dream, and in order to achieve this, the writer needs to create an immersive experience. This maintains the dream, and one accomplishes it with authenticity and truth. This means using concrete details and avoiding imitation so the dream can “engage us heart and soul.” Dialogue plays a vital role in storytelling and, in order to be effective, “should reveal character, advance the plot, and sound natural.”

Wayne C. Booth’s “The Rhetoric of Fiction” contains helpful hints about pitfalls that can hurt a writer’s work and how to avoid them. For example, a writer should show rather than tell. Try to avoid explaining; instead, show the reader a world that’s complete with vivid settings and fully formed characters. This is not easy but that’s why a writer must edit ceaselessly. “Booth highlights the ways in which the author’s values and beliefs shape the narrative and influence the reading experience.” Speaking of writers and their values, personal letters are incredibly revealing if one wants to delve into one’s psyche. For example, Flannery O’Connor’s “The Habit of Being” illuminates her illness and what her daily life must have been like (she died at thirty-nine). Stephen King—our favorite literary genre writer—is the first to admit plainly that writing is a lonely profession. One has to be alone with one’s thoughts all the time.

A whimsical touchstone that grapples with myth, lore, and the oldest stories ever told is Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces.”: In this, the author “analyzes humankind from a mythological and symbolistic point of view to prove that all humans have similar core concepts written in them, such as the monomyth, which is a way of narrating stories that people from all over the world use to connect with one another.” No matter where you’re from, storytelling is universal and vital for understanding.

To learn more about writing—including tips for beginners and recommended reading—check out Full Cycle Publications at the website and the links below:

https://sobrief.com/books/the-art-of-fiction

https://bookbrief.io/books/the-rhetoric-of-fiction-wayne-c-booth/summary

Texts cited above include:

• Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 1949
• John Gardner, The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers, 1983
• Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction, 1961
• Eudora Welty, One Writer’s Beginnings, 1983