Manual For Fiction Writers by Block, Lawrence (classic books to read .TXT) 📗

the reverse?a novelist can get away with stylistic crudity that would ruin a shorter piece of fiction.

Remember, what a novel gives you more than anything else is room, room for your characters and storyline to carry the day. While a way with words never hurts, it's of less overwhelming importance to the novelist than the ability to grab ahold of the reader and make him care what happens next.

The bestseller list abounds with the work of writers whom no one would call polished stylists. I don't want to name names, but I can think offhand of half a dozen writers whose first chapters are very hard going for me. I'm overly conscious of their style?writing does change one's perceptions as a reader?and I find their dialogue mechanical, their transitions awkward, their descriptions vague. But twenty or thirty pages into their books, I'll stop seeing the trees and begin to perceive the forest?i.e., the story grips me and I no longer notice what's wrong with their writing.

In shorter fiction, the storyline wouldn't have a chance to take over.

So perhaps you have to be a better craftsman for short stories and a better storyteller for novels, but both are equally important aspects of the writer's art. Obviously, the finest novels are skillfully shaped, just as the finest short stories catch up the reader in their narrative spell. But I certainly wouldn't avoid writing a novel out of lack of confidence in writing skills.

All right, next question. Are you trying to raise your hand back there? You keep putting it up and taking it down.

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That's because I'm uncertain. I have a good idea for a novel but I just can't seem to get started on it. Somehow it seems pointless to begin something that's going to take forever to finish.

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I know the feeling. I remember the first time I wrote a really long book. When I sat down to begin it I knew I was starting something that had to run at least five hundred pages in manuscript. I put in a good day's work and wound up knocking out fourteen pages. I got up from the typewriter and said, Well, just four hundred and eighty-six pages to go?and went directly into nervous prostration at the very thought.

The thing to remember is that a novel's not going to take forever. All the old clichŽs actually apply?a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and slow and steady honestly does win the race.

Consider this: if you write one page a day, you will produce a substantial novel in a year. Now writers who turn out a book a year, year in and year out, are considered to be quite prolific. And don't you figure you could produce one measly little page, even on a bad day? Even on a rotten day?

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Maybe it's not the length, exactly. But when I write a short story I can hold the whole thing in my head when I sit down at the typewriter. I know exactly where I'm going and it's just a matter of writing it down. I don't have that kind of grasp on a novel.

Of course not. Nobody does.

There are a few approaches you might consider. One involves writing progressively more detailed versions of your outline until you have essentially fleshed it out into a book, having outlined each scene in each chapter before beginning the actual writing. Writers who use this approach say it makes the writing a breeze. I would think it would transform what's supposed to be a creative act into a fundamentally mechanical process, but that doesn't mean it might not work like a charm for you.

As an alternative, you might come to realize that the control you seem to have over short stories is largely illusory. What you have is confidence?because you think you know everything about the story by the time you set out to write it.

But, if you're like me, you keep surprising yourself at the typewriter. Characters take on a life of their own and insist upon supplying their own dialogue. Scenes that looked necessary at the onset turn out to be superfluous, while other scenes take a form other than what you'd originally intended. As often as not, midway through the story you'll think of a way to improve the basic plot itself.

This happens even more markedly in novels, and that's fine. A work of fiction ought to be an organic entity. It's alive, and it grows as it goes.

Maybe it would help you if I said something about the novel I'm working on at present, an extremely complicated thriller set during World War II. I'm about halfway through the book as I write this, and I've been able to get this far solely by taking it One Day at a Time.

Whenever I project, whenever I start envisioning the novel as a whole, I'm paralyzed with terror. I'm convinced the whole thing is impossible and can't conceivably work out. But as long as I can get up each morning and concentrate exclusively on what's going to happen during that particular day's stint at the typewriter, I seem to be doing all right?and the book is taking form nicely.

One day at a time?that seems to work for me. And if you realize that you can only affect what you do now, things become a good deal more manageable.

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Maybe I haven't started a novel because I'm afraid I wouldn't finish it.

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Possibly so. And