The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers
gives a private series of extemporaneous lectures, analyzing the four essential elements of fiction.
If
you know where your inspiration really comes from, you will never run out of
material.
“A
rational writer can stoke his subconscious just as one puts fuel in a machine.
If you keep on storing things in your mind for your future writing and keep
integrating your choice of theme to your general knowledge, allowing the scope
of your writing to grow as your knowledge widens, then you will always have
something to say, and you will find ever better ways to say it. You will not
coast downhill after one outbreak of something valuable.”
The
wider a novel’s theme, the better it is as a work of art.
“If
a novel presents a marvelous philosophical message but has no plot, miserable
characterization, and a wooden style full of bromides, it is a bad work of art.
In
today’s literature, many books do not have any abstract theme, which means that
one cannot tell why they were written. An example is the kind of first novel
that relates the writer’s childhood impressions and early struggle with life.
If asked why the particular events are included, the author says: ‘It happened
to me.’ I warn you to write such a novel. That something happened to you is of
no importance to anyone, not even to you (and you are now hearing it from the
archapostle of selfishness). The important thing about you is what you choose
to make happen—your values and choices.”
Never
hang a gun on the wall in the first act if you don’t intend to have it go off
in the third.
“Never
resolve a smaller issue after the climax. In a story with multiple threads, the
problems of the lesser characters, if not involved in the climax, have to be
solved before the climax.
An
annoying aspect of badly constructed novels is that the author poses minor
problems and then leaves them hanging in the air, as if he has forgotten all
about them. (Of course, in really bad novels, even the major issues are not
resolved.)”
Concretize
your abstractions
“A
writer has to project his abstractions in specific concretes. That he knows
something inwardly is not enough; he has to make the reader know it; and the
reader can grasp it only from the outside, by some physical means. Concretize
to yourself: If a man and a woman are in love, how do they act? What do they
say? What do they seek? Why do they seek it? That is the concrete reality, for
which ‘love’ is merely a wide abstraction.”
*****
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an inspirational novel about the courage to be oneself freely.
Click to order Deconstructing INFATUATION
a thought-provoking novel about infatuation.
Click to order I say Who, What, and Where!
an inspirational novel about the courage to be oneself freely.
a thought-provoking novel about infatuation.
Copyright © 2013 by THE PYTHAGOREAN
STORYTELLER. All rights reserved.
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