- Dorothea Brande, Becoming A Writer, pg. 151
If you are to write well you must come to terms with the enormous and powerful part of your nature which lies behind the threshold of immediate knowledge.
10 Rules For Writing Fiction
Inspired by Elmore’s Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing, The Guardian asked noted authors about their rules for writing fiction, which include these indispensable tips:
Get an accountant, abstain from sex and similes, cut, rewrite, then cut and rewrite again – if all else fails, pray.
There are two parts, both are fantastic.
SURREALISM, n. Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express—verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner—the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by though, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.
[Source: Manifestos of Surrealism by André Breton]
How to Be a Poet
This from Arthur Rimbaud:
I say that one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet makes himself a seer by a long, prodigious, and rational disordering of all the senses. Every form of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he consumes all the poisons in him, and keeps only their quintessences. This is an unspeakable torture during which he needs all his faith and superhuman strength, and during which he becomes the great patient, the great criminal, the great accursed – and the great learned one! – among men. – For he arrives at the unknown! Because he has cultivated his own soul – which was rich to begin with – more than any other man! He reaches the unknown; and even if, crazed, he ends up by losing the understanding of his visions, at least he has seen them! Let him die charging through those unutterable, unnameable things: other horrible workers will come; they will begin from the horizons where he has succumbed!
Not many today would sacrifice so much for their art!
Vonnegut’s Creative Writing 101
A great set of a writing rules from one of our finest writers.
- Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
- Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
- Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
- Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
- Start as close to the end as possible.
- Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
- Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
- Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
From Bagombo Snuff Box
The Sense of an Ending
After just winning the Booker Prize, I had push a few other reads aside (Sorry Hermann Hesse and Philip K. Dick but you guys are up next. Promise.) and jump this one to the front of the literature que. More on this book after the brief, but expectedly dazzling read.
It’s to fiction that we regularly and gratefully turn for the truest picture of life.
– Julian Barnes, from The Art of Fiction #165, an interview in the Paris Review.
Way to go Julian Barnes. I just ordered your Booker Prize winning book, The Sense of An Ending. Can’t wait to read it.
Going inside the mind of Philip K. Dick
The long awaited, oft written about and frequently speculated on Exegesis of Philip K. Dick is set for release November 7th.
His fiction is famous, but his philosophy has been somewhat controversial as he has been called a visionary, a prophet, a latter-day Gnostic Saint and a madman.
I’ve read bits of the Exegesis at the end of VALIS and it was fascinating. I’m sure the full volume will be mind-bending, dark and illuminating.
I can’t wait to read it.