A Short Observation on Writing Novels (and Reading Them)

May 25, 2015

When I teach writing, I usually begin by asking you to draw your attention to your unconscious idea of the novel or story–i.e., what do you think a novel or story is? Because this is what you will write.

For most people there’s an explanation they may know from certain classes about what a novel is and they imagine they are working with that, but I’m not speaking of what you might say if someone asks you what a novel is. I’m speaking of something deeper, usually hidden from yourself until you start writing.

Too often I see people who think that a novel can be produced by a series of technical flourishes alone, and out springs your little demon, dressed in his Likable Narrator, his Backstory all shiny, his Crisis and Climax well prepared for, the arc flexing. This is an awful, horrible, terrible way to write a novel.

You will write a novel based on whatever you think a novel is. And if you don’t read novels you care about, it will be harder to write a novel you care about, and you do have to care, deeply. And this is the thing that so often goes missing. To get all the way through it, you have to care. Novels are, somewhere underneath it all, acts of love. Passionate reading then is some of the best preparation, but also, reading novels that challenge you and your idea of what a novel is.

Also? Try not to read several novels at the same time. You need to imprint in yourself the way the architecture of the novel works. To read multiple novels simultaneously skews that. You become like someone trying to insist on something you aren’t even sure of. It is very common to have multiple books in progress as a student, and while that can work for getting papers written, it will fail you as a writer.

4:03am | URL: https://tmblr.co/ZSw7by1lcjJis

(Notes: 59)