The Curse of the Human Race

Books are fatal: they are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense. The greatest misfortune that ever befell man was the invention of printing." (Benjamin Disraeli)

One of My Favorite Books: The Heart of the Matter

The Heart of the Matter (Graham Greene)

I’ve read all of Graham Greene. I was first introduced to him when I read Malcolm Muggeridge's memoirs, CHRONICLES OF WASTED TIME. I actually used his memoirs as a reading list for years. THE HEART OF THE MATTER was the first Greene novel I read and it had a profound effect on me as well as my understanding of what makes a great novel.

The Function of a Metaphor and Simile

"Because writing is an extension of reading, and because the students have been reading all their lives, it is understandable that the two activities might blur somewhat in their minds. Although it is certainly a good thing that their writing is informed by their reading -indeed, at the most basic level they wouldn't be able to write anything at all if it weren't-it has its dangers. The creation of metaphors and similes, for instance. "The boy hopped up and down' writes a bright student whose intuition, sense of rhythm and experience as a reader tell her a metaphor or simile is needed to complete the sentence, "like beads of water on a hot frying pan?' In the rush to meet the demands of intuition and rhythm she has written a weak metaphor. She has forgotten the function of the device, which is to make something crystal clear, to reduce to essence. She has tried to amplify, to add on, rather than reduce." (Frank Conroy from Dogs Bark, but the Caravan Rolls On)

On the Threshold of the Resolution: Insight

"As the first developmental focus must take us deep into the story, so the end of the last developmental focus must carry us back out again. It does so by means of the character"s "moment of insight" . . . . The moment of insight, sometimes called a "plot point" in screenplays, occurs at the end of the third developmental focus, either as the climax of that focus or as a realization associated with that climax. It is there, at the end of the third developmental focus, on the threshold of the resolution, that the character visualizes clearly what he must do to solve his problem." (Jon Franklin, WRITING FOR STORY, p. 106)

The Larger Life of the Novel

What I learned from reading so many novels, is that the novel, as it goes on, has to expand. It has to give you a sense of a larger life, not just the story you're dealing with, no matter how well it's told. There must be a sense of resonance, a sense that in that story is the knowledge of a whole larger story whose presence is felt.

(From "An Interview with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni" The Writer's Chronicle September 2002)

Verbs

Use verbs that connote emotion rather than merely describe action. For instance, strode, paced, ambled, marched, strolled, and tromped are all better than walked.

(From “Fiction’s Connecting Link: Emotion” by Kathy Jacobson from the book The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing.)

Chekhov's Memories

Chekhov was perfectly aware that he wrote out of his memories. He said: "I can only write from my memories, and I have never written directly from nature. The subject must first seep through my memory, leaving as in a filter only what is important and typical." We know some of the memories which were later shaped into stories, and it is instructive to observe what he took from them and what he left out. (From Robert Payne, The Image of Chekhov: Forty Stories by Anton Chekhov in the Order in Which They Were Written)