The Three-Act Structure

The three-act structure is the form that I grew up in the theater with. You generally present a situation in Act I, and by the end of Act I the situation has evolved to a point where something is threatening the situation. In Act II you solve that problem producing a more intense problem by the end of Act II. In Act III you solve that problem, either happily or unhappily, depending on whether you have a comedy or a tragedy or a drama: you work out the final solution accordingly.

PADDY CHAYEFSKY

Give Your Characters a Roll in the Hay

I’m really interested in writing about sex. I feel like it’s not often done well, and it’s sometimes done outrageously. I also get annoyed when writers are afraid to show pleasure. I’m tired of reading really dreadful sex scenes where everyone’s miserable and then eventually maybe one person has a reluctant orgasm. I thought, What if I tried to have a scene where people had sex and it was great? My characters do have sex in varying emotional states, and with various results. I took a class at Iowa with Allan Gurganus, and he picked my story to talk about in class…and he really liked that there was sex in it. He said, You should always give your characters a roll in the hay—they work hard, they deserve it. Which I thought was so funny. I tell my students that party scenes are really important in fiction because a party scene can go in any direction. Sex scenes can be similar. You’re putting characters together—what happens as a result?

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO

Tragedy Attracts Awards

I want them all to have happy endings although I do realize this is not true to life. But I get attached to my characters and I don't really want to do them in. And I think it is significant that the only book of mine that got a big literary award [the Pulitzer for Foreign Affairs] was the only one in which I've killed off a major character. Somehow tragedy attracts awards and comedy doesn't.

ALISON LURIE

Read the Best Writers

Read the best writers: maybe it would help to set a goal of one classic per year at least. Classics have stood the test of time, as we say. Keep trying them, if you don’t like them at first—come back to them. I tried Joyce’s Ulysses three times before I read it all the way through. (It helped that I was living in Ireland at the time, where I saw Joycean and Beckettian characters all around me.) I haven’t yet read Don Quixote, but I think I’ll actually enjoy it.

LYDIA DAVIS

A Novel Is Larger Than Your Head

The most important thing I’ve found about writing is that it is primarily an unconscious activity. What do I mean by this? I mean that a novel is larger than your head (or conscious mind). The connections, moods, metaphors, and experiences that you call up while writing will come from a place deep inside you. Sometimes you will wonder who wrote those words. Sometimes you will be swept up by a fevered passion relating a convoluted journey through your protagonist’s ragged heart. These moments are when you have connected to some deep place within you, a place that harbors the zeal that made you want to write to begin with. The way you get to this unconscious place is by writing every day. Or not even writing. Some days you may be rewriting, rereading, or just sitting there scrolling back and forth through the text. This is enough to bring you back into the dream of your story.

WALTER MOSLEY

The Last Collaborator Is Your Audience

The last collaborator is your audience…when the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you’ve written. Things that seem to work well — work in a sense of carry the story forward and be integral to the piece — suddenly become a little less relevant or a little less functional or a little overlong or a little overweight or a little whatever. And so you start reshaping from an audience.

STEPHEN SONDHEIM

The Voice Arrives Out of Thin Air

Truly, I just try to get out of my own way and inhabit the characters. I strive to get inside of them and leave myself in the dust, so I can consider their situations and dilemmas from a perspective that is not my own. If I can focus well enough to get there, the rest comes pretty naturally. The things they think and say and decide to do seem inevitable. The voice arrives out of thin air. When I’m writing character well, it’s not a very cerebral process. I feel the events rather than think them. I’ve gotta be inside the body and the psyche of my subject. If I can smell the coffee on my own breath, I know I’m not doing my job. My job is to jump through that empathic window and report on the human condition. Period. 

JONATHAN EVISON

So Much in the Novel Is Unexpected

I think a lot before I start writing, but I don’t think through everything, and when I do start a story—and this is especially true with stories, not novels—I already know what the story will be and so I don’t edit a lot. My first draft is often very close to my final draft. With a novel, it’s different. It’s such a tough thing to write a novel. I think through everything, but so much in the novel is unexpected, so you have to really let the control go, a little bit at a time.

YIYUN LI

Write the Book You Want to Read

I wrote the first book because I wanted to read it. I thought that kind of book, with that subject—those most vulnerable, most undescribed, not taken seriously little black girls—had never existed seriously in literature. No one had ever written about them except as props. Since I couldn’t find a book that did that, I thought, Well, I’ll write it and then I’ll read it. It was really the reading impulse that got me into the writing thing. 

TONI MORRISON

Revise Constantly

Another advantage of revising constantly, regardless of whether you’re ever going to “use” what you’ve written, is that you practice, constantly, reading with fresh eyes, reading as the person coming fresh to this, never having seen it before. This is a very important skill to develop, and one that probably develops only with time and practice (although some people recommend various tricks, such as printing different drafts of your work in different fonts).

LYDIA DAVIS