Always tell us where we are. And don’t just tell us where something is, make it pay off. Use description of landscape to help you establish the emotional tone of the scene. Keep notes of how other authors establish mood and foreshadow events by describing the world around the character. Look at the openings of Fitzgerald stories, and Graham Greene, they’re great at this.
JANET FITCH
When I’m working, when I’m writing, when I’m in the midst of it, or beginning it or ending it, the only reader that counts is myself. You know what they say in baseball, keep your eye on the ball? That’s the ball. I have to keep my eye on that, and never anything else. When I know I’m on the final draft—or think I am—I get to the end and then I prepare four or five copies and I mail them or get them to friends whose critical acumen I trust. I go and sit in her house and we talk about the book and I’ll tape record what they’re saying so I don’t have to take notes and not be involved in the conversation with them. And then I get them home and I transcribe them. And so I begin to make changes. Or if I think one person’s got it all wrong I ignore them. So the book is being described back to me in language which opens my thinking up. So even if they’re wrong, they’re right. There’s something to be gained, even if I think they’re wrong. So that’s what I do. It’s been a wonderful help.
PHILIP ROTH
Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice. To love someone is to put yourself in their story, or figure out how to tell yourself their story.
REBECCA SOLNIT
Completing a book, it’s a little like having a baby. There’s a feeling of relief and satisfaction when you get to the end. A feeling that you have brought your family, your characters, home. Then a sort of post-natal depression and then, very quickly, the horizon of a new book. The consolation that next time I will do it better.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die.
ANNE ENRIGHT
I write longhand pencil, and every other word’s crossed out. The words I strike are not usually because they’re clichéd, or not good words, but because they don’t reflect the character’s essential truth. Through a series of micro-choices made as I’m writing a sentence, I’m trying to find the true word, the word that reflects the character’s truth. Is that the smell she’s smelling in that bar? Is that the light she’s seeing in her car, with the snow falling? Is that really what she hears, and thinks and feels?
ANDRE DUBUS
For me, a project is an opportunity to interrogate a subject. When I really start writing, I get into a mode of circling. Before I can settle in any one position, my mind is already negotiating alternate positions. Each poem, image, or essay allows me to be in relation to a subject in a particular way.
CLAUDIA RANKINE
I have writer friends who spend a great deal of time outlining and detailing the biographies of their major characters. Through this process, I am told, they discover the motivations underlying actions taken by these players as they move across the stage of the novel. This may very well be a powerful and productive way to construct an Iago or Sister Carrie. It is, however, not my way of discovery. I meet my characters the way I encounter people in life—at a place and in a situation where I have less knowledge than I’d like and am almost always, at first, paying attention to the least important details. After that, I’m in discovery mode.
WALTER MOSLEY
Whatever the genre, I look for someone who is precise and economical in their style and hard-working in their prose. By that I mean they take the time to choose words that surprise me; they use metaphors that I’ve never heard before; and they avoid clichés like “The mortars slammed into the hillside.” I don’t want to read anything — not even a clause — that I’ve seen before. It’s just a waste of everyone’s time.
SEBASTIAN JUNGER
Writers hate formulas and checklists. It’s way more fun to masquerade as a natural shaman who channels beautiful pages as the oracle once channeled Zeus. But looking at my own books, I’ve found they all include most of the stuff below—as do most of the books I teach. Here’s my list:
1. Paint a physical reality that uses all the senses and exists in the time you’re writing about—a singular, fascinating place peopled with objects and characters we believe in. Should include the speaker’s body or some kinesthetic elements.
2. Tell a story that gives the reader some idea of your milieu and exploits your talent. We remember in stories, and for a writer, story is where you start.
3. Package information about your present self or backstory so it has emotional conflict or scene.
All the rest of these are interior:
4. Set emotional stakes—why is the writer passionate about or desperate to deal with the past—the hint of an inner enemy?
5. Think, figure, wonder, guess. Show yourself weighing what’s true, your fantasies, values, schemes, and failures.
6. Change times back and forth—early on, establish the “looking back” voice, and the “being in it” voice.
7. Collude with the reader about your relationship with the truth and memory.
8. Show not so much how you suffer in long passages, but how you survive. Use humor or an interjecting adult voice to help a reader over the dark places.
9. Don’t exaggerate. Trust that what you felt deeply is valid.
10. Watch your blind spots—in revision, if not before, search for reversals. Beware of what you avoid and what you cling to.
11. (Related to all of the above) Love your characters. Ask yourself what underlay their acts and versions of the past. Sometimes I pray to see people I’m angry at or resentful of as God sees them, which heals both page and heart.
And one big fat caveat: lead with your own talent, which may cause you to ignore all I’ve recommended.
MARY KARR, The Art of Memoir
Writerly wisdom of the ages collected by the author of Advice To Writers, The Big Book of Irony, and The Portable Curmudgeon.
Copyright © Jon Winokur 2019-2025. All rights reserved. Website by Wei-Haas Creative.
The trademark AdviceToWriters® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.