Hope They Enjoy It

It’s really more of a worry. I’m thinking, “Oh God, I hope somebody likes this.” As opposed to deliberately setting out to do it, I hope it happens. I write it with wishful thinking. But most of the time, though, I’m really just trying to write a good story. And I’m trying to write it as if I’m reading it. So, if something in my novel ends up being a surprise to somebody, it was a surprise to me when I wrote it. To me, it comes down to something that simple—I hope that they just enjoy it.

MARLON JAMES

The Poverty of Your Expression

When you sit down to write…you think, ah, yes, the entire world and all its strange nuances, and subtleties, and inexpressibilities are about to surge through my arm into the pencil I’m holding. And then you look down at what you’ve written and it’s something like, And so he walked to the grocery store…. That feeling of the richness of the world and the poverty of your means of expression is one of the inescapable features of writing fiction. One finds that one’s thought is much more conventionalized than one would have guessed.

DEBORAH EISENBERG

A Simple Structure Will Do

A simple and straightforward structure will do. Structure is one of those craft decisions that unfortunately one cannot avoid when writing a novel. Some novels may be remembered for their ingenious structures, but a novel does not have to have an ingenious structure to be great. A simple structure will do just fine. For instance, War and Peace has the most straightforward structure: the novel alternates between war (characters in the military settings) and peace (characters in the civilian settings). A complex book doesn’t have to have a complicated structure.

YIYUN LI

Chekhov's Prose

You can pick up a volume of Chekhov’s stories and open it anywhere, and, no matter how well or poorly the Russian has been translated, you will probably have a hard time finding a sentence you can’t understand. This is because, as much as any other writer and more than most, Chekhov put such a premium on writing comprehensibly, without flowery language or unnecessary adornment.

FRANCINE PROSE

Go for a Walk

I can count on one hand, or possibly one elbow, the number of good writing ideas I’ve had while straining at the keyboard. When you find yourself stumped, when a character seems to want to do this but the story seems to demand that she do that, it’s time to go for a walk. The answer will pop up into your mind so unexpectedly that you will very likely not be carrying a pen.

BEN DOLNICK

Do Whatever You Need to Do

I had a wonderful teacher, Irwin Blacker, and he was feared by everyone at the school because he took a very interesting position. He gave you the screenplay form, which I hated so much, and if you made one mistake on the form, you flunked the class. His attitude was that the least you can learn is the form. “I can’t grade you on the content. I can’t tell you whether this is a better story for you to write than that, you know? And I can’t teach you how to write the content, but I can certainly demand that you do it in the proper form.” He never talked about character arcs or anything like that; he simply talked about telling a good yarn, telling a good story. He said, “Do whatever you need to do. Be as radical and as outrageous as you can be. Take any kind of approach you want to take. Feel free to flash back, feel free to flash forward, feel free to flash back in the middle of a flashback. Feel free to use narration, all the tools are there for you to use.”

JOHN MILIUS

Use Seasoning Sparingly

Use all your seasoning sparingly. Do not worry about making your characters shout, intone, exclaim, remark, shriek, reason, holler, or any such thing, unless they are doing it for a reason. All remarks can be said. Every time you use a fancy word your reader is going to turn his head to look at it going by and sometimes he may not turn his head back again.

SHIRLEY JACKSON 

Novel Readers Are Super Nosy

Plot means that every notable event is conditioned on previous events. Start with the novel’s climax (often the first thing you know about it, its most striking moment) and work backward, asking why-why-why. Then write forward. With proper buildup, a scene that means little in isolation can become as significant to readers as it is to you. Your plot will of course reveal character through conflict, but novel readers are super nosy, so be sure to work out some characters’ personalities in detail.

NELL ZINK

Take Pride in Yourself

You need that pride in yourself, as well as a sense, when you are sitting on Page 297 of a book, that the book is going to be read, that somebody is going to care. You can’t ever be sure about that, but you need the sense that it’s important, that it’s not typing; it’s writing.

ROGER KAHN

Putting the Thought in Writing

Going into the writing I like to cultivate a particular juncture between knowing and not knowing — having all the facts but remaining uncertain how they fit together. It’s a delicate balance, because if you know too little what you write will be halting and opaque, and if you know too much it will be dead on the page, a mere transcription after the fact. In any case, whatever ideas and speculations may occupy the writer’s head, writing does not begin with an idea; it begins with a sentence. What occurs in your mind is a great swirling mass of half-formed notions, which are interwoven with worries, memories, songs, and emotions; the signal-to-noise ratio is overwhelming. Putting the thought in writing crystalizes it and gives it life.

LUC SANTE