The Stuff of Fiction : Advice on Craft

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: For the beginner or the serious amateur or anyone serious about writing fiction, this is the book to read.

Rating:
Summary: Illuminating for any writer or reader of realistic fiction
Review: If you want to understand more about how a good piece of realistic fiction is put together, read this book. It provides both rules and the wisdom to make it clear that if a writer is on the right track, he or she can go ahead and break those rules.

*The Stuff of Fiction* explains to ordinary readers what has gone wrong when a book suddenly turns unsatisfying (for example, when it doesn't know when to end), the book gives new writers a set of guidelines to keep in the back of their heads while they are slaving away, a kind of frame to check the day's work against, and the book offers experienced writers a welcome articulation of the things they have been trying to do since they began this strange line of work.

The book explains how to start a story (maybe at the beginning, maybe not), how to write dialogue that doesn't thud or crawl on the page, how to create characters with mixed blessings and curses (like a human being in other words), how to give drama its necessary subtlety, how to create sentiment not sentimentality (a discourse on how to write with taste, which is kind of like explaining how to play jazz, but amazingly it really works), and how to end a story. Bauer uses examples effectively--taking apart work from Denis Johnson, Toni Morrison, Alice Munro, and yes Wm. Shakespeare--and writes directly but also elegantly.

Douglas Bauer is the author of three novels, each of which I loved (he never does the same thing twice, but since the prose always contains the same steely twists, you know it is the same guy), and teaches at the Bennington MFA Program.

Writing programs, take note--instructors can cut to the chase by judicious use of this handy and straightforward volume. I won't say it's the Strunk and White of contemporary realistic fiction writing--only time can tell that--but it's as close as I can imagine. Full disclosure requires me to say that I know Douglas Bauer personally, but honestly, I would say all of this if I didn't know him. It is a terrific and useful volume.

Rating:
Summary: for all writers
Review: What a beautiful book! I can't remember when I've read such an eloquent work about the craft of writing, making me wonder why any of us pay any attention to advice about writing which arrives in less artful form ("the long half-life of sorrow" is one of the many well-turned phrases which clings to memory). This essay collection (nonfiction writers have as much to gain as fiction writers from reading the book) is elegant, compelling, succinct, and breathtakingly clear without being condescending. The author (who also writes gorgeous fiction) covers all of the most important aspects of craft--openings, dialogue, character, high events (dramatic moments), sentiment vs. sentimentality, and closings, and includes advice from the best of the other writing "gurus" and wonderful passages of first-rate literature to illustrate points made. The Stuff of Fiction is truly a book for writers at all levels. I felt an immediate need to underline when I began reading; the book made me seriously re-think a novel on which I'm currently working. What more could a writer ask.