I just finished a delightful book on fiction writing by Lisa Cron entitled Wired For Story. It was written in 2012. I purchased it in 2016, and didn't start reading it until just recently in August of 2021. This is not unusual for me. I often buy books because I am pretty sure that I will want to read them at some point. Later on I read them. I actually do this more often than one might imagine.
Another oddity that I have is that I sometimes will get a book and the audio version so I can listen to the book while following the text in print. I do this because my listening comprehension far exceeds my reading comprehension. But, you cannot easily highlight parts of an audio book for later reference. I do not do this very often. But for some books, and for reasons I do not understand, this really works well.
I found Cron's book enormously useful for giving me greater insight into writing and how to write fiction more effectively. So, I thought would write a blog post about it and explain why. Although this seems like a digression from my posts on Possible Worlds, it is actually very much on topic and I will elaborate on this post in the book. It also ties in with my earlier post on why people write stories.
But, as it turns out, this post will become a digression from a digression. Your have to expect this with blogs where you cannot rewrite and restructure the material before anyone sees it as you can with books. Cron's book made me think about the evolution of books on how to write, which is the first digression. But thinking is always good. So, I am not complaining. And a deeper dive into Cron's book will be the second digression. I will address this in my next post so I can have enough room to do some justice to both digressions.
Over the several decades that I have been interested in writing, I have been reading a lot of books about writing and have been drawing some conclusions that may or may not be shared by others who are familiar with the literature on writing. This may be due to the fact that my interest in writing was spurred by the Possible Worlds idea and how it may be useful in the ethics of technology. This idea goes back to the mid 1990's. I am fairly sure that other prospective writers are interested in, and motivated by, other things.
Personally, I would divide the books on writing into three categories reflecting their evolution over time: 1) The Heuristic Phase: prior to 2005 books on writing tended to be self report books by writers attempting to explain how they do what they do; 2) The Refined Technique Phase: after 2005 when a book by Blake Snyder entitled Save the Cat changed the way we view the writing process; and 3) The Grounded Technique Phase: after 2012 when a book by Lisa Cron entitled Wired for Story (the topic of the next post) provided greater insight into reader psychology which, in turn, provided a foundation and some corrections for traditional views of writing.
About a year ago, I posted a piece on the Expressive/Inspirational School of writing versus the Technical/Teleological School of writing. Books written before 2005 were, generally, in one of these two camps. Some of the books written in this period blurred this distinction. But most of the books written prior to 2005 were self report books in which writers tried to use their experiences to help others who were aspiring to be writers. I read quite a few of these books over the years, and while I really liked several of them, I did not find them very helpful. Why was this?
There is an overused saying "Those who can, do. Those who can't teach." Having been an academic for nearly 30 years, I can certainly attest to that. However, from the same experience, I can also attest to the claim "Those who can do. But, they probably can' teach it." Doing something, whatever it may be, and teaching others how to do it are very different bodies of knowledge. So, books on writing written by writers are often interesting but lacking in pedagogical value. Having said that, here are some books on writing that represent the evolution
The Heuristic Phase
I'm not sure who wrote the first book on writing fiction. But Clayton Hamilton A Manual of the Art of Fiction, first published in 1919 as a textbook, embodies the essence of the first phase of writing books with heuristic advice on writing fiction. It addresses the basic components: plot, characters, setting, point of view and so on. One has to start somewhere and the overly technical books of the second and third phase might be too technical for a beginning writer.
Another early book on the craft is E.M. Forster Aspects of the Novel. You often see a reference to it in later books where Forster distinguishes between a story and a plot. According to Forster, "The King died and then the queen died" is a story. "The King died and then the Queen died because of grief" is a plot. The idea here is that a plot is a narrative argument expressing causality. To me, the most interesting thing about this is that it reveals how naive our understand of stories (or plots) was 50 or 60 years ago compared to where we are today.
A couple of opposing views on the Expressive vs. Technical approaches to writing can be found in Natalie Goldberg Writing Down the Bones and John Gardner Art of Fiction. I referred to these books in an earlier post. The second and third phases I refer to above suggest that the Technical School has won. I am a great fan of the Technical School but I would strongly warn readers against thinking that the competition is over. Here is an analogy. Science has made enormous strikes in the last couple of centuries. However, there are significant problems that science cannot address. In the same way, the Technical School of writing has made some amazing advances in the last couple of decades. But, eventually we will see its limitations, as we always do.
The Refined Technique Phase
During the Heuristic Phase writers and teachers of writing began to make writing heuristics more specific. As these suggestions evolved from suggestions to rules, a widely accepted body of such rules began to form and find its way into workshops, seminars, books and classes on writing. In 2005 Blake Snyder refined these evolving heuristics for screenwriters in a book entitled Save the Cat. Snyder observed that the people who buy screen plays are looking for "the same thing ... only different." The idea here is that movie viewers do not want to spend a lot of viewing time trying to figure out what is going on. They want to recognize what 'kind' of movie they are watching so they can just go for the ride. Snyder identified 10 genres (kinds) of movies and 15 beats (plot points). This provides a structure for a screenplay so the writer can focus on writing instead of structuring and those who buy scripts as well as viewers can figure out what the story is about more easily. Over the next decade Snyder's ideas began working their way into the workshops, seminars, books and classes on writing that had previously been promoting the less specific heuristics from the early phase. I would point out, as someone who has developed and taught dozens of classes, having a well structured and widely used textbook makes the instructor's job a LOT easier and makes learning the body of knowledge much easier for students. There are also drawbacks of having a standard text, but that would result in a third digression. So, I will leave off there.
The Grounded Technique Phase
The Refined Technique phase was certainly an advance in the teaching and the practice of writing. It went beyond some vague suggestions about what you were trying to do, to some pretty specific advice. Prior to this point, writing was left to the inspired Illuminati. You had to be, to some extent, a born writer. With the highly structured and detailed approach spelled out by Snyder, the profession of writing screenplays was opened up to a much larger group. So this was a big step. However, although this was a big advance, there were two areas that were not really covered. The first and most significant was the teleological aspect. While Snyder's approach told writers what to do in a highly structured and detailed manner, it did not tell you why (other than saying this is what viewers and people who purchase screenplays like). And, second, it did not did not provide any limitations on the approach. Would Don Quixote have been a better novel if it followed Save the Cat. How about War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov? OK, OK, maybe James Joyce's Ulysses or William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury could have used more structuring.
In 2012 Lisa Cron's book Wired for Story came out and connected the process of writing with the psychology of readers by grounding it in some recent advances in neuroscience. This was another huge step. But, I have already gone on too long. So, I will pick up that thread in the next post.
