Category Archives: On Craft

by bonalibro

Hit Lit

I just finished reading James Hall's excellent little book on the craft of the novel, Hit Lit. He describes the many elements that bestselling novels share, with the coda that they are not enough, by themselves, to make a book a bestseller. What is needed, in addition, is the passion of the writer for his subject matter and his characters. I particularly enjoyed his enlightening opening chapter, in which he writes about the historical function of the novel as one of the main forms of popular entertainment. Read more [...]
by bonalibro

The Novelist Interviews the Blogger on Lars Iyer

You've written a lot about Lars Iyer. What attracted you to his work, and why did you respond to his manifesto? It's so hard to find worthwhile fiction anymore. There's Richard Powers and then what? Literary Fiction? Franzen? DeLillo? To me, they're soporific. Steve Erickson writes interesting novelties that at least don't put me to sleep.  Tom Robbins wrote some fabulous stuff but, because of his popularity, he doesn't get critical recognition.  I came across a review of Dogma on an aggregator's Read more [...]
by bonalibro

Death of Literature – Nude in Your Hot Tub, Facing the Abyss

Nude in your hot tub, facing the abyss (A literary manifesto after the end of Literature and Manifestos) | The White Review. Having written my reader's response to Lars Iyer's Dogma, below, I decided to peruse his manifesto on the death of Literature. I intend to refrain from comment on it until I have perused others on the subject over the years, but I just want to say, by way of an immediate reaction to it. that I think he is both right and wrong on the subject. Since I was in college, some forty Read more [...]
by bonalibro

What Happened to Standards of Excellence?

I'm all for raising standards of excellence, in ethics, politics, morals, education. Especially standards of excellence in writing, which is what I attempt to do. I write fiction and I am always appalled by how little vocabulary people know today, even people who call themselves writers, or are published as writers. The multi-syllabic word is almost beyond most people's understanding. Shakespeare fused the high Norman French to the vulgar Anglo-Saxon, giving us the basis of modern English, yet it Read more [...]
by bonalibro

Comments Please.

Here is a paragraph I recently wrote into my novel. What say you all? Is it a darling that needs to be killed, or kept? In the darkest part of his heart he knew it would tell her nothing necessary and was, in short, the typical screed of a narcissistic VIP. It rationalized his own decisions prior to the crisis and concealed connivance in confidence schemes conceived by his grandfather years before. He portrayed himself as a neophyte, seduced by situation ethics and enthralled with the overall cultural Read more [...]
by bonalibro

What is Meant by the Writer’s Voice?

Voice in literary fiction is one of those intangible qualities that separate the artist from the craftsman. It is something no one can teach us, either to develop in our own writing or to recognize in the writing of others, because it is such an individual thing. It is the manifestation of a person on the page, and exists only in the writing of those for whom the pen or the keyboard transmits the soul. Voice is an audible quality, as if the writer himself were present in the room engaging our attention Read more [...]
by bonalibro

On Point of View

Believing that limited choices foster creativity, I decided to tell my entire tale from single character's point of view. Using the illeistic third, rather than first person narrative, he occasionally reveals himself in a journal he keeps in first person. This detaches the character from himself a little, which does create some distance from the reader, but permits him to be more selective in his observations, and immediacy is achieved through the primacy of dialogue. A first person narrative requires Read more [...]
by bonalibro

More on “Mating.”

Norman Rush's 'Mating' sends my BS detector soaring. A sure sign of amateurism in fiction is the info dump, in which the author loads the reader up with back story, world building material, or other facts and figures he feels one needs to understand the central conflict. Rather than being parceled out gradually on a need to know basis, it is dumped on the reader all at once, usually in the first or second chapter. As I read Norman Rush's "Mating" I cannot help but feel I am being subjected Read more [...]
by bonalibro

Thoughts on Norman Rush’s “Mating”

I've been reading Norman Rush's Mating, a national book award winner, and for a book that purports to be so learned, this passage in particular struck me as strange. "Nelson would propose to Peter that they each have the power to name the other's firstborns, always assumed to be male, interestingly. During these accounts I felt fortunate having no siblings. I was seeing something foreign. The name would have to be documentable, either by appearing in the sorts of lists of names that are appended Read more [...]
by bonalibro

The Great Canards of Creative Writing

Write What You Know Having read reams of online slush, I have labored through numerous manuscripts that give the lie to the principle of Write What You Know. IMHO, it leads to a lot of writing about mundane daily routines, what might be called the workplace novel, or perhaps, the house spouse novel, that could not be more atrocious as literary fiction. I cannot tell you how many novels I have glanced at that begin with waking up in the morning and getting breakfast together, or arriving at work Read more [...]