Write for the audience whose expectations you want to meet — not an imagined audience you’ve been taught is the standard.
That’s among the the top-level themes of Craft in the Real World, the 2021 book by celebrated fiction author and novelist Matthew Salesses. It challenges many norms of the American-style writer workshop that was largely first established at Iowa University, where the first Masters in Fine Arts writing program emerged. The book is rich with general criticism, tactical advice for modernizing writer workshops (many of which I’ve incorporated into my own) and even fresh looks at foundational elements of writing (ie. what exactly is plot?).
I introduced many of Matthew’s points on making a more effective writers workshop to my own workshop. I also appreciated his general contribution to our collective goals for great writing. I recommend the book to anyone in workshop or interested in writing process. Below I share my notes for me to return to in the future.
- Aristotle defined character driven-plot like we use Today
- “To become a better writer is to make conscious what may have been unconscious
- “There are many different conventions — not just convention and experimentation”
- Language always comes short of representing experience, author says, but can create a shared identity
- Laura Mulvey’s influential criticism of “scopophilia,” or the effect of “the male gaze” on film is also found in much of popular English-language writing
- The “gag rule” of workshop was from Iowa and, argues the author, made sense for white men who were used to being heard and needed to listen. In the real world it is important to share the context of your goals and assumptions. Different workshops have different people and so different needs.
- “To learn craft is to learn how to use cultural expectations to your advantage”
- For example, tags like “say” and “ask” are commonly preferred as “invisible” over “commented” and “queried” only because all other books also use those words and make them invisible. That’s cultural, not natural. If every author tomorrow used “commented” then that word would become invisible. Knowing the difference is craft, or understanding your own culture’s norms. (It’s why “shouted” etc should only be used if we want that to be visible)
- Author notes many ESL readers he’s worked with think Hemingway is an ineffective and limited writer because they’re learning vocabulary and his appears so limited. To English native speakers, his mastery is said to be control over language and use of simple phrasing
- What is official always has to do with power
- What “craft values” does your workshop have?
- In workshop: Is this criticism of craft or of the writer’s cultural position? Whom are you writing for?
- Audre Lorde: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
- To use craft is to engage with an audiences bias
- Iowa created a codified American and Western curriculum to support its own fundraising and repeatable teaching methodology. This resulted in surprisingly successful axioms (show don’t tell, kill your darlings; every protagonist either changes or doesn’t change). It is Freytag’s triangle (though that was for drama) and Aristotle’s poetics (though that was for Greek tragedy). The five act is different than the Japanese four act koshotenketsu. These are all different tools.
- Western-style storytelling: A wants B but C gets in the way
- Aristotle shaped the Western literary world’s hate for dues ex machina which was common among Greek tragedy at his time. He was railing against the pop culture of his day.
- The 2004 book Maps of Imagination reminds that paragraphs and capitalizing the first letter of a sentence are also all cultural decisions. (Even spaces between words too)
- Western storytelling descended from the individualistic epic poem told in the courts of small European kingdoms. Collective storytelling of Africa and forms from Asia evolved differently.
- John Gardner’s Art of Fiction introduced many famous prompts, including the famous “sad barn”
- Charles Baxter has been critical of “writing pathetic fallacy”
- Tiger Writing notes differences in Asian writing
- Kundera: the novel is existential not just plot
- “Characteristics of Negro Expression” introduced Black writing craft
- “To better understand one’s culture and audience is to better understand how to write.”
- In 1961, Wayne Booth introduced the idea of implied author and implied reader, depending on craft choices
- Your writing Tone is “orientation to the world,” the author says, though elsewhere it has been defined as the “distance between narrator and character”
- “If there is a distance tone inhabits, it is the distance between our world and the world of the story” tone is the chosen gap by the author
- Character driven plot is a Western tradition (which can be good!) not a rule of all fiction. Aristotle and English novelist EM Foster popularized
- As Foster wrote: “ The king died and the queen died of grief’ is a plot while ‘the king died and then the queen died is merely a story.”
- Foster: “incident springs out of character” relates to his belief, not a perfect truth (56)
- Another Iowa axiom: “Start when all but the action is finished” (These can be helpful but the author argues they just can’t be assumed as universal perfect truths)
- Story arc and character arc fit together: if the world and the character changed over time or not. Together they form meaning and the author’s message.
- American novelist Janet Burroway introduced four methods of direct characterization: speech, action, appearance and thought (author recommends writing out every single decision, including negative “not decides” in a story for a character to see what kind is your preference)
- For setting, ask yourself: what does the character notice? What does the narrator notice? And why?
- Pacing: why are chapters evenly sized of 10-15 pages? Why are workshop submissions between 3k-5k words? Because of expectations, and reader habits but that doesn’t mean that’s right
- A culture is a “system of stories”
- Jane Allison: obsessing over the ending of a story is “masculo-sexual”: ““Something that swells and tautens until climax, then collapses? Bit masculo-sexual, no?”
- Hemingway and later Raymond Carver embodied the American writing way that also shaped workshop: “invisible” writing that shows not tells, with few adjectives.
- Author argues there is no one right way to write. These are all just cultural norms
- “Workshop is most helpful to whomever speaks the most.”
- What if a revision workshop only asked questions like “why did you do that, what id you did this”
- Ask more questions in workshop. “What would the story be like if…?” “I noticed you did this..”
- Recommended Craft questions.
- Action: what happens?
- Agency: who causes the actin?
- Arc: how does the protagonist change or not?
- Audience: whom is this written fir?
- Characterization: does the audience have a clear vision of the characters? What is left out?
- Conflict: what is the obstacle?
- Context: is there too much information we don’t need?
- Inside/outside story?
- Language/pacing: do style abs syntax match craft goals?
- Is this the most important moment in this characters life?
- Setting: could this only happen here?
- Stakes: what can be lost or gained?
- Structure: do the scenes happen in the best order?
- Vulnerability: what does this story risk?
- Beginning: does it give us stakes and the rules?
- Ending:does it fulfill expectations set?
- “Novel workshops are most effective when they treat the manuscript as only a glimpse into the author’s next 5 to 10 years of process – again, as context and not as content. In order to do this, the workshop needs to know what the authors process looks like.”
- “Does the length match the reach?”
- Do time limits not length limits
- A workshop’s goal is for the author to be inspired to write more.
