Stephen Koch - Advice to the Writer: The Writers Guide to Plot, Revision, and Autobiography: A Digital Pamphlet: Excerpted from The Modern Librarys Writers Workshop

A Modern Library eBook Original

Copyright 2003, 2013 by Stephen Koch

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Modern Library, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

M ODERN L IBRARY and the T ORCHBEARER colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

The main text of this work was originally published in different form as Chapters 3, 6, and 7 in The Modern Library Writers Workshop by Stephen Koch in the United States by Modern Library, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, in 2003.

eBook ISBN 978-0-8129-9372-1

www.modernlibrary.com

v3.1

You have just downloaded three chapters from The Modern Library Writers Workshop; a book with eight chapters written to help you sidestep the classic problems that have frustrated writers since writing began. The governing idea of the Writers Workshop is to mix the wisdom, wisecracks, and opinions of writers from Aristotle to Stephen King with some of the things I learned, and some that I taught, during the almost twenty years I led writers workshops at Columbia University and Princeton. Between Aristotle, Virginia Woolf, and me, youre pretty sure to pick up something useful, especially because this is not a textbook and still less a rulebook. Its a book of advice, and the only good advice is advice that, when you take it, works.

Are these three chapters the most important in the larger book? Not necessarily. The most important chapteror page, or paragraph, or sentenceis the one thats important to you. Because you will have to figure out whats important on your own, take my advice: Read the whole chapter, and use only what sparks your thinking or solves your problem. Big literary problems can sometimes be solved by one short comment, a single insight, or a mere turn of phrase. I cant possibly guess which spark will light your firebut trust me, neither can you. You will recognize it only when the fire starts to burn. Sparks will fly all over these pages. They have lit the fires of many writers before you. Some became bonfires. Lets hope some light up something for you.

Well begin with the most treacherous problem: the maddening business of finding your story, building its plot, and being sure it is the right plot. Some of the happy few find their stories easily, the rest of us dont. After that, in Working and Reworking well lay out some techniques for revision: the most teachable of all literary skillsand yet the one least often taught. Finally, in The Story of the Self, youll find advice about autobiography that is guaranteed to surprise you.

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If these chapters do help, I hope youll read the whole book some day. One of the other five chapters meditates on how to create characters out ofwell, out of what? Thin air? Another chapter explores the great spectrum of styles from high to low, musing on where you might find a style to call your own. One talks about beginnings; another talks about finishing. And to top it off, The Modern Library Writers Workshop suggests ways to handle your life and time if you insist upon pursuing the difficult, poorly paid, and (for the right person) irresistibly intoxicating work of spinning words.

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Who needs this advice? Every writer needs some kind of advice from somebody. You may rightly add that writers also need encouragement, and I would immediately agree. Yet, good advice is in itself often a kind of encouragement. The message hereshowto do it usually whispers, You cando it.

Lets take a look at our three subjects in reverse order: First, autobiography, then revision, and finally narrative.

To beginners, autobiography often looks easy and inevitable. That, my friends, is an illusion. Pure mirage. In fact, autobiography is riddled with countless traps and snares. You should know how to spot them.

Well also talk about revisionthe skill behind almost all good writing. There should be no mystery about revision. It is a basic literary skill, not unlike learning to drive. Every writer should learn how to master the techniques, or develop some of his or her own. Luckily, revision is very learnable, classroom-style, even though it is almost never taught in classrooms or anywhere else. Most novice writers are given no help with it. They are baffled by it, or want to ignore it, or get mired in it. Some foolishly imagine that fixing a first draft will be ridiculously easy. The usual result: shabby writing. Some believe it has to be impossibly hard. Usual result: boring, overwrought writing. Yet, the indispensable techniques are simple and straightforward, and they cannot be ignored.

Well also look at what many writers experience as the all-around killer: narrativethe maddening mystery of where the story comes from. I have taught hundreds of students, and I knew some of the best writers now publishing at the beginning of their careers. I am in a position to know. Narrative anxiety is literary kryptonite. Facing its glare, even super-talents grow feeble and slump to the floor. No literary problembar nonehas made more tears flow, mutilated more manuscripts, or crushed more rising talent than this one. Many of you may have been told, probably in some classroom or other, that storytelling is somehow not all that important for true literature. Somebody behind a podium has told you that mere narrative is underbred and lacks tone; it is commercial; it is intended to excite the common (therefore ignorant) reader. And is a little vulgar. Misled by this classroom absurdity, many writers of fiction come away imagining that they can, or even should, neglect or ignore the story.

With all due respect, they are wrong.

Numberless gifted young writers have sat in my office, shaking with panic because they just cant do plots. And when they started working on their project, everything looked so promising. They are talented people. They had hit on an exciting general subject and their opening pages shonebefore they petered out. But they have no storyno real storyall that promise is running scared. The talent is stymied. The shining prose lies dead on the page, refusing to move.

The motor that makes most good prose move is narrative. Because too many writers believe that storytelling is beneath their dignity, and/or have embraced the self-fulfilling prophecy I cant do plots, they try to evade this truth.

Actually, their dilemma is not as dire as they may think. As I hope you will learn here, many writers who cant do plots are already in possession of a wonderful story. They just cant recognize it. They possess it without knowing what they have got.

The basic principle is: You cant make up a story. Rather than be invented, a story has to be discovered, almost as if it pre-exists you. The story you already know is quite possibly already buried in your being, hidden in the shadows of your wonderful idea, patiently waiting for you to notice it. While the writer groans, I cant do plots, a brilliant story may be sitting two feet away, ignored and despised, trying to get your attention and struggling to make you listenso it can tell itself. Does this sound mystical? It isnt. I am not talking about magic or some sort of hocus-pocus. The discovery of your story is a basic creative process.