Walter Mosley - Elements of Fiction

Copyright 2019 by Thing Itself, Inc.

Cover design by Julianna Lee

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffys Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota from The Branch Will Not Break 1963 by James Wright.

Published by Wesleyan University Press and reprinted with permission.

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FIRST EDITION

Published simultaneously in Canada

First Grove Atlantic eBook edition: September 2019

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication data available for this title.

ISBN 978-0-8021-4763-9

eISBN 978-0-8021-4764-6

Grove Press

an imprint of Grove Atlantic

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Distributed by Publishers Group West

This book is dedicated to the memory of
John Singleton.

One of the most original and creative individuals
I have ever known.

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This monograph is concerned with the hope of writing a novel that transcends story in such a way as to allow the writer to plumb the depths of meaning while, at the same time, telling a good yarn. It is not a manual offering prescribed steps that will inevitably lead to the writing of the perfect story. Rather, the intent of this essay is to explore the internal makeup of the elements of fiction writing. These elements are, among other things: character and character development, plot and story, Voice and narrative, context and description, content and the blank page and, of course, intentional structure versus vast troves of unconscious material.

Considering the goal of this essay and the nonlinear relationships of the elements of fiction, I have decided to approach the subject in a contemplative rather than a systematized form. That is to say, I do not believe there is a road map to Successville in fiction writing. There is no consistent rule to measure the level of achievement. Even if the author is happy with her work that doesnt mean she has done her best. Beginning, middle, and end are meaningless if you arent, at least in some small way, breaking new ground.

For the serious writer these challenges may seem capricious, erratic, and intimidatinglike some unfamiliar opponent in a combat ring of their choosing. The goal of the writer in this contest is the survival of the story in its ideal form. The goal of the story is the impossible brass ring of freedom. Neither rival can achieve absolute victory but they can failin some cases spectacularly.

Luckily for us and our work, failure is an essential raw material from which our stories arise. Failure encompasses the negative spaces of our tales; it guides us, teaches us, it loves our intentions better than any ambition. Failure makes our stories stronger while allowing humility to flow in our hearts.

Fiction is one of the few constructive human activities in which we have the potential to make something from almost nothing. Something from nothing. That kind of alchemy is a recipe for failure and also the hope for the miraculous.

When I say nothing I mean there is little to no physical material used in the creation of our tales. The author might just be an elder making up a story about a wolf and a little girl for the grandchildren on a rainy day when the larder is low. All the storyteller needs are words, imagination, and lovenot necessarily in that order. These materials have a scant physical footprint. The story told might change every day, and the children might, probably will, remember a very different fable.

Something from nothing.

The plentifully available natural resources for fiction are found in language and the capacity for in-articulation, the senses and their continual reevaluation of the world we live in and imagine, and experience, which we glean from both conscious and unconscious sources, through reliable and unreliable recollections.

Theres one last thing to say before we get into the main body of this disquisition, and that iscondensation. Even though I havent used this word in the main body of the text, it is a major unspoken element of fiction writing. Thats how you write a novel: you take a small section of the larger world (for example, retired cop culture in Saint Louis) and then crush the subject down to only those elements that are salient to the story being told. Once youve achieved this end you add as little of the commonplace as possible to make a story that seems large and real and pedestrian and, hopefully, revealing. The middle-aged ex-cops of Saint Louis become the readers entire worldas large as, larger than, their minds can comprehend at any given moment. Thats what our experience of the world is. Good novels are the same.