The Fiction Class

'You still feel something every time you pick up a book: you still connect to characters in ways you've never connected to the people you actually know, and you know you're more than you appear to be. You have to give it one more shot: you have to see if you can be a writer'

- Susan Breen, The Fiction Class -

I can't resist the pull toward books about writers' clubs. First The Jane Austen Book Club (Karen Joy Fowler) and now The Fiction Class.

Perhaps one day I'll actually join one. Perhaps one day I'll actually finish something I've started writing myself.

I was watching 'Child Genius' last night, and was so impressed that adolescent-genius, Michael Dowling, had already published three novels that I promptly ordered the entire trilogy from Amazon - I will talk in another post about whether it was a insightful impulse buy or a complete waste of money

Anyway, back to The Fiction Class. One of the things I liked at the book were the exercises the protagonists sets her writing class at the end of each session:

1. Make a list of your 5 'obsessions'


2. Think of a person from history who intrigues you. Write a 2 to 3 page description of that person eating a meal. What would s/he eat? How would s/he eat? What would s/he be thinking about as s/he ate? Would someone be sharing the meal with him or her? What would they talk about? Remember to bring your character to life


3. This is an exercise in learning how to write a climactic scene. A boat sinks during a storm, and only ten of its passengers make it onto the lifeboat. One by one the survivors are knocked off until, after a month at sea, only two survivors are left. There is not enough food for both of them, and one of them is going to have to get rid of the other. Once of them is a teenage girl who is very strong for her age, but she is blind. The other is a musician from a successful boys' band. He is twenty-six years old and smaller than the girl. Who will survive? Write the final scene.


4. Think about a family gathering. Write about that gathering in the first person from the point of view of a child.


5. Write about a place that was important to you growing up. Don't put people in it. Just describe it as though you were painting a picture with words


6. Two people are having a conversation. It can be any two people you want, but this is the first line of dialogue: 'Kiss me.'


7. Imagine a moment of crisis: someone shooting a bullet into you, someone about to be hung, someone falling in love at first sight across a crowded room. Writing a few paragraphs describing the crisis, trying to expand time as you write so that the moment becomes as tense as possible.


8. Choose a novel or short story that you like and try to discover its theme. How does the author get the theme across? Title? Plot? Names of characters?


9. This is an exercise in finding creative solutions to write yourself out of a corner. There is a man sitting in a tree, and he is wearing a tutu. What happened?


10. Write a short story (just a few paragraphs) with this proviso: you can only use words of one syllable

It wasn't that I particularly liked these as examples (although I've already found myself doing a number 8 with several of my favourite books). And I suspect that many were simply included to lead in to particular plot points within the novel. For example, number 3 just seems like a lead in to a moving piece of dialogue between Arabella and her dying mother:

Her mother opens her eyes. They are wet. 'They're both going to die,' she says. 'Neither one of them stands a chance.'

Arabella feels her heart seize, feels her heart break.

'It is a foolish question,' her mother says.

I love the idea of combining genres: writing advice + novel (shades of Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate - recipes + novel). Fairclough liked it so much he created a name for it - 'interdiscursivity' (1992, Discourse and Social Change).

Anyway, moving away from English degree speak, what I also liked about the book was its focus on the idea of 'theme':

'your theme is how you interpret the world'

Perhaps that's why my own attempts at writing haven't quite made it yet. And why I prefer reading the words of others. I simply don't know what my theme is yet. Will I ever?
Anyway, that's enough for now...

Books I have read since the last post:

Ann Patchett, Run
Colin Dexter, The Wench is Dead & The Secret of Annexe 3
Peter Robinson, Playing with Fire
Susan Breen, The Fiction Class

Books I intend to read soon (and probably should have already read):

Dickens, Bleak House (several characters in books have now described this as their favourite book, which has to be some sort of recommendation!)