In a satisfying story or novel, all of the pieces seem to fit together so effortlessly, so seamlessly, that it's easy to find yourself wondering, "How on earth did the author do this?" The answer is simple: He sat alone at his desk, considered an array of options, and made smart, careful choices.
In Alone With All That Could Happen, award-winning author and respected creative writing professor David Jauss addresses overlooked or commonly misunderstood aspects of fiction writing, offering practical information and advice that will help you make smart creative and technical decisions about such topics as:
writing prose whose syntax and rhythm create a "soundtrack" for the story it tells
choosing the right point of view to create the appropriate degree of "distance" between your characters and the reader
writing valid and convincing epiphanies
harnessing the power of contradiction in the creative process
In one thought-provoking essay after another, Jauss sorts through unique fiction-writing conundrums, including how to create those exquisite intersections between truth and fabrication that make all great works of fiction so much more resonant and powerful than fiction that follows the generic "write what you know" approach that's so often preached.
David Jauss is an award-winning fiction writer, poet, and essayist. He has been teaching creative writing from more than thirty years and speaks regularly at writing conferences like the annual AWP. He is currently a tenured professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He also teaches in the low-residency MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College. In addition, he's instructed at the University of Iowa; Southwest State University in Marshall, Minnesota; and Syracuse University.
I was born in Minnesota in 1951 and educated at Southwest Minnesota State College, Syracuse University, and the University of Iowa. I am the author of two collections of short stories, Black Maps and Crimes of Passion; two books of poems, You Are Not Here and Improvising Rivers; and a collection of essays on the craft of fiction, Alone With All That Could Happen. I have also edited three anthologies, Words Overflown by Stars, an anthology of essays on the craft of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction from past and present faculty of Vermont College of Fine Arts, The Best of Crazyhorse: Thirty Years of Poetry and Fiction, and, with Philip Dacey, Strong Measures: Contemporary American Poetry in Traditional Forms.
My fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in numerous magazines, including Arts & Letters, The California Quarterly, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, The Nation, New England Review, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, and The Writer's Chronicle. My work has also been translated into Indonesian, Farsi, and Braille and read over Voice of America radio.
My fiction has appeared in a dozen anthologies, including Best American Short Stories; Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards; The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses; and The Pushcart Book of Stories: Best Stories from the First 25 Years of the Pushcart Prize.
My poetry has appeared in 30 anthologies, including Strongly Spent: 50 Years of Shenandoah Poetry and The Poetry Anthology, 1912-2002: Ninety Years of America's Most Distinguished Verse Magazine.
From 1981-1991 I served as fiction editor of Crazyhorse, and I am currently on the Editorial Board of Hunger Mountain: The Vermont College of Fine Arts Journal of Arts & Letters.
In addition to the O. Henry Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, and the Best American Short Stories selection mentioned above, my awards and honors include the AWP Award for Short Fiction, the Fleur-de-Lis Poetry Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a James A. Michener Fellowship, a fellowship from the Minnesota State Arts Board, and three fellowships from the Arkansas Arts Council.
I teach creative writing at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and in the MFA in Writing Program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, where I also serve as Faculty Chair and have twice received the Louise Crowley & Roger Weingarten Award for Teaching Excellence. I live in Little Rock with my wife Judy and our dogs Toby, Phoebe, and Pip. We are proud parents of two grown children, Alison and Steve, both of whom live nearby, Alison with her own trio of pooches and Steve with his wife Kewen and our darling grandson Galen.
For more information, please go to www.davidjauss.com.
This review is from: Alone With All That Could Happen: Rethinking Conventional Wisdom about the Craft of Fiction (Hardcover)
The firs two essays alone in this collection are worth the price of the book. David Jauss looks at such craft issues as point of view, epiphanies, the organization of a short story collection, writing what you know, and other things. But what makes this book stand out from other writing books is David Jauss doesn't just repeat the same old tired and already well-known wisdom on such topics.
Instead, Jauss gives us a whole new way of looking at it. The chapter on Point Of View is the best one. This essay looks at how point of view is more a matter of technique than a matter of denoting which person is telling the story, and Jauss goes on to talk about how multiple point of view shifts are not only okay, but in many cases, they are preferred.
You won't get the same insight elsewhere. Whereas most writing books just repeat the same advice, perhaps with a thematic gimmick thrown in to make it look different, ALONE WITH ALL THAT COULD HAPPEN is a new way of looking at old writing techniques. The essays are heavy with examples from other works and quotes from other sources, making this in a way a more academic writing book than most, but the insights delivered simply should not be passed up.
If you're a writer, get this book.
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This review is from: Alone With All That Could Happen: Rethinking Conventional Wisdom about the Craft of Fiction (Hardcover)
Others who have reviewed these essays emphasize the (stellar) technical essays in this collection, but I'd like to add that the last essay "Lever of Transcendence" is the real diamond in the collection. This essay explores and explains why some art lives and some does not. It is thus a treatise on life as well as writing. I'd predict and hope that this piece would be read and re-read by every serious reader as well as every serious writer -- and maybe the not-so-serious ones as well.
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This review is from: Alone With All That Could Happen: Rethinking Conventional Wisdom about the Craft of Fiction (Hardcover)
As I commented on the other reviewer's post, I'd picked this book up and put it back several times before I saw HIS review and ended up buying it. I know I'm not alone in buying and spending too much time reading writing books instead of writing, but this purchase is justified and CRUCIAL to growth as a writer.
I read the book from cover to cover in less than a week and the information is so vital, groundbreaking, and provocative, that is is NECESSARY to read it more than once. Each essay. You will be excited about going back to page one just to make sure that everything sinks in!
I realize now that I put the book back a few times before buying it because it is NOT the kind of book that you can take a quick glimpse at and decide whether or not you need it. It must be read closely and carefully. Please take our word it, you will be a better writer because of it. My favorite chapters were on the point of view, epiphanies about epiphanies and putting together a story collection. This is a book for serious writers, and makes me think of my FAVORITE critic in the world Wyatt Mason (who he even references about Edward P. Jones - read Mason's essay on Jones online from Harper's at ONCE). Mason and Jauss make you proud to be writers, and make you see fiction with an even more exhilarated critical eye so you can love it as a reader and admire and absorb it as a writer. Gosh, let me stop gushing and get back to work.
I put this book up there with The Art of Fiction. Timely and timeless already! Dayum! Well done, Mr. Jauss!
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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
clove hitch, cloud atlas, rhythmic mimesis, indirect interior monologue, imaginary men, ent tense
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Alone With All That Could Happen, Stacking Stones, Remembrance of Things Present, The Misfit, Some Epiphanies About Epiphanies, Lever of Transcendence, Vargas Llosa, Hills Like White Elephants, Wheat Field, Madame Bovary, Arabia Deserta, Tim O'Brien, Joe Christmas, The Musical Lady, Lay Dying, Don Diego, Good Man Is Hard, Trifle From Real Life, Frederic Henry, Stephen Dunn, David Copperfield, The Kiss, Virginia Woolf, Walter Murch, Flannery O'Connor
Browse Sample Pages: Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!
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