Customer Reviews

The Art and Craft of Novel Writing

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

One can be assured the professional novelist will not enjoy this book, but Oakley Hall does not write for such a reader. Instead, this work is an outline for someone who has never written a novel before. Especially helpful are the varied literary examples which are accompanied by clear notes printed in the margins. The format helps the reader see what beginning writers often miss--the elements of effect writing. Individuals who have never attempted a novel before (and even those who have never written before) will gain insight from Hall's advice.

This book "polishes" up any sprawling draft in progress. While it is decidedly weak in helping with matters of plotting and publishing, I have found this book to be infinitely useful when putting the final details on any of my literary works. Of special worth are the sections on dialogue, characterization, and use of indirection for dramatic effect. It also teaches how to write good "romantic" scenes without being too vulgar.

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Reviewed by C J Singh

For two decades, Oakley Hall directed the MFA program at the University of California, Irvine, teaching the craft of writing fiction to numerous apprentice writers, including Richard Ford, Amy Tan, and Michael Chabon.

In "The Art & Craft of Novel Writing," published in 1989, Hall sequences the chapters of the first two parts as the syllabus for a basic course in fiction writing. The first part comprises four chapters: dramatization; characterization, point of view, and plotting. The second part also comprises four chapters: style; dialog; indirection; and information. He includes quotes from the writings of literary masters like Gustav Flaubert; Anton Chekov, Henry James; William Faulkner; Ernst Hemingway; and Flannery O'Connor. These well-chosen quotes enhance his exposition of the craft elements to high sophistication.

(In 2001, Hall published How Fiction Works: The last word on writing fiction - from basics to fine points , which includes examples from the recent writings of Philip Roth, Don Delillo, and Charles Frazier among others. Moreover, the book covers the crafts of writing short story as well as novel. See my review on amazon.)

The third part focuses on the process of novel writing: coming up with the germ of the novel, planning, beginning, continuing, and finishing. Hall quotes William Styron and John Fowles on the germ for their novels "Sophie's Choice" and "The French Lieutenant's Woman": an image of the main character.

Hall cites Gustav Flaubert's emphasis on planning: "Flaubert . . . pondering on the failure of his `Tentation de Saint Antoine' condemned improvisation. He wrote to Louise Colet, who had read the manuscript of `Tentation' and praised it: `It's a failure. You talk of pearls. But it is not pearls that make a necklace; it's the thread. . . . Everything depends on the plan. Saint Antoine lacks one" (page 143). On the same page, another Flaubert quote on how novels are written: "...as pyramids are, following a premeditated design, and by hoisting great blocks one atop the other by dint of sheer brute strength, time, and sweat." Other examples are Dostoyevsky's writing eight successive outlines of "The Idiot" and Henry James's writing a 20,000 word outline of "The Ambassadors."

Hall's advice: "Experienced writers may trust the emerging novel as a source of its own development, but beginners are well-advised to outline the work, considering the many novels that have been abandoned because the novelist languished waiting for the repeated prod of those feelers from beneath the reef, instead of putting on snorkel and face-mask" (page 143).

How to begin? "Formal planning usually begins with character.... What does he hate, fear, need, or passionately desire, and what is he going to do about it? And what does he, and what does the reader, as well as the author, discover about him in the process?" (page 146). "Characters, as they begin to curve into roundness, will contribute to the progress of the novel. "Decisions as to their personalities, relationships, and fates may have to be rethought because of demands of the characters themselves. Each will have his throughline--his overall objective, as well as his objective in a particular scene" (page 156).

"The novelist, as he tiptoes or blunders into his first draft, may be forced to summarize as a kind of expanded outline, telling what happens in a scene he is not yet prepared to dramatize. Ultimately, of course, he must move out of summary in order to breathe life into it, for the novelist's burden is to find means of scenically presenting summary and situational information" (page 157).

In the appendix, Hall presents a synopsis of his novel "Apaches" as well as how he developed it.

The book's jacket presents four stellar endorsements, including one by Ethan Canin, novelist and currently professor of creative writing at the University of Iowa: "A wise, authoritative, and charming book. It teaches everything about writing that can be taught."

Five-star book.

This isn't as awful as everyone says. It's one of the few books I've found that deals exclusively with the demands of novel writing. Many books on fiction writing do not address the demands of writing a novel which separate the craft from that of writing short fiction. (Even some books purportedly about writing a novel slip into this "fiction is fiction" trap.)

The sections cover the basic skills needed to write a decent novel and provide excellent examples.

Hall's guide is very straight-forward, no nonsense, and grounded in what's useful. I read it twelve years ago and I learned still more when I just read it again.

The book is well laid out and easy to read, with wide margins that contain quotes from many authors on the subject at hand. Also, unlike many books on writing that go on and on with walls of dense paragraphs for pages on end, there's no long essays here - on the first page he examines a passage from Chekhov, on the second it's The Odyssey, and on the third Jack Finney. This not only shows you the techniques in action, and allows Hall to point out the clincher detail, but also breaks up the pages and keeps everything moving.

Of course it's the quality of what's taught that counts, and in that Hall excels. He directed the writing program at the University of California, Irvine, for twenty years (teaching Michael Chabon and Amy Tan), and wrote over twenty novels (two of which were made into movies), and so he's equally erudite in the use of sense perceptions by Raymond Chandler, the implicit sexuality in Madame Bovary, and Norman Mailer's verb choices in describing a machine gun in action.

Hall started off studying at Columbia and later wrote westerns, and he represents both areas well, equally adapt at quoting from Tolstoy as Louis L'Amour. His focus is on the skills you need to write effectively, and so in the chapter on style, instead of waxing poetic, he goes into when to use (and not use) modifiers and tells you to beware of "there," the passive voice, and accidental repetition.

He samples from many sources, including a Hemingway letter on using profanity, and he quotes in full Henry Miller's "Commandments" of writing, Elizabeth Bowen's "Rules of Dialog," and Kerouac's "List of Essentials." Other parts include Detail in Motion, Creating Tension, Plot Diagrams, Repetition, The Double Plot, and Flashback and Tunnelling.

In the third section Hall moves on to the actual writing, from the first idea through Planning, Starting, Continuing, and Finishing. These later chapters are short, about five pages each, but are still more effective than those you find in most books on writing.

Finally there's seventeen pages of The Columbus Tree, by Peter Feibleman (with Hall's commentary in the margins of what the author is doing), ten pages of a synopsis for a proposed novel, and a five page list of suggested reading, for both "On the Writing Process" and "Contemporary Fiction." A good index rounds it out.

To sum up, here's a quote by Robert Stone, not found on the back cover: "This is simply the best book in print to examine the strategies and necessities involved in the making of a novel. It is a clear, practical guide and utterly free of jargon - commercial, academic, or otherwise. A work no aspiring novelist should be without."

By the way, he has a newer book out, How Fiction Works, and I don't know if it's a revision of this one or not, but I'll be sure to check it out. If you know, please post a comment.

I read Warlock before I got this book. Reading Warlock was a follow on activity to seeing the Henry Fonda movie. When I read extra notes about the movie on IMDB, it mentioned the significance in the literary world of the Oakley Hall book. After that read, I'm more interested in Oakley Hall. And I discover he writes about writing. OK, I'll try that. And I'm glad I did. I understand much more about what I do wrong and what it will take to correct my writing. I primarily write comic strip oriented scenarios. But the points about what brings an audience into that sharing sphere between book and reader are solid gold. Hall gives great examples of how writing must involve the senses and show action vs being explanatory. His examples vary. I was pleased that he obviously greatly admires John D MacDonald. Faulkner, Twain, Zane Gray, Hemingway, Henry James, and many more are quoted and excerpted in great lessons about POV, Dialogue etc. I still mean to go through the index and write notes from the topics as a memory aid. Highly recommended.

There are so many fine books on the market on writing, that I am surprised that this book continues to be in print. Though it has some general good writing advice, I found it to be of extremely limited use. Ironically, this book which professes to teach 'the art and craft of novel writing' is itself written in a dull and lifeless manner. I was particularly struck by the author's list of "must-read" novels. Had I read his very macho, white bread reading list first, I would have realized his ideas about writing were quite different from mine, and saved my money.