The Modern Library Writer's Workshop: A Guide to the Craft of Fiction (Modern Library Paperbacks) Modern Library Pbk. Ed Edition, Kindle Edition

by Stephen Koch (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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“Make [your] characters want something right away—even if it’s only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.” —Kurt Vonnegut

“‘The cat sat on the mat’ is not the beginning of a story, but ‘the cat sat on the dog’s mat’ is.” —John Le Carré

Nothing is more inspiring for a beginning writer than listening to masters of the craft talk about the writing life. But if you can’t get Vladimir Nabokov, Virginia Woolf, and Gabriel García Márquez together at the Algonquin, The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop gives you the next best thing. Stephen Koch, former chair of Columbia University’s graduate creative writing program, presents a unique guide to the craft of fiction. Along with his own lucid observations and commonsense techniques, he weaves together wisdom, advice, and inspiring commentary from some of our greatest writers. Taking you from the moment of inspiration (keep a notebook with you at all times), to writing a first draft (do it quickly! you can always revise later), to figuring out a plot (plot always serves the story, not vice versa), Koch is a benevolent mentor, glad to dispense sound advice when you need it most. The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop belongs on every writer’s shelf, to be picked up and pored over for those moments when the muse needs a little help finding her way.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“An extraordinarily comprehensive and practical work by a master craftsman and a master analyst of the craft.” —Madison Smartt Bell, author of All Souls’ Rising and Anything Goes

“Stephen Koch was my teacher long ago. Now he is everyone’s teacher, indelibly. This is a book not just for the beginning writer but for every writer.” —Martha McPhee, author of the National Book Award nominee Gorgeous Lies

“The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop is a treasure trove of wisdom, both immensely practical and philosophical, entertaining and thought-provoking. Koch takes us inside the writing process, and it is impossible not to emerge transformed.” —Joanna Hershon, author of Swimming

From the Trade Paperback edition.

From Booklist

There's no shortage of writing guides available, but Koch's is especially valuable as it collects the comments and thoughts of such writers as Anthony Trollope, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Stephen King, in addition to his own sage advice. Koch, who taught at Columbia University's writing program, divides his book into the stages of the writing process. "Begin right now," he urges his readers. He goes over the basics, such as the importance of reading, the difficulty of finding time to write, and the importance of plot, with the added bonus of backing quotes from writers who have been around the block and found success. Learning that Toni Morrison, too, had to balance work and writing, or that Ray Bradbury writes six or seven drafts of each of his stories, is bound to buoy struggling writers. One thing he avoids is talking about the difficulties of a writer's life--a student sagely advised him to leave that to everyone else. Koch's tone is both encouraging and forthright, and his accessible, friendly guide will be essential for aspiring writers. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Inside Flap

?Make [your] characters want something right away?even if it?s only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.? ?Kurt Vonnegut

??The cat sat on the mat? is not the beginning of a story, but ?the cat sat on the dog?s mat? is.? ?John Le Carré

Nothing is more inspiring for a beginning writer than listening to masters of the craft talk about the writing life. But if you can?t get Vladimir Nabokov, Virginia Woolf, and Gabriel García Márquez together at the Algonquin, The Modern Library Writer?s Workshop gives you the next best thing. Stephen Koch, former chair of Columbia University?s graduate creative writing program, presents a unique guide to the craft of fiction. Along with his own lucid observations and commonsense techniques, he weaves together wisdom, advice, and inspiring commentary from some of our greatest writers. Taking you from the moment of inspiration (keep a notebook with you at all times), to writing a first draft (do it quickly! you can always revise later), to figuring out a plot (plot always serves the story, not vice versa), Koch is a benevolent mentor, glad to dispense sound advice when you need it most. The Modern Library Writer?s Workshop belongs on every writer?s shelf, to be picked up and pored over for those moments when the muse needs a little help finding her way. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Back Cover

"Make [your] characters want something right away--even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time." --Kurt Vonnegut
"'The cat sat on the mat' is not the beginning of a story, but 'the cat sat on the dog's mat' is." --John Le Carre
Nothing is more inspiring for a beginning writer than listening to masters of the craft talk about the writing life. But if you can't get Vladimir Nabokov, Virginia Woolf, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez together at the Algonquin, "The Modern Library Writer's Workshop gives you the next best thing. Stephen Koch, former chair of Columbia University's graduate creative writing program, presents a unique guide to the craft of fiction. Along with his own lucid observations and commonsense techniques, he weaves together wisdom, advice, and inspiring commentary from some of our greatest writers. Taking you from the moment of inspiration (keep a notebook with you at all times), to writing a first draft (do it quickly! you can always revise later), to figuring out a plot (plot always serves the story, not vice versa), Koch is a benevolent mentor, glad to dispense sound advice when you need it most. "The Modern Library Writer's Workshop belongs on every writer's shelf, to be picked up and pored over for those moments when the muse needs a little help finding her way. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

About the Author

Stephen Koch taught the craft of fiction to graduate students for twenty-one years in the writing division of the School of the Arts at Columbia University and to undergraduates for seven years in the Program in Creative Writing at Princeton University. Koch is the author of two enthusiastically acclaimed and widely translated novels, Night Watch and The Bachelor’s Bride, and several nonfiction works, including Stargazer: Andy Warhol’s World and Double Lives: Stalin, Willi Münzenberg and the Seduction of the Intellectuals. He lives with his wife and daughter in New York City. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1

Beginnings

The only way to begin is to begin, and begin right now. If you like, begin the minute you finish reading this paragraph. For sure, begin before you finish reading this book. I have no doubt the day is coming when you will be wiser or better informed or more highly skilled than you are now, but you will never be more ready to begin writing than you are right this minute. The time has come. You already know, more or less, what a good story looks like. You’ve already got in mind some human situation that matters to you. You need nothing more. Begin with whatever gives you the impetus to begin: an image, a fantasy, a situation, a memory, a motion, a situation, a set of people—anything at all that arouses your imagination. The job is only to get some or all of this into words able to reach and touch an unknown, unseen somebody “out there” known as the Reader. You must plunge into it. And you must do it now.

It would be nice, I suppose, to begin at the perfect point in the story, in the perfect way, using the perfect voice to present exactly the desired scene. Unfortunately, you have no choice but to be wholly clueless about all of this. The rightness of things is generally revealed in retrospect, and you’re unlikely to know in advance what is right and wrong in a story that has not yet been written. So instead of waiting until everything is perfect, begin anyhow, anywhere, and any way. The result probably will not be exactly right. It may not be even close. So what? You’re going to persist until you get it right.

While I’m sure you can think of good reasons to procrastinate, I very much doubt there’s much real merit in any of them. There is no need to wait for inspiration; no need to find your confidence; no need to know exactly why or what you’re writing; no need read wise and thoughtful books about how to write; no need to know your story; no need to understand your characters; no need to be sure you’re on the right track; no need even for your research to be complete. No need now. Later on, it will be very nice indeed to have some or all of these fine things. You will of course eventually want inspiration and confidence and self-knowledge and faith in your project and informed technique and a finished story with developed characters and completed competent research. But every single one of these things—even the research—comes to you only in the process of writing. They are the result of writing. If you let any one of them immobilize you before you write, I can guarantee that a year from now you will still be waiting to begin. The belief that you must have them to begin is the most common mistake of all, and it is fatal. Right here—on the jagged rocks of that false belief—is where most good ideas break up and sink without trace. Inspiration and confidence and conviction and craft and knowledge are not what make writing possible. It’s exactly the other way around. Writing makes them possible.

“The common conception of how novels get written,” says Martin Amis, “seems to me to be an exact description of writ- er’s block. In the common view, the writer is at this stage so desperate that he’s sitting around with a list of characters, a list of themes, and a framework for his plot, and ostensibly trying to mesh the three elements. In fact, it’s never like that. What happens is what Nabokov described as a throb. A throb or a glimmer, an act of recognition on the writer’s part. At this stage the writer thinks, Here is something I can write a novel about.”

Isak Dinesen used to say much the same: “I start with a tingle, a kind of feeling of the story I will write. Then come the characters, and they take over, they make the story. But all this ends by being a plot.” Robert Penn Warren began the same way. “Any book I write starts with a flash. . . .” A “throb.” A “tingle.” A “flash.” Pretty flimsy stuff. Most people have spent a lifetime shunting shimmers like that out of their minds. Now you must recognize them as a call to action, as a promise of what is to come.

And you must sit down and write. It doesn’t even really matter if you feel like writing. As Tom Wolfe says, “Sometimes, if things are going badly, I will force myself to write a page in half an hour. I find that can be done. I find that what I write when I force myself is generally just as good as what I write when I’m feeling inspired. It’s mainly a matter of forcing yourself to write. There’s a marvelous essay that Sinclair Lewis wrote on how to write. He said that most writers don’t understand that the process begins by actually sitting down.” Joyce Carol Oates agrees: “One must be pitiless about this matter of ‘mood.’ In a sense, the writing will create the mood. . . . Generally I’ve found this to be true: I have forced myself to begin writing when I’ve been utterly exhausted, when I’ve felt my soul as thin as a playing card, when nothing has seemed worth enduring for another five minutes . . . and somehow the activity of writing changes everything.”

This principle—write it now—applies not just to writers of fiction, but also to writers of all kinds. Interestingly enough, it is relevant even to scholars dependent on factual research. The great historian Samuel Eliot Morison used to tell his students: “First and foremost, get writing! Young scholars generally wish to secure the last fact before writing anything, like General McClellan refusing to advance (as people said) until the last mule was shod. . . . In every research there comes a point, which you should recognize like a call of conscience, when you must get down to writing. And once you are writing, go on writing as long as you can; there will be plenty of time later to shove in the footnotes or return to the library for extra information.”

“But”—you may say—“I don’t even know my story yet.” My answer is: “Of course you don’t know your story yet.” You are the very first person to tell this story ever, anywhere in the whole world, and you cannot know a story until it has been told. First you tell it; then you know it. It is not the other way around. That may sound illogical, but to the narrating mind, it is logic itself. Stories make themselves known, they reveal themselves—even to their tellers—only by being told. You may ask how on earth you can tell a story before you know it. You do that by letting the emerging story tell itself through you. As you tell it, you let the story give you your cues about where it is going to go next. At first, you must feel your way, letting it be your guide. You may eventually be able to plan the whole scope of the work down to its smallest details, as J. K. Rowling is said to have done with all her Harry Potter books. But in the very first phase of its creation, any story must be teased out from the shadows of your imagination and unconscious. As Isabel Allende says, the story is “hidden in a very somber and secret place where I don’t have any access yet. It is something that I’ve been feeling but which has no shape, no name, no tone, no voice.” It is waiting for you, untold, undefined, and latent. It will take shape only when you put it into words. So start putting it into words. As Allende concludes, “By the time I’ve finished the first draft, I know what the book is about. But not before.”

Since you have no choice but to begin in uncertainty, you must learn to tolerate uncertainty and, if possible, to turn it into excitement. As Toni Morrison puts it: “I am profoundly excited by thinking up or having the idea in the first place . . . before I begin to write. . . . it’s a sustained thing I have to play with. I always start out with an idea, even a boring idea, that becomes a question I don’t have any answers to.”

Most writers start out uncertainly with a small thing called the “germ,” or the “seed” of the story. That “germ,” as E. L. Doctorow points out, can be anything. “It can be a voice, an image; it can be a deep moment of personal desperation. For instance, with Ragtime I was so desperate to write something, I was facing the wall of my study in my house in New Rochelle and so I started to write about the wall. That’s the kind of day we sometimes have, as writers. Then I wrote about the house that was attached to the wall. It was built in 1906, you see, so I thought about the era and what Broadview Avenue looked like then: Trolley cars ran along the avenue down at the bottom of the hill; people wore white clothes in the summer to stay cool. Teddy Roosevelt was president. One thing led to another, and that’s the way that book began, through desperation to those few images.”

Writers use all kinds of metaphors to describe the way their imagination is originally aroused. Tom McGuane says it makes him feel like a hunting dog snapping alert, catching the scent. “When I start something it’s like being a bird dog getting a smell; it’s a matter of running it down in prose and then trying to figure out what the thing is that’s out there.” In the prefaces to the New York Edition of his novels, Henry James tells the many little tales of how each of his classic works began as some sudden impression, something “minute and windblown. . . . the stray suggestion, the wandering word, the vague echo, at the touch of which the novelist’s imagination winces as at the prick of some sharp point. . . .” Patricia Highsmith notes that story ideas “can be little or big, simple or complex, fragmentary or rather complete, still or moving. The important thing is to recognize them when they come. I recognize them by a certain excitement which they instantly bring, akin to the pleasure and excitement of a good poem or line in a poem.” The “throb” can come to you as a whole story, but more often it will be a fragment. The job, once you’ve been aroused, is to expand your excitement: to let it grow, take on substance.

While you cannot force ideas into existence, you can coax them into view. When you first notice some exciting fragment, your impulse may be to brush it aside. It looks so . . . so small, so slight. Don’t be deceived. What matters is not the idea’s size but its resonance. Ray Bradbury has generated stories by simply writing down, in free association, image after image, looking for “a pattern in the list, in these words that I had simply flung forth on paper, trusting my subconscious to give bread, as it were, to the birds. . . . Where am I leading you? Well, if you are a writer, or would hope to be one, similar lists, dredged out of the lopside of your brain, might well help you discover you, even as I flopped around and finally found me. I began to run through those lists, pick a noun, and then sit down to write a long prose-poem-essay on it. Somewhere along about the middle of the page, or perhaps on the second page, the prose poem would turn into a story. Which is to say that a character suddenly appeared and said, ‘That’s me!’ or, ‘That’s an idea I like!’ And the character would then finish the tale for me.”

But be careful. If you are like me, your first instinct will be to try to “take control” of a new idea, to assert yourself, to “turn this into something.” Yet at this early stage, it may be a mistake to treat your idea too aggressively. The whole process of writing, from first to last, requires that you alternate steadily between a passive, open, daydreaming intuitiveness, followed by worked-out, thought-through, fully developed acts of judgment and control. You must have both, and you must get both to work not against each other but in concert. In the early stages, most developing ideas usually need lots of fertile, nurturing passivity. Something has moved you. You begin to write about it. You sketch. You jot down a chain of fantasies and associations. You dream the dream. You don’t know what’s coming; you’re a vehicle for what’s happening on your page, as was Flannery O’Connor when she wrote her great short story “Good Country People.” “When I started writing that story, I didn’t know there was going to be a Ph.D. with a wooden leg in it. I merely found myself one morning writing a description of two women I knew something about, and before I realized it, I had equipped one of them with a daughter with a wooden leg. I brought in the Bible salesman, but I had no idea what I was going to do with him. I didn’t know he was going to steal that wooden leg until ten or twelve lines before he did it, and when I found out that this was what was going to happen, I realized it was inevitable.” --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0029732JS
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Modern Library; Modern Library Pbk. Ed edition (May 9, 2009)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 9, 2009
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 394 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #528,966 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
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Customer Reviews:
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Jackson

Got me writing again

Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2018

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This is a bit strange. I don't remember the author's name, not even the exact contents of the book, but it kept insisting that one start writing immediately. I had spent at least a year with no inspiration to write. So I started buying some books about writing to motivate me again. Some were pretty good. This one was not the best, but it's the one that got me writing again (even before I finished it). That was 2 months ago and I haven't stopped. So I've come back to Amazon to give it my 5 stars!

10 people found this helpful

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CD Scott

Prepared me for the emotional roller coaster that is the writer's life

Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2016

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During the drafting of my first novel, I purchased this book because it was highly recommended. The book has so many nuggets of wisdom, but the most valuable information I gleaned had to do with the process of revision. As a first time novelist, I didn't understand that with the completion of the first draft I'd only be about 10% finished with my book. Koch's book prepared me mentally for the arduous rewriting and revision process that my book deserved. I highly recommend this book.

15 people found this helpful

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Fredex

Bloody Good! Takes the elements of fiction writing apart and ...

Reviewed in the United States on August 27, 2016

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Bloody Good! Takes the elements of fiction writing apart and puts them back together in coherent form. Forces one to consider all facets of creating fiction. Lot of insights from successful writers woven into his narrative...often in in accord with one another. Miy copy could not be resold as it totally defaced with highlighter.
But I accept that it ain't gonna make me the next Henry Jame....

4 people found this helpful

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Judith Lethin

Just Write

Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2010

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The Modern Library Writer's Workshop is a book about the art of writing narrative prose. Koch believes passionately that writing can be taught, and he has assembled a text that sets about doing just that. Though written for the beginning writer, Koch believes every writer, however proficient, can find herself at a place of new beginnings, or a place of uncertainty, and can find something of value here that will give great comfort and inspiration as she begins again. Koch captures the urgency a new writer feels simply to begin. I loved this recognition and his admonition to "plunge into it (the writing). And you must do it now." I loved the permission Koch seems to give to take ample advantage of one's own memory, power of observation, reading preferences and desire to write as ways to help shape the writer's life. He urges us to write every day and to treat writing as a job, even if we have another job. A writer's life is hard, but possible. We can learn to shape the story and make the characters come alive, and to do that we need to pay attention to the story, the structure and the plot. We must know the difference between story (the account of the sequence of events) and plot (what makes the story move). Structure is what joins the story and the plot. Koch shows us how to organize the plot by developing the characters and the conflicts they experience. This makes the story come alive and feel cohesive. The use of drama and improbability to uncover the meaning of the story is especially helpful for me, as a nonfiction writer. " Finally," Koch says, "truth in even the most fantastic fiction--that is, its authenticity--rests somewhere, somehow on bedrock of facts." This is the heart of his work for me, and gives the craft its superb ring of truth.

12 people found this helpful

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J Williams

Inspired Writing and Reading

Reviewed in the United States on July 30, 2017

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Reading just the first chapter of this book caught my attention and encouraged me to read on. The first chapter's tips on writing about what you know, where to find your story, inventing your story, etc., peeked my interest. It's a well written book with sentences that flow easily from one topic to another on what to think about and how to prepare for your writings, no matter what you choose to write. I look forward to reading the next chapters!

One person found this helpful

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A. Lindquist

Indispensible

Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2022

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The first and last chapters have the greatest advice. Overall, a good primer for the beginning writer. It is meant to get work going and help plow through doubt.

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Echobox

The Bible

Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2012

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It's a difficult thing wading through the myriad of writing books and most are all saying the same thing. This is a collection of quotes and advice from other writers and I think the most helpful resource to a writer. I'm currently referring to it as the Bible of writing. It is thick with knowledge and almost every sentence offers encouragement and enlightenment. I do my devotions and read from it every morning before I begin my writing day.

If you're looking for a good book to help you come up with a plot or develop characters (I'm not sure there is one), look elsewhere. If you ever wished you could have hundreds (it seems like hundreds) of writers telling you what has worked for them, providing you with guidance and options for getting into a groove, buy this book.

8 people found this helpful

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B. Martin

Encouraging and Inspirational

Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2007

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This book has provided fuel for my recently withering desire to write. I often need a kick in the rear end and I found the boot I needed in this book. The book does not get very technical but does give the writer the right path to follow in all aspects of writing. Koch did his research and provides literally hundreds of inspirational quotes from many of the great writers we all know and love. Koch makes you believe he is on your side in the battle. Not everything will be absorbed on the first read but I don't think it was meant to work that way. This isn't necessarily a how-to book. Advice and encouragement is given but it is clear your own way must be paved.

4 people found this helpful

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Alex

This little book packs quite a punch

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 24, 2009

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This little book packs quite a punch as far as creative writing books go. It's very tightly written (I found it plenty to read one chapter or even part of a chapter, then having to mull it over), and it's a heartfelt, interesting, well-written "workshop" for writers, with plenty of very good advice. Koch is presenting different issues (how to begin, how to edit, voice...) and examines them one by one. He focuses very much on practical, real life writing advice and uses many quotes from actual published writers to illustrate the point and organize his material. That puts him head and shoulders above the blahblah published by failed writers who then turn to writing books about how to write books (and of which I own far too many). This one is a definite keeper.

It is an energizing, kind book that does not go all metaphysical and wishy-washy like so many others (the likes of Julia Cameron). It's definitely one of those few books I'd give away as presents to fellow writers. I was reading this just because I enjoy creative writing books, but inside I found a whole lot that I can apply to the book I'm current /not/ writing, and where I blocked myself with over-research. Koch gave me permission to write a bad first draft and explained how I should go about the revision process - all things I've done in previous books, and being reminded of the method that works for me unblocked me and I can't wait to get home to start on my new book. Koch makes you want to write, he gives you solid advice that will help you on all the many fronts where the writer's battle is fought, and it's not just for beginners, either. I'll certainly re-visit this one when I run into a wall again. I'm well-impressed.

8 people found this helpful

Ania Jankowska

Very useful!!!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 25, 2016

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Fantastic guide with telling examples from famous authors. I didn't expect a guide so inspiring and practical. I highly recommend this resource!

One person found this helpful

K H

Insightful and informative

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 4, 2015

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Stephen Koch gives excellent advice for the novice writer. A book that should be kept at your side at all times if you are writing.

One person found this helpful

Adrian Gibbs

How to Write Fiction

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 8, 2014

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An excellent book, extremely readable. Highly recommend for any aspiring writer. Excellent examples, references and pointers. Essential Reading for a would be writer.

Lucía D.

Me encanta este libro

Reviewed in Spain on January 3, 2018

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No soy escritora pero me dio hace un tiempo por querer escribir alguna historia corta y creo que es uno de los libros que me han despejado más dudas respecto al arte de escribir. Mientras que lo leía se me iban encendiendo bombillitas, "ah, pero ésto era así!", la verdad es que lo recomiendo para los que se quieran iniciar en el arte de escribir. Eso sí, está en inglés.

One person found this helpful

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