Spider, Spin Me A Web: A Handbook for Fiction Writers

by Lawrence Block

The craft of writing is a lot like spinning a web: You take threads and weave them skillfully together, and only you know where this intricate network of twists and turns begin and how it will end. Now, with Lawrence Block's expert advice, you can learn this art of entrapping your reader in a maze of facinating fiction.

Spider, Spin Me a Web is the perfect companion volume to Block's previous book on writing, Telling Lies for Fun and Profit, which Sue Grafton noted "should be a permanent part of every writer's library." As helpful and supportive as always, Block shares what he's learned over the course of writing over one hundred published books: techniques to help you to write a solid piece of fiction; strategies for getting a reader (or editor) to reaad—and buy—your book; ideas for increasing your creativity and developing an environment that will nourish you and your craft.

Spider, Spin Me a Web is a complete guide to achieving your full potential as awriter.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Reference, How To, Crafts

264 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Lawrence Block has been writing crime, mystery, and suspense fiction for more than half a century. He has published in excess (oh, wretched excess!) of 100 books, and no end of short stories.

Born in Buffalo, N.Y., LB attended Antioch College, but left before completing his studies; school authorities advised him that they felt he’d be happier elsewhere, and he thought this was remarkably perceptive of them.

His earliest work, published pseudonymously in the late 1950s, was mostly in the field of midcentury erotica, an apprenticeship he shared with Donald E. Westlake and Robert Silverberg. The first time Lawrence Block’s name appeared in print was when his short story “You Can’t Lose” was published in the February 1958 issue of Manhunt. The first book published under his own name was Mona (1961); it was reissued several times over the years, once as Sweet Slow Death. In 2005 it became the first offering from Hard Case Crime, and bore for the first time LB’s original title, Grifter’s Game.

LB is best known for his series characters, including cop-turned-private investigator Matthew Scudder, gentleman burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, globe-trotting insomniac Evan Tanner, and introspective assassin Keller.

Because one name is never enough, LB has also published under pseudonyms including Jill Emerson, John Warren Wells, Lesley Evans, and Anne Campbell Clarke.

LB’s magazine appearances include American Heritage, Redbook, Playboy, Linn’s Stamp News, Cosmopolitan, GQ, and The New York Times. His monthly instructional column ran in Writer’s Digest for 14 years, and led to a string of books for writers, including the classics Telling Lies for Fun & Profit and The Liar’s Bible. He has also written episodic television (Tilt!) and the Wong Kar-wai film, My Blueberry Nights.

Several of LB’s books have been filmed. The latest, A Walk Among the Tombstones, stars Liam Neeson as Matthew Scudder and is scheduled for release in September, 2014.

LB is a Grand Master of Mystery Writers of America, and a past president of MWA and the Private Eye Writers of America. He has won the Edgar and Shamus awards four times each, and the Japanese Maltese Falcon award twice, as well as the Nero Wolfe and Philip Marlowe awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, and the Diamond Dagger for Life Achievement from the Crime Writers Association (UK). He’s also been honored with the Gumshoe Lifetime Achievement Award from Mystery Ink magazine and the Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer for Lifetime Achievement in the short story. In France, he has been proclaimed a Grand Maitre du Roman Noir and has twice been awarded the Societe 813 trophy. He has been a guest of honor at Bouchercon and at book fairs and mystery festivals in France, Germany, Australia, Italy, New Zealand, Spain and Taiwan. As if that were not enough, he was also presented with the key to the city of Muncie, Indiana. (But as soon as he left, they changed the locks.)

LB and his wife Lynne are enthusiastic New Yorkers and relentless world travelers; the two are members of the Travelers Century Club, and have visited around 160 countries.

He is a modest and humble fellow, although you would never guess as much from this biographical note.

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Spider, Spin Me A Web is a collection of Lawrence Block's column about writing in Writer's Digest.

First off, I enjoyed Block's first volume about writing, Telling Lies for Fun and Profit, immensely and got a lot of useful tips from reading it. I was not as enamored with Spider, Spin Me a Web. Spider, Spin Me a Web feels like a mixture of stuff that wasn't good enough to make it into Telling Lies, with a healthy dose of rehashing.

It's not a bad book about writing. Block still makes it an engaging read. I just don't feel like it's as necessary to my writing habit as Telling Lies for Fun and Profit was.

[Demetri · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a moment in the “Preface to the Quill Edition” of “Spider, Spin Me a Web: A Handbook for Fiction Writers” when Lawrence Block describes the temptation to go back and touch up earlier work – to strike an infelicitous phrase, smooth a ragged transition, make the past behave. He declines. Better, he decides, to leave those pages as written, of their time, unretouched.

It is a small decision, offered with Block’s habitual plainness, and it doubles as a manifesto. This is a writing book that mistrusts cosmetic certainty. It prefers the lived sentence to the improved one, the discovered connection to the engineered solution, the human process to the system. Block’s central metaphor – the spider spinning a web from its own inward substance – is not a cute emblem affixed to the cover; it is the book’s working theology.

In that summary, Block calls the fiction writer a spider, drawing upon inner resources and shaping them with craft, and then adds the sentence that governs everything that follows: the book is not a textbook, because there can be no true textbook for this subject. The argument is not anti-craft. It is anti-false certainty. He insists there are no blueprints for the novel, and he frames his own role not as master but as traveler: each writer is a stranger in his own strange land, so all he can honestly offer are field notes – what he tried, what failed, what surprised him, what might be of use when you arrive somewhere he never visited.

That refusal to hand over blueprints is, of course, also a kind of seduction. Many readers come to writing advice wanting a promise: follow these steps and you will arrive, obediently, at a finished draft with an ending that clicks. Block offers something better and more irritating. He offers notes from the road – practical but not prescriptive – and he insists the road remains yours.

The book is arranged into four parts – “Building the Web,” “Trapping the Prey,” “Spider Love,” “Spider Dreams” – and the table of contents reads like a map of widening circles: from technique, to strategy, to the inner game, to the daily life that contains the desk. Read straight through, it feels less like a manual than like a long, intelligent conversation with a working writer who has spent decades solving the same problems in different disguises.

Block’s voice is the book’s first pleasure. It is conversational, wry, and nearly incapable of pomposity. He will interrupt himself to answer an imaginary student; he will undercut his own authority with a joke; he will admit, with surprising directness, when the best explanation he has for a decision is simply that it felt right. This manner is not a pose. It enacts his ethic: writing is a human act carried out under conditions of doubt, desire, impatience, and fear. A handbook that forgets that ends up describing a creature that does not exist.

Part One, “Building the Web,” begins with “Organic Writing,” a chapter that functions as an overture. Block opens with the question readers ask him most: how much do you know before you begin? Do you know the ending? Do you know how you will get there? His answer is not an argument against planning so much as an argument for humility in the face of what good fiction does. Even with careful preparation, he suggests, you never really know exactly what is going to happen next when the work is alive, because each page is altered by the page that came before it.

This is a familiar credo now, but Block gives it a sturdier, less mystical base. His examples are concrete and slightly absurd in the way real creativity often is: a three-fingered bartender invented for no reason becomes plot-relevant; a detail tossed into a chapter begins to echo later, creating texture; an anecdote heard years earlier waits until a character suddenly needs it. He uses these stories to argue for a particular form of courage: the courage to let an idea be odd before it is useful, to let it exist without immediately justifying it, to trust that the mind is not only generating material but arranging it in ways the conscious self will not recognize until later.

The daring part of his claim is not that the unconscious exists – anyone who has written recognizes the strange authority of the right next sentence – but that Block treats the unconscious as something to cooperate with rather than dominate. He urges writers to allow seeds to be sown and to keep the more logical side from interfering too early. This is not an invitation to laziness. It is an invitation to permeability, to giving intuition enough room to surprise you before you fence it in.

The second chapter, “The Look of Words upon the Page,” makes Block’s practicality unmistakable. He insists that prose fiction is not designed to be read aloud; it is received with the eyes, and the ear it must please is the inner ear that hears what the eye has recorded in silence. He describes the deadening effect of unbroken paragraphs and the way dialogue, spacing, and visual rhythm determine whether a page feels welcoming or punishing. He watches readers at a paperback rack and turns their behavior into craft: the book is picked up by the cover, but it is kept, or rejected, by what the pages look like when they are thumbed.

From there Part One moves through famous people in fiction, turning experience into story, imitation, foreshadowing, flashbacks, omission, detail, and backstory. These are familiar territories, but Block’s consistent move is to turn craft into consequence. He is less interested in rules than in what a choice does to the reader’s trust, to the story’s forward motion, to the density of the fictional world. Even when he discusses typographic tools, he frames them as levers of attention, not ornaments.

Part Two, “Trapping the Prey,” shifts from technique to strategy, and its subjects are the ones that turn many craft books managerial: what do editors want, what counts as a breakthrough, how do you keep the story from wandering, how do you create identification, what do you owe your reader, how long does it take to write a book, should you write sequentially, how do editors and copyeditors affect the work. Block handles these with a refusal that feels almost moral: he will not encourage the writer to chase a phantom market at the expense of the work’s pulse.

His insistence that you must write what you want to write is not romantic idealism; it is a warning against the kind of anticipatory obedience that produces bloodless prose. His chapter on sex and violence is similarly unsqueamish. These are powerful tools, he suggests, but they are not substitutes for drama. Used lazily, they are noise. Used with intention, they are pressure – ways to raise the stakes of character and choice.

One of the book’s most useful strategic ideas is also its least glamorous. Block treats the writer as a problem-solver. The work is not to preserve inspiration in amber but to keep encountering obstacles – in plot logic, in character behavior, in pacing – and to invent solutions that feel inevitable once discovered. This is a deeply adult view of art. It does not deny imagination; it simply refuses to pretend imagination can carry a book to the last page without labor.

Part Three, “Spider Love,” is where the book becomes more than competent advice and starts to feel like companionship. Here Block turns to what he calls the inner game: self-esteem versus arrogance, comparison, procrastination, looseness, goals, fear, play, the necessity of wanting to succeed, trying again, surviving rejection. Writing advice often fails here because it reaches for either cruelty or cheerleading. Block chooses neither. His tone is steady, occasionally amused, and quietly firm about what is required.

“Apples and Oranges,” on comparison, is the sort of chapter that does not feel impressive until you notice how rarely it is said cleanly. Comparison is unfruitful not because it is a sin but because it is inaccurate. Careers are not commensurable. Talent is not a single measure. Circumstances differ, temperaments differ, luck differs. Comparison replaces the only work you can actually do – the work in front of you – with a fantasy scoreboard that will never, conveniently, declare you finished.

“Keeping Up with Yesterday,” on procrastination, treats delay as information rather than disgrace. Block’s implied argument is that writers postpone the work for reasons that are often rational, if not conscious: fear of failure, fear of success, fear of exposure, fear of discovering that the thing you want is harder than you imagined. In this frame, discipline becomes less a whip than a relationship with fear. Courage is not an ecstatic mood; it is the daily act of returning to the page.

The chapters on goals and play are unusually sane. Block does not treat goals as commandments. He treats them as tools that require adjustment, and he warns against the kind of goal-setting that produces guilt instead of pages. The solitary vice of play and delay is treated with sympathy. Many books tell writers to remove distractions; Block asks them to learn what their distractions are doing for them and what they are costing. It is more difficult counsel, because it requires self-knowledge rather than compliance.

Part Four, “Spider Dreams,” widens the lens further, treating the writer’s life as a life rather than an abstract vocation. The topics are practical, almost blunt: the guts of a fictioneer, taking a break from the tools, New York and its uses, ghostwriting, surviving on a writer’s income, synopses, posterity, aging, submission, and the negative beliefs that shadow the work. Here Block’s frankness deepens. He is honest about money without turning that honesty into bitterness. He is clear about rejection without making a religion of suffering. He understands that the writer’s life is not a single heroic ascent but a sequence of adjustments, compromises, renewals, and stubborn returns.

So why does the book stop short of feeling definitive?

One reason is that Block’s virtues and his limits are, in some ways, the same thing. His resistance to systems means that writers who want a rigorous structural method will find the book politely evasive. He is not interested in diagrams, and he is not interested in arguments that reduce fiction to choreography. That stance is honorable. It is also, for certain temperaments, unsatisfying. Some chapters offer a steadied perspective more than a new tool, and a steadied perspective can feel like a luxury if what you want is an instrument you can pick up and use immediately.

Another reason is historical. The book is of its time in ways Block refuses to apologize for and explicitly refuses to update. The publishing ecosystem he assumes is not identical to the one contemporary writers face, and some of the classroom banter of his imaginary students can feel quaint. There is also the matter of default language – the casual he for the writer – which reflects an era more than it reflects the book’s otherwise generous spirit.

And then there is voice, which is both the book’s invitation and its disguise. Block’s geniality can make his counsel seem lighter than it is. Because he is funny, the reader may miss how exacting he can be. Because he refuses grand pronouncements, the reader may overlook the severity of his demands: pay attention, be honest, do not hide behind excuses, do not confuse fear with truth. This is not a cozy book, not really. It is a gentle book that refuses delusion.

What the book gives, at its best, is not instruction but calibration. It recalibrates the writer’s sense of what matters: the page as a physical object, the reader as a breathing presence, the mind as a generator of usable accident. It makes the work feel less like a referendum on your worth and more like what it is – a craft practiced, imperfectly, in time.

What remains, after the last page, is less a set of techniques than a temperament. Block wants the writer to trust intuition, to craft for the eye and the inner ear, to treat readers as intelligent collaborators, to handle editors without melodrama, to manage fear without self-hatred, to face rejection without collapse, to live a life that keeps attention alive. If the spider is the metaphor, attention is the silk.

For that reason, “Spider, Spin Me a Web: A Handbook for Fiction Writers” works best not as a one-time read but as a book you return to when the work turns stubborn. It speaks most clearly to the writer who has already discovered that the problem is rarely a lack of ideas and more often a lack of faith – faith in the next sentence, in the process, in one’s right to spend time on something that may never repay the investment.

My rating for “Spider, Spin Me a Web: A Handbook for Fiction Writers” is 79 out of 100 – not because it fails its ambitions, but because its ambitions are modest in the most honorable sense, and its gifts, while durable, are not always the ones a reader expects to find in a handbook. It may not be the only writing book you need. But it is the kind of writing book that, at the right moment, can remind you why you needed any writing book at all.

[Cyndi L. Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those books I've had on my bookshelf for years, always telling myself I'll get back to it. I would start it and then life would get in the way, or else self-doubt would creep in and tell me what a horrible writer I was, so what was the point. This summer I decided to really dig in and start writing my first mystery novel. About two weeks in I dusted this book off to read as I wrote. It is a great reference. He says, first and foremost, write what you want not what you think will get published. Worry later about those details, get your story down first. My edition is from 1988, so no e-books, no self-publishing sites, no social media to plaster your name all over Facebook. So, I appreciate even more his message about writing the story you want to write. It is empowering while staying realistic in how hard it is to make a living telling lies.

[Stephen Simpson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Books on writing books are always tough to evaluate because what works for one writer, won't work for another. Not to mention, take any topic/question and you can probably find at least two "how to write" books that take completely opposing viewpoints.

I think what helps this book is that it talks more about the philosophy and mentality of writing more than ultra-specific how-to's. While there are certainly how-to pointers here, they're fairly broad (although not necessarily obvious) and can be applied to a wide range of writing styles and categories.

One issue with this book, and that I have with so many how-to-write books, is that it makes frequent references to other works (typically pretty obscure ones), and I'm not going to read a large handful of other books just to understand the point(s) he's trying to illustrate for this book. To be fair, I don't know how you write a how-to book without providing such examples, but maybe turning to better-known, more widely read sources would have been a better option.

[Clarissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

v easy read, entertaining altho the humor a little bit too cute
basically a collection of personal musings abt author's own personal experiences as a writer, less a practical handbook
mostly tips about how to live & "make it" as a fiction writer (which may be dated cuz this guy was a writer in the 60s-80s) & less about the actual writing of fiction :P

[David Leemon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of interesting insights in this book.

[Bill Phelps · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very good book on the craft of creative writing. The book is a collection of essays that come from his column in Writer's Digest. I particularly enjoyed the style of this work, because it had an air of a story to it. I think this lends a great deal more credibility to what he has to say. Through this book and his columns, he is able to weave a narrative tale that instructs the reader on the craft of writing. In no small way, the book is an illustration of exactly the writer does, so it is a work by example. After reading through what Block has to say, I am sure that this was no accident. As a writer we have to look at the effectiveness of the structure and point of view of what we write. Through the narrative guise of a classroom and a well crafted point of view talking directly to the reader, he has allowed me to suspend my disbelief and come to feel as if I was sitting in a class of other students of writing.
I feel that this is one I will have to add to my shelves and refer back to as I continue to grow as a writer. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the craft of writing, regardless if they want to actually attempt to weave stories or not.

[Craig Childs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lawrence Block wrote a monthly column for Writer's Digest magazine for 14 years in the 1970's and 80's. They have all been collected now into 4 books:

1. Telling Lies for Fun and Profit
2. Spider, Spin Me a Web
3. The Liar's Bible
4. The Liar's Companion

No subject is off limits for Block. From lofty questions (how do writers get their ideas?) to the mundane (how many pages should you write every day?) to the personal (how often should writers exercise? how should writers budget their money?), the advice is practical, funny, and never boring.

I do not have a desire to be an author, but these glimpses into the writing life fascinated me.

I preferred Liar's Bible and Liar's Companion because they presented the columns in chronological order. The other two volumes group entries by topic, which was fine but tended to feel repetitive at times.

[Elizabeth Allen · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I acknowledge that Mr. Block is a very talented and prolific writer, this hardly qualifies as a "handbook", or at least, my definition of something aspiring fiction writers would find useful. "Spider" is essentially the life journey, experiences and observations of this man's path as a writer. That's terrific for him, but who's to say my path as a novelist (yes, I am one) will be anything like his? So far, except for living in NYC ( which he insists any would-be writer MUST do at some point), we have nothing else in common on the road to literary success.
So, other than being well written, at times interesting, and often entertaining, I would not recommend this book for those considering a career in writing.

[Vanessa Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book for writers and anyone thinking about being a writer! This book continues the collection of gems from Lawrence Block's 10 years as a columnist for Writer's Digest.

Block's style is friendly and casual, often irreverent - and filled with gems for the creator. Definitely a keeper for the writer's bookshelf, and a great read for anyone who is curious about writers and how they do (or don't do) it. I read this book years ago, and ofter return to it.

[Elaine Cramer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A product of it's times, still a good resource.

A fair portion of the book is about getting published, and I'm not certain how much of that applies, since I have never been published by a major house, but it seems as though the game has changed drastically since the '80s.

Still, it was painless to read and there were some good sentiments throughout. I'm glad I read it, and it will probably stay on my shelf at home.

[Tom V · Rating 4 out of 5]

LB is just so damn accessible! His group of columns on writing have all the right/write stuff...advice, critique, pump-you-up affirmation; and all in a not too PollyAnna-ish prose.

Just the thing if you're looking for a view from the writer's side.

What's that Arnold? Oh, really?

Arnold says to tell you he's hooked on LB's take on the writer's craft

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

This followup to Lawrence Block's Telling Lies for Fun and Profit is every bit as engaging and accessible as its predecessor. His advice about creativity is valuable, but what most tyro writers need most is guidance on professionalism, and that is where Block consistently knocks it out of the ballpark.

[Adam Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great, wide-ranging collection of columns Block wrote fir Writer's Digest in the 1980s. Amusingly dated in places (using typewriters) that must be translated into the present climate, which has changed dramatically. Some of the advice no longer applies. Still, broadly helpful from a lifelong career writer.

[G.C. Neff · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very inspiring book. This was the second time I've read it (my copy was published in 1988), the first being over 20 years ago. While some information is dated, it still offers a lot of insight on the process of creating with words. A valuable tool, one that will be on my bookshelf to be reread again when my brain needs a boost.

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

This follow-up to TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT is more of the same and well worth it. Something for everyone. Block said that his greatest education as a writer was reading amateur manuscripts when he worked at Writer's Digest. A lot of that wisdom is in this book and its predecessor.

[Stephen]

I like this one better than From Plot to Print. It is made up of columns he wrote for Writer's Digest, so it hits writing from multiple angles and it doesn't give you a whole picture for writing your novel, but that's okay

[Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best books on how to write out there.

[Ray Charbonneau · Rating 4 out of 5]

A how-to for writers, but one that concentrates more on philosophy than technique. And since it's written by Block, it's fun to read.

[Richard Givan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is more helpful than most when it comes to crafting fiction.

[Kyle Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read. Definitely some wisdom to be found.