The Craft of Writing

by William Sloane

“One of the delights of the year is this wise and witty book. . . .For writers of fiction and nonfiction, beginners and pros, [it] will concentrate the attention most wonderfully on the hard-won techniques that go into good writing.” ―Walter Berkov, Cleveland Plain Dealer William Sloane was a brilliant editor, publisher, and teacher for more than forty years. In this book are gathered chapters derived largely from lectures he gave over twenty-five years at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, from correspondence with writers, and from editorial memoranda dealing with the specifics of a writer’s problems.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Crafts

128 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1979

About the author

Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

William^^Sloane

Reviews

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is all about appealing to the reader. So if that’s what you want instead of writing hard to follow literature than this book is for you.

The gist:

(1)Use your personal experiences and emotions when writing your characters in scenes
(2)Your characters must contain parts of who the reader already is so the reader can relate and sympathize and hence be hooked by your book
(3) Your book must contain some common every day humour, sense of group, sense of triumph or defeat, physical hunger, thirst, exhaustion - things the common reader experiences in their lives.
(4) You need to appeal to appeal to the external needs and experiences of the reader.
(5) The opening sentence must indicate that this is a story that involves people in a conflict and change revealed in a series of scenes that has a resolution at the end. It also must establish the time, the place, the means of perception (POV), the tone of voice and the scale/depth of whta is to come.
(6) Each scene should have only one POV character regardless of how many other characters are in it
(7) Only write the things about the setting and character behaviour that the POV character would see, taste, smell, touch, hear
(8) If you have to speak to the reader via authorial narration be careful since this breaks the illusion of reality. Most times it is best to work the material in via POV or another character.

Note about POV: having only one character POV prevents the destruction of the illusion of reality, it is the reader who is being the POV character and they can only be one being during a scene, any ambiguity over who’s POV is being used kills the illusion.

(9) All dialogue must do more than one thing to justify it in the book. It must characterize the speaker or the one being spoken to AND contribute to moving the plot forward OR describe setting OR relate back story OR show books theme OR ...(any combination of these or anything else that is relevant to the story)

(10) Each character must have their own distinctive voice (speech patterns, syntax, diction, etc) to the degree that you could remove the speech attribution and still know which character is speaking. Each character may change their speech too depending on what other characters are around since we do this in real life.

(11) When using dialogue the indirect identification method is the best. Ex. Sam crossed his arms. “I doubt that will work.”

(12) Read all dialogue aloud to see if it is sayable and likely heard in real life.

Scene creation:

State how this scene will move the story forward. Know what each character does to help move toward the objective of the scene.
Where and how does the scene begin and end
Who will be the POV character
How will the scene help characterize each character
How will the setting (time, place, surroundings) be revealed through the POV character’s senses, dialogue, thoughts
How will the themes be enriched by the dialogue, setting and characterizations
How will the scene look back and interpret previous scenes (improves story cohesion)
How will the scene help foreshadow the next scene or the rest of the book.
How will the setting influence and affect the actions and moods of the characters

Extra Tidbits.
if you have to refer to the past have the character relay it in their own dialogue
Try to reveal theme through character dialogue instead of authorial comment
Keep your POV internal dialogue simple - it should not be didactic nor should it be fractured grammar. Listen to how you speak to yourself and replicate it in you character thoughts.
Never write afterthoughts or explanatory flashbacks, author essays, description that is not important for the story or setting, dialogue that goes nowhere, characters who don’t contribute to the action or characterization of the main characters.
Never show sex. Just show the causes and effects before and after the act.
Never write anything that violates the POV method.
Use lots of verbs and words with verbal force since it makes the writing and story move forward and hooks the reader.

[Mike Thorn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Craft of Writing is a posthumously assembled collection of fragments, so it doesn't have the sense of "roundness" it might've had if William Sloane had completed it. Still, it's filled with intelligently articulated ideas about writing mechanics.

I try to approach craft books with caution, because taking them too seriously can make me overthink and second-guess just about every step of my process. When they're as clear, thoughtful, and persuasive as this, though, I think they're very much worth the time.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

For my Creative Writing class, we had to read a book on Craft, and I found this at SU's library. While it's a little old, it is still relatable and enjoyable. I already knew a lot of what was said, but Sloane presents his "advice" in a new and intriguing fashion. And there were definitely some new and wonderful ideas that I had never thought about before. I recommend it if you're looking for a nifty little book on craft and you don't mind the fact that it was written in 30 years ago. It's just over 100 pages; I read it in a day.

[Robert Nolin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some really poor advice about show vs. telling. Uses the Bible for a writing sample. Srsly? Some really dated information (circa 1960) published in the 70's. Highly unrecommended.

[Jay Rothermel]

Very useful.

....Density is the opposite of thinness. In its nature it is not divisible. It is not made by lamination but by fusion. It is always there, any place at all in the book. An editor can open a manuscript to any page and tell its presence or absence. In Hemingway's scene of the retreat from Caporetto in A Farewell To Arms, the line "They said to me, Who's dead next, Tenente? Where do we go from here?'" characterizes the speakers, characterizes the hero who hears it, characterizes me, the reader, and foreshadows the whole tragic romance of the book....


This omnipresent quality of successful fiction is extremely easy to recognize once you have learned to look for it. In order to see it in all its complexity, you might reread some books that you've read recently. Reread while the whole book is sharply present in your mind. See how you become aware of the fusion and the density....


When it comes to your own writing, the quality of density will take time to achieve. I believe that it is most likely to result from a lot of prewriting rumination. Telling the novel over, piecemeal, in your mind. Rubbing one part against another until the foreground section has been "tumbled" against the other sections. It is no use writing some parts of a novel in order to get to "other parts" or climaxes. Every sentence, every line of dialogue is important. At some instant, that is the sentence or the speech that the reader will be reading. If the narrative is in motion, it must contain everything needful and nothing for its own separate sake….


From: The Craft of Writing by William Sloane (1983)

[Larry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book holds up well considering that it was published over forty years ago. Five years after Sloane's death, his widow, assembled the introduction he had written for the book he had contemplated, lectures he had in his files, and correspondence with other writers. Unlike most contemporary books about writing which seem to be a hodge-podge of independent sections that dip shallowly into a vast number of things, Sloane's book dives deeply into a few topics that Sloane felt were essential for the writer to consider. These include

The implied contract between the writer and the reader.

What we would now call Point-of-View, which Sloane refers to as "means of perception." Each scene should have exactly one POV character, and nothing should be presented that is not perceived by that character. Authorial intrusion, descriptions of elements of the scene that the POV could not have perceived, and other deviations from Sloane's injunction break the reader's immersion in experiencing the scene from the POV character in the scene.

The narrative process--what we would call the structure of the novel and how it moves from beginning to end.

The importance of scenes, and how to select them. Sloane believed that a novel should be entirely composed of scenes. Each scene should have a beginning, middle, and end.

Characters. Sloane wrote that each character should have their own distinct vocabulary. You should be able to tell which character is talking in a scene without the need for speech tags. Moreover, a character uses a different subset of their vocabulary when talking to different people.

Knowing your material. One of the characteristics of good writing is density, by which Sloane means richness or substance. That is achieved when the optimum number of things are going on at once, some of them overt, and others implied. He says that writing is finding out what you know, and knowing creates density.

[Al Kratz · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can tell it was gathered by notes and lectures by his widower more than his complete design, but it’s a treasure to be able to “hear” his thoughts on the art of fiction. Book is well worth it for the chapter “Between Writer and Reader” and “Fiction and the Means of Perception.”

[Brian Ewuzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best writing advice are usually found in books like this. Straight to the point, no waffling, no tedious explanations. This is a simple book full of insights. Highly recommended to aspiring writers.

[Kirti Vyas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Compiled from the author’s notes posthumously, and it’s a valiant effort. The references/ texts quoted are dated, and a new writer would be better served by William Zinnser, Thomas Foster, Anne Lamott, and others

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic gem of a book. It covers so many excellent subjects in short and direct chapters.

[J. Collbran · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Craft of Writing (1979), by William Sloane, was put together five years after its author’s death by his widow. Though Sloane had published two science-fictiony horror novels, he was mostly known as a publisher, and he was one of the main people behind the annual Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference for a quarter of a century. This slim book collects materials from some of his Bread Loaf lectures as well as from his correspondence. It has some real wisdom in it, but it doesn’t really hang together as a book on the craft of writing. Here are a few kernels: “Let the material dictate the form” (p. 20). “Art cannot be taught . . . What can be taught is technique, craft, method, understanding of the medium” (p. 27). “People are not the principal subject of fiction; they are its only subject” (p. 81). “I urge those of you who are writing fiction to shun the impulse that diminishes the tension inside you while you are writing. Don’t talk about your novel to other people” (pp. 106-7). The sections on “Scene” (Chapter 5) and on “The Nonfiction Writer” (chapter 8) are the least effective in the book.

[Linda · Rating 2 out of 5]

A good book of tips for writers-beginners. I guess my more or less 30 sticky notes in the pages mean that these tips are good enough even for people who already have written bits and pieces. Also thumbs up for original and interesting examples.

Also, I want to emphasize this is not an exercise book, the only (and actually the most important) exercise this book promotes is - to write.

[T. Martin Bennett · Rating 4 out of 5]

My editor is bonkers over this book, so I guess he gets it more than I do, although I really liked the book. Concise and to the point, this 123-page book is worth reading twice for tips on reader transparency or immersion, POV, the narrative process, etc.

[Louise Silk · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disappointing-not much to be in anyway helpful.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

William Sloane has some really important things to say about writing, but his references are extremely dated.

[Sue Burke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good theory, a little thin on application.

[Laurie · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a student of writing I appreciated this book ; as I knew more when I finished reading it about the craft of writing than when I began it