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36 Craft Essays
- GenresWritingNonfictionEssays
142 pages, ebook
Published January 1, 2007
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About the author
Chuck Palahniuk
174 books132k followersWritten in stolen moments under truck chassis and on park benches to a soundtrack of The Downward Spiral and Pablo Honey, Fight Club came into existence. The adaptation of Fight Club was a flop at the box office, but achieved cult status on DVD. The film’s popularity drove sales of the novel. Chuck put out two novels in 1999, Survivor and Invisible Monsters. Choke, published in 2001, became Chuck’s first New York Times bestseller. Chuck’s work has always been infused with personal experience, and his next novel, Lullaby, was no exception. Chuck credits writing Lullaby with helping him cope with the tragic death of his father. Diary and the non-fiction guide to Portland, Fugitives and Refugees, were released in 2003. While on the road in support of Diary, Chuck began reading a short story entitled 'Guts,' which would eventually become part of the novel Haunted.
In the years that followed, he continued to write, publishing the bestselling Rant, Snuff, Pygmy, Tell-All, a 'remix' of Invisible Monsters, Damned, and most recently, Doomed.
Chuck also enjoys giving back to his fans, and teaching the art of storytelling has been an important part of that. In 2004, Chuck began submitting essays to ChuckPalahniuk.net on the craft of writing. These were 'How To' pieces, straight out of Chuck's personal bag of tricks, based on the tenants of minimalism he learned from Tom Spanbauer. Every month, a “Homework Assignment” would accompany the lesson, so Workshop members could apply what they had learned. (all 36 of these essays can currently be found on The Cult's sister-site, LitReactor.com).
Then, in 2009, Chuck increased his involvement by committing to read and review a selection of fan-written stories each month. The best stories are currently set to be published in Burnt Tongues, a forthcoming anthology, with an introduction written by Chuck himself.
His next novel, Beautiful You, is due out in October 2014.
In the years that followed, he continued to write, publishing the bestselling Rant, Snuff, Pygmy, Tell-All, a 'remix' of Invisible Monsters, Damned, and most recently, Doomed.
Chuck also enjoys giving back to his fans, and teaching the art of storytelling has been an important part of that. In 2004, Chuck began submitting essays to ChuckPalahniuk.net on the craft of writing. These were 'How To' pieces, straight out of Chuck's personal bag of tricks, based on the tenants of minimalism he learned from Tom Spanbauer. Every month, a “Homework Assignment” would accompany the lesson, so Workshop members could apply what they had learned. (all 36 of these essays can currently be found on The Cult's sister-site, LitReactor.com).
Then, in 2009, Chuck increased his involvement by committing to read and review a selection of fan-written stories each month. The best stories are currently set to be published in Burnt Tongues, a forthcoming anthology, with an introduction written by Chuck himself.
His next novel, Beautiful You, is due out in October 2014.
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November 28, 2023
Here's a compilation of the most helpful advice. If you are passionate about writing, there are at least a few points that will benefit you.
1. Never say a moment is beyond description. Only the weakest writers say a moment can't be captured in words. That's just lazy.
2. Describe the story with physical sensations. There is a saying that if you don't know what to do next, describe what's happening inside the narrator's mouth. Or the bottom of their feet. Never rush the pages with general descriptions like 'I have a fever'. Add details like what it feels like to have a fever.
3. Submerge the I. A first-person story has authority unlike a third-person one but never use too many I's in the beginning of a sentence. Replace some I's with me, mine and my.
4. Hidden gun: You can show a plot device in the beginning to create tension like a literal gun/ a time bomb. Then hide it and then resurface it in the end for a big reveal/climax.[Hitchcock does this a lot in his movies]. You can do it consciously. Or if you are struggling with how to advance a story, reflect on the previous pages and hide an object in the past.
5. Thesis Sentence: While this works well in a dry essay or thesis – where you must follow rules about structure and presentation. And where content is more important than entertainment. In fiction, opening with a Thesis Sentence will suck all the joy and energy and intrigue out of your work. Instead – you want to raise a question in your reader’s mind. My point is: Don’t tell your audience too much, too fast. Unpack every detail of the sandwich until your audience feels sick.
6. Read what you have written aloud. Speaking will remove the story from you. By crafting it into something larger than a strict memoir, you turn your personal issue into a story that doesn’t exclude others. A bigger, fictionalized story lets other people see, explore, and exhaust their own issues.
7. When your characters describe time, what they’re really describing is themselves. A businessman will describe an hour differently than a student.So, what does a half-hour mean to your character? A whole Sunday morning?
8. Writing continuous dialogue gives a bland moment of quiet in the reader’s mind. Give pauses. When you write: "So? Now that you are dead,", he says, "what are you going to do with your life?", My bet is the reader doesn’t even subvocalize the words between the double quotes. Maybe doesn’t even read them. More likely, the reader’s vision ‘jumps’ those two words or ‘skims’ them, landing even harder on the most important part of the quote. So try to add dynamics with gestures, some actions of their hands, and their body in between.
9. In my perfect writing trap, it’s like this: Very little distraction (no television or phone); enforced seating; a space foreign to me; a lot of other people engaged in some learning or testing; the minimal comforts are provided; and I can’t easily leave for at least an hour. To get writing done, I used to sign up for real estate seminars – really sales seminars where it cost nothing to attend but you’d be pitched a system you could buy. Or I’d go to retirement planning seminars – again, free meetings in hotel ballrooms where you’d be pitched something to buy. I’d even sit in church. I’d sit in during the all-day state bar exams if I could. The LSATs or the GSATs.
10. A Story can be told in two ways, with heart or with head. With heart means the story must be very emotional. Easiest way to tell a story this way is to make the protagonist a fool in the beginning, you know like buster keaton/charlie chaplin characters. In this way you can create empathy for the character. Stephen King tells a lot of his stories in this method. With head means the protagonist is very smart like spy movies. Mix both styles to get amazing results.
11. Use metaphors, not similes. [Similes use the words like and as, try to avoid these two words]
12. This brings us to three types of words to still avoid: “Like” comparisons. “Is” and “has” verbs (“the dog had a limp” is never as strong as “the dog walked with a limp”). And, the dreaded “thought” verbs such as, “knew, realized, believed, worried, understood,” that let you spoon feed your reader, instead of letting the reader think.
13. If you are struggling with writing every day, you can use egg timer method writing. Start boiling some eggs in the kitchen and write until the egg boils. Washing machine also helps.
14. If you need more freedom around the story, draft to draft, change the character names. Characters aren’t real, and they aren’t you. By arbitrarily changing their names, you get the distance you need to really torture a character.
15. A million hours of television sit-coms have trained us to be “witty,” to connect every statement with the perfect reply. It’s a great game wherein one person demonstrates power, and another trumps that. Consider how the perfect, clever response seems to kill the energy in a scene. I say, “How’s the weather?” You say, “Raining.” And the communication is complete. No frustration or unfulfilled expectation slops or builds into the next scene or moment or chapter. So your characters can be clever or you can build tension through rough, incomplete dialogue.
16. Use more verbs, it activates the reader's brain. Studies have proved it.
17. Use less of third-person pronouns. No “he said” or “she walked” or “it flew.” Instead, look at more specific ways of referring to a character. The obvious problem with avoiding pronouns is repeating nouns until they become monotonous. For example, “Shelley Parker closed the book. Then, Shelley Parker dropped the book on the floor. Shelley Parker bent at the waist to retrieve the book.” No, using the pronouns “she” and “it” wouldn’t make these sentences much better, just shorter. So instead, consider that everything has multiple names, the least-powerful of which is the usual noun. For example, “Shelley Parker closed the book. Then, Miss Parker dropped the dusty thing on the floor. The coy minx bent at the waist to retrieve the crumpled pile of pages.”
It’s not perfect, but the passage is getting better.
18. Also, ask yourself and be very clear about what earlier questions the current scene will answer. And what new, larger questions will this scene raise?
19. With that in mind, a huge aspect of telling good stories is listening and recognizing themes that seem unresolved for people. A writer’s job is to express what other people can’t.
20. Sometimes a lie can also act as a gun, a ticking time bomb, that can create tension. The protagonist can tell the lie to other people, which can create anticipation of subjecting to the victim’s emotions when he finally gets caught. Again he can tell a lie to himself. Then he can have some character development of whether to clutch to the lie or let go of it. Even the most sincere people are lying to themselves.
21. A concept: “The Vertical versus the Horizontal” of a story. The Horizontal means the string of plot events from beginning to end. The Vertical means the accumulation of emotion that leads to a character’s “transformation” near the end of the story. Most first drafts are limited to establishing the horizontal – the plotting, scene, characters. It’s usually in reflection that a writer finds and heightens the emotional or vertical aspects of a story.
1. Never say a moment is beyond description. Only the weakest writers say a moment can't be captured in words. That's just lazy.
2. Describe the story with physical sensations. There is a saying that if you don't know what to do next, describe what's happening inside the narrator's mouth. Or the bottom of their feet. Never rush the pages with general descriptions like 'I have a fever'. Add details like what it feels like to have a fever.
3. Submerge the I. A first-person story has authority unlike a third-person one but never use too many I's in the beginning of a sentence. Replace some I's with me, mine and my.
4. Hidden gun: You can show a plot device in the beginning to create tension like a literal gun/ a time bomb. Then hide it and then resurface it in the end for a big reveal/climax.[Hitchcock does this a lot in his movies]. You can do it consciously. Or if you are struggling with how to advance a story, reflect on the previous pages and hide an object in the past.
5. Thesis Sentence: While this works well in a dry essay or thesis – where you must follow rules about structure and presentation. And where content is more important than entertainment. In fiction, opening with a Thesis Sentence will suck all the joy and energy and intrigue out of your work. Instead – you want to raise a question in your reader’s mind. My point is: Don’t tell your audience too much, too fast. Unpack every detail of the sandwich until your audience feels sick.
6. Read what you have written aloud. Speaking will remove the story from you. By crafting it into something larger than a strict memoir, you turn your personal issue into a story that doesn’t exclude others. A bigger, fictionalized story lets other people see, explore, and exhaust their own issues.
7. When your characters describe time, what they’re really describing is themselves. A businessman will describe an hour differently than a student.So, what does a half-hour mean to your character? A whole Sunday morning?
8. Writing continuous dialogue gives a bland moment of quiet in the reader’s mind. Give pauses. When you write: "So? Now that you are dead,", he says, "what are you going to do with your life?", My bet is the reader doesn’t even subvocalize the words between the double quotes. Maybe doesn’t even read them. More likely, the reader’s vision ‘jumps’ those two words or ‘skims’ them, landing even harder on the most important part of the quote. So try to add dynamics with gestures, some actions of their hands, and their body in between.
9. In my perfect writing trap, it’s like this: Very little distraction (no television or phone); enforced seating; a space foreign to me; a lot of other people engaged in some learning or testing; the minimal comforts are provided; and I can’t easily leave for at least an hour. To get writing done, I used to sign up for real estate seminars – really sales seminars where it cost nothing to attend but you’d be pitched a system you could buy. Or I’d go to retirement planning seminars – again, free meetings in hotel ballrooms where you’d be pitched something to buy. I’d even sit in church. I’d sit in during the all-day state bar exams if I could. The LSATs or the GSATs.
10. A Story can be told in two ways, with heart or with head. With heart means the story must be very emotional. Easiest way to tell a story this way is to make the protagonist a fool in the beginning, you know like buster keaton/charlie chaplin characters. In this way you can create empathy for the character. Stephen King tells a lot of his stories in this method. With head means the protagonist is very smart like spy movies. Mix both styles to get amazing results.
11. Use metaphors, not similes. [Similes use the words like and as, try to avoid these two words]
12. This brings us to three types of words to still avoid: “Like” comparisons. “Is” and “has” verbs (“the dog had a limp” is never as strong as “the dog walked with a limp”). And, the dreaded “thought” verbs such as, “knew, realized, believed, worried, understood,” that let you spoon feed your reader, instead of letting the reader think.
13. If you are struggling with writing every day, you can use egg timer method writing. Start boiling some eggs in the kitchen and write until the egg boils. Washing machine also helps.
14. If you need more freedom around the story, draft to draft, change the character names. Characters aren’t real, and they aren’t you. By arbitrarily changing their names, you get the distance you need to really torture a character.
15. A million hours of television sit-coms have trained us to be “witty,” to connect every statement with the perfect reply. It’s a great game wherein one person demonstrates power, and another trumps that. Consider how the perfect, clever response seems to kill the energy in a scene. I say, “How’s the weather?” You say, “Raining.” And the communication is complete. No frustration or unfulfilled expectation slops or builds into the next scene or moment or chapter. So your characters can be clever or you can build tension through rough, incomplete dialogue.
16. Use more verbs, it activates the reader's brain. Studies have proved it.
17. Use less of third-person pronouns. No “he said” or “she walked” or “it flew.” Instead, look at more specific ways of referring to a character. The obvious problem with avoiding pronouns is repeating nouns until they become monotonous. For example, “Shelley Parker closed the book. Then, Shelley Parker dropped the book on the floor. Shelley Parker bent at the waist to retrieve the book.” No, using the pronouns “she” and “it” wouldn’t make these sentences much better, just shorter. So instead, consider that everything has multiple names, the least-powerful of which is the usual noun. For example, “Shelley Parker closed the book. Then, Miss Parker dropped the dusty thing on the floor. The coy minx bent at the waist to retrieve the crumpled pile of pages.”
It’s not perfect, but the passage is getting better.
18. Also, ask yourself and be very clear about what earlier questions the current scene will answer. And what new, larger questions will this scene raise?
19. With that in mind, a huge aspect of telling good stories is listening and recognizing themes that seem unresolved for people. A writer’s job is to express what other people can’t.
20. Sometimes a lie can also act as a gun, a ticking time bomb, that can create tension. The protagonist can tell the lie to other people, which can create anticipation of subjecting to the victim’s emotions when he finally gets caught. Again he can tell a lie to himself. Then he can have some character development of whether to clutch to the lie or let go of it. Even the most sincere people are lying to themselves.
21. A concept: “The Vertical versus the Horizontal” of a story. The Horizontal means the string of plot events from beginning to end. The Vertical means the accumulation of emotion that leads to a character’s “transformation” near the end of the story. Most first drafts are limited to establishing the horizontal – the plotting, scene, characters. It’s usually in reflection that a writer finds and heightens the emotional or vertical aspects of a story.
February 24, 2026
A collection of craft essays gathered from "lessons" from magazine/blog contributions by the novelist Chuck Palahniuk.
Sometimes writing feels like there's a small number of writers, critics, and editors who know the code to good writing and are quietly keeping it to themselves, or just waiting for all the other writers in the world to sweat over or stumble upon the code before they can be let into the club. There's more "ways" to write than there are writers in existence, yet most people if they apply themselves can feel the difference when the writing is "great." I think Palahniuk makes plain some core tenets of what elevates writing.
Palahniuk gives actually good writing advice imo compared to the vast majority of advice out there that's mostly productivity-related or what readers think they like and want to see from authors, or just vibes-based, as if writing, composition, and prose can't be fully articulated or judged by anyone. Palahniuk's advice is definitely pulled from the tenets of his own style, and therefore the basic concerns, goals, and approaches that he has apply to modern writing and modern tastes but don't have the same applicability outside of that scope. That said, modern tastes are still a real shared thing, and what we like and what we find ourselves creating are usually attempts to emulate something commonly shared in art that a lot of people like, whether we realize it or not. I feel like Palahniuk has a finger on the pulse of what good writing looks and sounds like and what to think about and what to do to reach the vision that a writer has in her mind.
Palahniuk highlights common pitfalls in writing that are only familiar or agonizing to writers who have been at it for at least a little while, compared to a lot of popcorn advice online that's only useful if you're starting your first writing project. He speaks in general terms about those pitfalls instead of showing real examples of writing you're not going to like by other people. He compares pitfalls to the improved examples that he writes and demonstrates himself. This is why Palahniuk's advice works better - he shows the advice's impact on prose and understanding. Then in the essays where he doesn't write specific examples, it's easy to follow and trust what he's saying because he's already demonstrated several times that he knows how to make writing stronger at the line level all the way up to the structure level.
Palahniuk compares what writers want to have in their writing to movies a lot of the time, which I found interesting, since I believe that "camera lens writing" is a plague nowadays. But then again, the newest essays in this collection are about two decades old. In addition, Palahniuk is more interested in pacing, story beats, dramatic ebb and flow, and tangible sensory details not including sight (what's visually on the "screen"), so when he talks about being inspired by movies, he's not talking about visuals in a writer's head. In fact, he talks frequently about the problems with "and then, and then, and then" prose and how simply showing the reader what's happening on the page is not actually interesting and not actually narrating or telling a story. This is why "show, don't tell" is screenwriting advice, not novel-writing advice, but it's unfortunately advice that's made entire genres (such as fantasy and scifi) almost unlivable recently.
Something that helped it click for me was Palahniuk talking about the role of the narrator. He's being a little cheeky about introducing or revealing the literal narrator of the words on the page at some point in a story to help ground the reader and set expectations, but serious in that he's suggesting that even the tense of writing you choose as well as the pronoun (first person, third person) matters not just as a storytelling choice, but as a choice that should influence everything from sentence structure to vocabulary to the shape the plot takes at the macro level. "Why is this story being told?" asked in every possible way. If it's "to show you the movie in my head" then that's a problem for your characters and prose. If you're serious about who is telling the story, then how the plot flows and what your sentences sound like will follow suit.
A friend and I were talking about these essays recently and we determined that a lot of the advice is "rules" that a slightly experienced writer will understand on a subliminal level, without necessarily knowing how to put the rule down in words. I found it useful to have it all down in words even if a part of me knew what to strive for and what to avoid already in most of these essays. There are others that hit me upside the head though, so it's worth reading this whole collection and more of Palahniuk's advice that hasn't been gathered up like this yet. I wish the "thought verbs" essay was in here, but it isn't, though reading that one changed my writing forever and immediately.
I mostly kept the fantasy genre in mind as I was reading this. There are modern conventions in fantasy that are taken as gospel for no particular reason, which I think is a problem because the execution of most of it is objectively bad. It was useful to read these essays because they let me think of ways to go against frankly bland conventions in ways that might not alienate impatient readers. A big one is the linear narrative and "and then, and then" prose; another one is the passive, distant role of the narrator; another is the disdain for the "omniscient" viewpoint, which I think is really just a preference for the extremely restricted POV of GRRM's writing or mysteries and thrillers, for instance.
All that said, there are a couple of essays that I frankly did not agree with, lol. The pronouns vs. proper nouns vs. other ways to name the character essay staggered me for how quickly this could lead writers astray, even though Palahniuk approached the topic cautiously. This is how we get "said the blonde" writing. I think this advice only works in specific instances of the story being ironic or outright satirical by putting distance between the respective character and the narration, or maybe, as Palahniuk is trying to argue (I think), when the narrator has an incredibly distinctive voice that would believably name other characters or himself anything but "he/she." In general though, I don't think it works most of the time as a tool to vary the texture of any old writing. I even found his "improved" examples overburdened.
I also have mixed feelings about the advice to have a character use a gesture instead of dialogue wherever a gesture will do. I can see this getting rid of bit words or empty "tennis match" dialogue, which Palahniuk warns against a few times. I go back and forth on whether or not it's a real thing that readers prefer to hit dialogue on the page as soon as possible (this comes from a lot of modern general advice, not from Palahniuk), but I do think that Palahniuk's advice that readers search for verbs as they read to be interesting and kind of a new idea for me. I'm not convinced that a gesture can replace dialogue often enough to be super relevant, but this could also be because Palahniuk's writing and advice is most focused on serving the story and the idea/feeling rather than serving a character or their integrity (he even mentions that characters aren't real and you can easily change their names or do away with names entirely). There's been mutterings lately about how modern writing prioritizes characters ("believable" or even relatable characters) more than it ever has before in history, and the story itself and the idea/feeling is prioritized less than ever. This is more advice that might just run contrary to the conventions of fantasy, but that fantasy could maybe stand to make room for more variety and changed conventions given the examples.
At the end of this collection, Palahniuk shows us what a first draft of his short story "Fetch" looks like. I love seeing first drafts by authors I admire. I was surprised - and maybe just a little dismayed - at how similar this first draft is to the final product. From how Palahniuk talks about how much of a "disaster" his first drafts are, I was expecting significant developmental differences between first draft and final; instead, I detected mostly line edits. I found his notes in the essay collection showing where he applied his advice in that first draft to be extremely helpful; I found any comparison to the final draft to be less helpful, lol. But then again, none of Palahniuk's advice had anything tangible to say about drafting (just "you can do xyz in the next draft," not "here is how I draft"). So he hasn't advised on the drafting process itself; and maybe he's someone who drafts less than he thinks he does. Who knows.
Sometimes writing feels like there's a small number of writers, critics, and editors who know the code to good writing and are quietly keeping it to themselves, or just waiting for all the other writers in the world to sweat over or stumble upon the code before they can be let into the club. There's more "ways" to write than there are writers in existence, yet most people if they apply themselves can feel the difference when the writing is "great." I think Palahniuk makes plain some core tenets of what elevates writing.
Palahniuk gives actually good writing advice imo compared to the vast majority of advice out there that's mostly productivity-related or what readers think they like and want to see from authors, or just vibes-based, as if writing, composition, and prose can't be fully articulated or judged by anyone. Palahniuk's advice is definitely pulled from the tenets of his own style, and therefore the basic concerns, goals, and approaches that he has apply to modern writing and modern tastes but don't have the same applicability outside of that scope. That said, modern tastes are still a real shared thing, and what we like and what we find ourselves creating are usually attempts to emulate something commonly shared in art that a lot of people like, whether we realize it or not. I feel like Palahniuk has a finger on the pulse of what good writing looks and sounds like and what to think about and what to do to reach the vision that a writer has in her mind.
Palahniuk highlights common pitfalls in writing that are only familiar or agonizing to writers who have been at it for at least a little while, compared to a lot of popcorn advice online that's only useful if you're starting your first writing project. He speaks in general terms about those pitfalls instead of showing real examples of writing you're not going to like by other people. He compares pitfalls to the improved examples that he writes and demonstrates himself. This is why Palahniuk's advice works better - he shows the advice's impact on prose and understanding. Then in the essays where he doesn't write specific examples, it's easy to follow and trust what he's saying because he's already demonstrated several times that he knows how to make writing stronger at the line level all the way up to the structure level.
Palahniuk compares what writers want to have in their writing to movies a lot of the time, which I found interesting, since I believe that "camera lens writing" is a plague nowadays. But then again, the newest essays in this collection are about two decades old. In addition, Palahniuk is more interested in pacing, story beats, dramatic ebb and flow, and tangible sensory details not including sight (what's visually on the "screen"), so when he talks about being inspired by movies, he's not talking about visuals in a writer's head. In fact, he talks frequently about the problems with "and then, and then, and then" prose and how simply showing the reader what's happening on the page is not actually interesting and not actually narrating or telling a story. This is why "show, don't tell" is screenwriting advice, not novel-writing advice, but it's unfortunately advice that's made entire genres (such as fantasy and scifi) almost unlivable recently.
Something that helped it click for me was Palahniuk talking about the role of the narrator. He's being a little cheeky about introducing or revealing the literal narrator of the words on the page at some point in a story to help ground the reader and set expectations, but serious in that he's suggesting that even the tense of writing you choose as well as the pronoun (first person, third person) matters not just as a storytelling choice, but as a choice that should influence everything from sentence structure to vocabulary to the shape the plot takes at the macro level. "Why is this story being told?" asked in every possible way. If it's "to show you the movie in my head" then that's a problem for your characters and prose. If you're serious about who is telling the story, then how the plot flows and what your sentences sound like will follow suit.
A friend and I were talking about these essays recently and we determined that a lot of the advice is "rules" that a slightly experienced writer will understand on a subliminal level, without necessarily knowing how to put the rule down in words. I found it useful to have it all down in words even if a part of me knew what to strive for and what to avoid already in most of these essays. There are others that hit me upside the head though, so it's worth reading this whole collection and more of Palahniuk's advice that hasn't been gathered up like this yet. I wish the "thought verbs" essay was in here, but it isn't, though reading that one changed my writing forever and immediately.
I mostly kept the fantasy genre in mind as I was reading this. There are modern conventions in fantasy that are taken as gospel for no particular reason, which I think is a problem because the execution of most of it is objectively bad. It was useful to read these essays because they let me think of ways to go against frankly bland conventions in ways that might not alienate impatient readers. A big one is the linear narrative and "and then, and then" prose; another one is the passive, distant role of the narrator; another is the disdain for the "omniscient" viewpoint, which I think is really just a preference for the extremely restricted POV of GRRM's writing or mysteries and thrillers, for instance.
All that said, there are a couple of essays that I frankly did not agree with, lol. The pronouns vs. proper nouns vs. other ways to name the character essay staggered me for how quickly this could lead writers astray, even though Palahniuk approached the topic cautiously. This is how we get "said the blonde" writing. I think this advice only works in specific instances of the story being ironic or outright satirical by putting distance between the respective character and the narration, or maybe, as Palahniuk is trying to argue (I think), when the narrator has an incredibly distinctive voice that would believably name other characters or himself anything but "he/she." In general though, I don't think it works most of the time as a tool to vary the texture of any old writing. I even found his "improved" examples overburdened.
I also have mixed feelings about the advice to have a character use a gesture instead of dialogue wherever a gesture will do. I can see this getting rid of bit words or empty "tennis match" dialogue, which Palahniuk warns against a few times. I go back and forth on whether or not it's a real thing that readers prefer to hit dialogue on the page as soon as possible (this comes from a lot of modern general advice, not from Palahniuk), but I do think that Palahniuk's advice that readers search for verbs as they read to be interesting and kind of a new idea for me. I'm not convinced that a gesture can replace dialogue often enough to be super relevant, but this could also be because Palahniuk's writing and advice is most focused on serving the story and the idea/feeling rather than serving a character or their integrity (he even mentions that characters aren't real and you can easily change their names or do away with names entirely). There's been mutterings lately about how modern writing prioritizes characters ("believable" or even relatable characters) more than it ever has before in history, and the story itself and the idea/feeling is prioritized less than ever. This is more advice that might just run contrary to the conventions of fantasy, but that fantasy could maybe stand to make room for more variety and changed conventions given the examples.
At the end of this collection, Palahniuk shows us what a first draft of his short story "Fetch" looks like. I love seeing first drafts by authors I admire. I was surprised - and maybe just a little dismayed - at how similar this first draft is to the final product. From how Palahniuk talks about how much of a "disaster" his first drafts are, I was expecting significant developmental differences between first draft and final; instead, I detected mostly line edits. I found his notes in the essay collection showing where he applied his advice in that first draft to be extremely helpful; I found any comparison to the final draft to be less helpful, lol. But then again, none of Palahniuk's advice had anything tangible to say about drafting (just "you can do xyz in the next draft," not "here is how I draft"). So he hasn't advised on the drafting process itself; and maybe he's someone who drafts less than he thinks he does. Who knows.
July 14, 2021
The advice is excellent. Palahniuk is a very kinetic, immediate writer, and a lot of his advice pushes on that. So it'll boil down on your preference. To me, he's one of my style heroes, so it worked perfect. Also the way he combines many different forms of media to talk and advise about writing is frankly excellent and what I miss in other writers.
The story was... gruesome. Nightmarish and odd. Not sure if I got what it was going for and the constant notes interrupted any flow. But this is the beauty of Palahniuk: he's so in your face and immediate that you'll forgive him for stranger turns in plots. Immediate crudeness is still a form of prose and a beautiful one at that.
The story was... gruesome. Nightmarish and odd. Not sure if I got what it was going for and the constant notes interrupted any flow. But this is the beauty of Palahniuk: he's so in your face and immediate that you'll forgive him for stranger turns in plots. Immediate crudeness is still a form of prose and a beautiful one at that.
November 20, 2018
Lots of thought-provoking ideas here, that work well as exercises even if you wouldn't want to incorporate them in your regular writing style. It works well as a challenge to one's laziness or thoughtlessness in filling blanks with easy solutions like "he thought that..." and suggesting that unpacking things through action is more engaging. Throwing away the interior monologue, however, means losing one of the main weapons that a book has that a film lacks.
A lot of variations on "Show don't tell" and a lot of icky detail, as you might expect from Palahniuk. This book lacks a little bit of qualification, it's more of a "Here's how to write like me and my mentor Tom Spanbauer" rather than "Here's a few tools and exercises to consider".
A lot of variations on "Show don't tell" and a lot of icky detail, as you might expect from Palahniuk. This book lacks a little bit of qualification, it's more of a "Here's how to write like me and my mentor Tom Spanbauer" rather than "Here's a few tools and exercises to consider".
September 12, 2021
Just a weird fuckin' guy giving you tips on paying attention to the world. If you like him, you'll like this. Every essay focuses on a singular theme, and Palahniuk delivers his tutelage in a way that is neither patronizing nor hokey. He doesn't come off as a full-of-himself writing teacher or anything--but you probably wouldn't expect that from him, anyway. His style is sleek, unique, and grotesque, and this collection gives the reader a chance to see how a professional does it firsthand. Also, the 'assigned readings' at the end of each chapter are phenomenal. If you want to know whether you'd enjoy thinking or working or even just acting like a writer, give this a read.
May 16, 2021
Excellent insights from Palahniuk on the process of writing. I also enjoyed the four additional essays he wrote in 2014-2015. Many of these ideas later appeared in Consider This, but there is a lot of material only found in these essays.
September 11, 2019
My favorite author gives some great insights on his writing process.
Am I biased? Hell yes. Five on five.
Am I biased? Hell yes. Five on five.
May 3, 2015
While successfully giving aspiring authors great advice, Palahniuk inserts anecdotes that will make even the harshest critics laugh out loud.
May 29, 2014
A must read for anyone interested in mastering the craft.
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