Love these life posts. Always stoked to see them come through.
Question for you this month about the artist life: How did you navigate that decade between Drown and Oscar? Would love some insight both in terms of emotionally (any mantras that kept you going, useful beliefs, books, etc) and also (if you're willing to share) what that looked like for you life/work wise. Were you a "dead end job I'll scrape by however and keep writing" kinda guy? Or did you have some semblance of a life/career + plan if the writing never fully took off? Been wrestling with some existential ideas around this at the moment and would love any insights on how you navigated it! Thanks again for the great resource, been learning a ton 🙏
I’ve been writing novels and working on learning the craft for several decades. I’ll always write novels, but lately I’m having ideas for short stories. So, I bought the 2023 short story collection you recommended recently.
My question - What’s up with dialogue? Is it considered a disdained part of the craft now? I see barely any dialogue in most of the stories considered the best of 2023. Also, I’ve seen a few (two) agents on Substack mention in passing how too much dialogue is a sign of a beginner.
This concerns me a bit. I think of dialogue as my writing strength. I love listening to people talk and I love working on a conversation until it’s full of nuance, meaning, and sounds authentic. I hold onto Walter Mosley as champion of how dialogue can move a novel. So, if dialogue isn’t in style, it doesn’t matter to me as far as the writing goes. I write for the story, not the market. I’ll keep writing dialogue. But, it sure would be good to know before I try to sub a story to lit mags. I’m assuming dialogue is still ok in novels, as I see it in writers like James McBride, but maybe I’m wrong?
I would love your thoughts or if my observation is off, would love to know from the community. Maybe dialogue has always been disdained in literary market?
Thank you for all your honest, real advice here. Btw, I’m Jersey (Asbury Park) and put 2 kids through Rutgers, one, the artist of course, housed in Demerest. The other, home for a visit last week, stole my copy of Oscar Wao saying he opened to a random page and the portrayal of two roommates was so exactly like two guys he knew, and so hilarious, he kept reading until he was totally hooked and then started page 1. Proof to you that your characters are timeless and you are on Rutger’s mind too.
ada, thank you for your kind comments. to be honest i dont think that dialogue is particularly on the out. It all depends on what books we're reading. the canon is vast, after all. (also: too much of anything is a sign of a beginner). perhaps in some sectors folks are eschewing dialogue A) because that shit is hard to write and B) because it seems more "literary." (given how many of my young writers are learning to write from screens which encourages a lot of dialogue, lack of dialogue might be a way that some writers signal literary "seriousness" ).
to me, it seems that dialogue is alive and well. certainly in novels of incident - from mysteries on down (or up, depending on how you view these things) and plenty of our best literary writers are dialogue crazy. check out Colm Tóibín. his latest LONG ISLAND is a masterclass in dialogue. check out Roddy Doyle's work. or Francisco Goldman's novels. or Edwidge Danticat and Danzy Senna.
the canon is big enough that there's always material for discouragement. my advice: focus on what encourages and motivates.
As I write, I've been thinking about causality. George Saunders discusses this in A Swim in a Pond in the Rain as one of the main reasons some writers stop writing: they can't figure out causality. I'm wondering about your thoughts on this craft element.
"Making causality doesn't seem sexy or particularly literary. It's a workmanlike thing, to make A cause B, the stuff of vaudeville, of Hollywood. But it's the hardest thing to learn. It doesn't come naturally, not to most of us. But that's really all a story is: a series of things that happen in sequence, in which we can discern a pattern of causality" (226)
He goes on to use the "The queen died, and the king died of grief" example.
Then he adds: "Causality is to the writer what melody is to the songwriter: a superpower that the audience feels as the crux of the matter; the thing the audience actually shows up for; the hardest thing to do; that which distinguishes the competent practitioner from the extraordinary one.
A well-written bit of prose is like a beautifully hand-painted kite, lying there on the grass. It's nice. We admire it. Causality is the wind that then comes along and lifts it up. The kite is then a beautiful thing made even more beautiful by the fact that it's doing what it was made to do" (227).
I interpret all this as Saunders saying the reader will search for reasons behind every event and action in a story, and that truly established causality will make the characters and story sing. It's about creating relationships among all the elements in a story. I realize this is related to worldbuilding and character development. I'm curious to hear any other thoughts.
Junot, I'm so appreciative of your thorough and substantive response to my question! Thank you for your insight and your time--even to go so far as to read the book I referenced! Your mechanics breakdowns are, as always, enormously helpful. Thank you for both assuaging my fears about prioritizing causality and for placing it in the context of genre. And for emphasizing it as a product of strong character, conflict, and worldbuilding. All of the specific examples help me see its various functions. Thank you again for taking the time to answer my question!
victoria, i wish i could have done a better job but glad it made some kind of sense. believe me your astute question was an enormous help because it forced me to make the abstract actionable and reproducible.
we all have our homebrews and in george causality seems very very important. there's no question that causality matters and george makes a stirring lyrical defense of it but as you might expect i have a different sense of what makes "a well-written bit of prose" soar. like i said, we all have our homebrews and we all stress different elements. hopefully i can answer you more fully in the next week or two. thank you for your wonderful question, victoria.
Love these life posts. Always stoked to see them come through.
Question for you this month about the artist life: How did you navigate that decade between Drown and Oscar? Would love some insight both in terms of emotionally (any mantras that kept you going, useful beliefs, books, etc) and also (if you're willing to share) what that looked like for you life/work wise. Were you a "dead end job I'll scrape by however and keep writing" kinda guy? Or did you have some semblance of a life/career + plan if the writing never fully took off? Been wrestling with some existential ideas around this at the moment and would love any insights on how you navigated it! Thanks again for the great resource, been learning a ton 🙏
I’ve been writing novels and working on learning the craft for several decades. I’ll always write novels, but lately I’m having ideas for short stories. So, I bought the 2023 short story collection you recommended recently.
My question - What’s up with dialogue? Is it considered a disdained part of the craft now? I see barely any dialogue in most of the stories considered the best of 2023. Also, I’ve seen a few (two) agents on Substack mention in passing how too much dialogue is a sign of a beginner.
This concerns me a bit. I think of dialogue as my writing strength. I love listening to people talk and I love working on a conversation until it’s full of nuance, meaning, and sounds authentic. I hold onto Walter Mosley as champion of how dialogue can move a novel. So, if dialogue isn’t in style, it doesn’t matter to me as far as the writing goes. I write for the story, not the market. I’ll keep writing dialogue. But, it sure would be good to know before I try to sub a story to lit mags. I’m assuming dialogue is still ok in novels, as I see it in writers like James McBride, but maybe I’m wrong?
I would love your thoughts or if my observation is off, would love to know from the community. Maybe dialogue has always been disdained in literary market?
Thank you for all your honest, real advice here. Btw, I’m Jersey (Asbury Park) and put 2 kids through Rutgers, one, the artist of course, housed in Demerest. The other, home for a visit last week, stole my copy of Oscar Wao saying he opened to a random page and the portrayal of two roommates was so exactly like two guys he knew, and so hilarious, he kept reading until he was totally hooked and then started page 1. Proof to you that your characters are timeless and you are on Rutger’s mind too.
ada, thank you for your kind comments. to be honest i dont think that dialogue is particularly on the out. It all depends on what books we're reading. the canon is vast, after all. (also: too much of anything is a sign of a beginner). perhaps in some sectors folks are eschewing dialogue A) because that shit is hard to write and B) because it seems more "literary." (given how many of my young writers are learning to write from screens which encourages a lot of dialogue, lack of dialogue might be a way that some writers signal literary "seriousness" ).
to me, it seems that dialogue is alive and well. certainly in novels of incident - from mysteries on down (or up, depending on how you view these things) and plenty of our best literary writers are dialogue crazy. check out Colm Tóibín. his latest LONG ISLAND is a masterclass in dialogue. check out Roddy Doyle's work. or Francisco Goldman's novels. or Edwidge Danticat and Danzy Senna.
the canon is big enough that there's always material for discouragement. my advice: focus on what encourages and motivates.
makes life easier.
Thank you. This really helps.
Stella Maris is 90% dialogue. And what a dialogue… what a novel… I guess fads will be fads, but what is true is true :)
Thank you, Zoe. I will check it out.
Stuart Dybek comes to mind. His story in The New Yorker, If I Vanish, opens with a lot of dialogue. Excellent. I read that story again and again.
That’s great to know. I will track it down. Thank you.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/07/09/if-i-vanished
Thanks for the recs! The Apartment is top of my list. Also, haven't heard of either of those Quincy gems (and I'm from the South Shore)
evan youre in for some excellent meals then! enjoy!
Something I wrote recently. It's been all about gas stations and fires and stuff lately.
Raining in Las Vegas
It's raining in Las Vegas
The people are being told to leave
And Disneyland burned down
The circus just doesn't come to town
Like it used to back when we were the people
The only people who mattered.
And we shop and we shop
Try to be good and we fight each other over shopping carts.
And we send and we send all these random goods and messages
Watch out sideways lest these barbarians come to town
We think about looting and burning and apocalypse
Until it is just too hard to sit it out anymore.
Stand and sway and je accuse
Tomorrow the fires wane, the floods subside
Another distraction beckons.
And we get up again, like agonized battery bunnies
We get up and do it again because we care
It keeps getting worse and we keep caring
We keep wanting to be ready for the next one.
I mean just look at us.
June 22 2024
Looks better with paragraph breaks. Sorry about that.
As I write, I've been thinking about causality. George Saunders discusses this in A Swim in a Pond in the Rain as one of the main reasons some writers stop writing: they can't figure out causality. I'm wondering about your thoughts on this craft element.
victoria, please explain. what does george mean by this?
I'll quote from the book!
"Making causality doesn't seem sexy or particularly literary. It's a workmanlike thing, to make A cause B, the stuff of vaudeville, of Hollywood. But it's the hardest thing to learn. It doesn't come naturally, not to most of us. But that's really all a story is: a series of things that happen in sequence, in which we can discern a pattern of causality" (226)
He goes on to use the "The queen died, and the king died of grief" example.
Then he adds: "Causality is to the writer what melody is to the songwriter: a superpower that the audience feels as the crux of the matter; the thing the audience actually shows up for; the hardest thing to do; that which distinguishes the competent practitioner from the extraordinary one.
A well-written bit of prose is like a beautifully hand-painted kite, lying there on the grass. It's nice. We admire it. Causality is the wind that then comes along and lifts it up. The kite is then a beautiful thing made even more beautiful by the fact that it's doing what it was made to do" (227).
I interpret all this as Saunders saying the reader will search for reasons behind every event and action in a story, and that truly established causality will make the characters and story sing. It's about creating relationships among all the elements in a story. I realize this is related to worldbuilding and character development. I'm curious to hear any other thoughts.
ive put some things down and will share soon - whether this will help, i have no idea. sorry if it doesnt. more soon
Junot, I'm so appreciative of your thorough and substantive response to my question! Thank you for your insight and your time--even to go so far as to read the book I referenced! Your mechanics breakdowns are, as always, enormously helpful. Thank you for both assuaging my fears about prioritizing causality and for placing it in the context of genre. And for emphasizing it as a product of strong character, conflict, and worldbuilding. All of the specific examples help me see its various functions. Thank you again for taking the time to answer my question!
victoria, i wish i could have done a better job but glad it made some kind of sense. believe me your astute question was an enormous help because it forced me to make the abstract actionable and reproducible.
You did an excellent job!
we all have our homebrews and in george causality seems very very important. there's no question that causality matters and george makes a stirring lyrical defense of it but as you might expect i have a different sense of what makes "a well-written bit of prose" soar. like i said, we all have our homebrews and we all stress different elements. hopefully i can answer you more fully in the next week or two. thank you for your wonderful question, victoria.
Holy damn, Lismar tho