Elements of Fiction

by Walter Mosley

Following his essential writing guide, This Year You Write Your Novel, award-winning author Walter Mosley delivers an eloquent treatise on the craft of fiction writing--part writing guide, part study of the mechanics of the genre.

In his essential writing guide, This Year You Write Your Novel, Walter Mosley supplied aspiring writers with the basic tools to write a novel in one year. In this com-plementary follow up, Mosley guides the writer through the elements of not just any fiction writing, but the kind of writing that transcends convention and truly stands out. How does one approach the genius of writers like Melville, Dickens, or Twain? In The Elements of Fiction, Walter Mosley contemplates the answer.

In a series of instructive and conversational chapters, Mosley demonstrates how to master fiction's most essential elements: character and char-acter development, plot and story, voice and narrative, context and description, and more. The result is a vivid depiction of the writing process, from the blank page to the first draft to rewriting, and rewriting again. Throughout, The Elements of Fiction is enriched by brilliant demonstrative examples that Mosley himself has written here for the first time.

Inspiring, accessible, and told in a voice both trustworthy and wise, The Elements of Fiction writing will intrigue and encourage writers and readers alike.

• ISBN13: 9780802157355
• Publish Date: 8 October 2020
• Publish Status: Forthcoming
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 128
• Language: English

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Elements of Fiction is a guide/tutorial/master-class on elements of writing aimed at writers (or would-be writers) by well known author Walter Mosley. Released 3rd Sept. 2019 by Grove Atlantic on their Grove Press imprint, it's a concise 128 pages and available in hardcover, ebook, and audio formats.

I've been a fan of Mr. Mosley's crime- and science- fiction for many years and although I don't really have any definite desires to be a writer myself, it's always enlightening to get to see some of the nuts-and-bolts of the process going on behind the scenes. I was hoping for some step-by-step tutorials or hand holding 'start HERE and do this or that' type teaching. This is emphatically not that book. What it is, however, is a conversational treatise on the philosophy of the craft and scattered nuggets of real salient wisdom about what makes a good novel good and sometimes great.

As an almost(?) neurotically active reader, I've often experienced having positive or negative feelings about a narrative and not easily being able to articulate precisely why. There were several gut-punch moments in this book which, for me, shone a light on some of those visceral reactions. I'm tempted to go back and re-read some of those books which confused me with an eye toward deconstructing them in terms of the information in this book.

As a straight up how-to-write-a-novel tutorial, this isn't This Year You Write Your Novel. This book is much less focused on the writing process and more a long conversational essay on writing philosophy. The chapters are very loosely tied together, some of them segueing into the next chapter, some exploring a theme and then petering out. This is not a book with a logical layout and bullet point lists of information. Readers who are looking for easily found info-points, graphs, marketing or any related items will be disappointed. Those who are open to guidance from a lifetime of experience by a gifted writer will find much to assimilate in this book.

Four stars. This is an information rich book, but in a philosophical manner. There are no easy opt-ins for the wisdom Mosley shares, we have to think about what he writes. I recommend it for readers who want to know the 'why' more than the 'how-to' of writing fiction.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes