Think of these features as the fast food of writing wisdom. Quick. Meaty. And effortless. Grab and go back to your writing.
This week’s post is on fiction straight from the words of Rachel Joyce, author of a recent book I read and am still digesting: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.
In the back of this inspiring novel, I found an interview between Joyce and another author, Charlotte Rogan. I gleaned a handful of fiction and even insights on life from their conversation. I hope you will too:
Rachel Joyce: “Reading is a creative process. As writers, we must do everything we can to make a world that stands up as if it could be a real one. Not necessarily the real one; not necessarily the world the reader knows. But within its own confines, that world must be plausible. It must add up. After that, the reader meets you halfway. The reader fills out your words with pictures, with breath, with feeling.”
“…whenever I begin a story, I like to ask myself, What is the situation here? What is the thing that has to change? All the clues-I think-should like in the opening scene. But they mustn’t have rings round them, signifying LOOK AT US! WE ARE CLUES! The story must work on a superficial level, and it must also work on a deeper level for someone like you who cares to look back and re-examine. That is the delight of storytelling for me: that it can be what it is, and that it can also carry reverberations, when you go back and look a second time.”
“…my first drafts are shocking. I reread them and I want to give up. After that, I go back and I go back and I go back. And every time I look at a scene-or I scrape at the surface-I see things a little more clearly. As for inspiration, sometimes I read poetry. Sometimes I look at writers I admire. But the thing is, I can only be who I am-so I have to keep whittling away. Besides, no one knows the story you are writing as well as you know it. And so you have to keep challenging yourself. You have to keep asking, Is this true, as I know truth?”
