Short story expert David Jauss — author of “Glossolalia” and “Nice People,” among other collections of fiction — retired a decade ago from his 34-year post as a creative writing professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, but he’s still teaching through his craft books. His latest guide, “Words Made Flesh: The Craft of Fiction,” came out in October via Press 53.
A bit from the book’s preface:
Unfortunately, many creative writing textbooks and essay collections take a prescriptive rather than a descriptive approach to matters of craft and thus restrict our sense of what’s possible in fiction. In the six essays in this book, I have tried to expand our understanding of the craft of fiction by describing what writers have actually done rather than by prescribing what they should do. As a result, the essays take issue with some of the reigning dogmas of the day, as expressed both in standard creative writing guides and in the practice of many contemporary fiction writers.
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Perhaps this only appeals to short story nerds like me, but Jauss recently sat down for an insightful discussion with the writer Philip Graham about some of the lessons imparted by his new book.
The conversation touches on the virtues of rereading (“Reading a story once is like a one-night stand; rereading it numerous times over the course of years is like a marriage, and I recommend that all readers be polygamists”); the pitfalls of being too certain about your characters (“I believe that any character who is fully known at any point in the story, much less before the story is even started, is too devoid of mystery to be plausible”); and Jauss’ unique approach to revising (“Some writers believe that the revision process should end when a work is published, but I think it should end only when the author stops breathing”).
Find the full interview at 3 Quarks Daily.
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