The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers (29 page)

    2. Take a simple event: A man gets off a bus, trips, looks around in embarrassment, and sees a woman smiling. (Compare Raymond Queneau,
Exercices du Style
.) Describe this event, using the same characters and elements of setting, in
five
completely different ways (changes of style, tone, sentence structure,
voice, psychic distance, etc.). Make sure the styles are
radically
different; otherwise, the exercise is wasted.

    3. Write three effective long sentences: each at least one full typed page (or 250 words), each involving a different emotion (for example, anger, pensiveness, sorrow, joy). Purpose: control of tone in a complex sentence.

    4a. Describe a landscape as seen by an old woman whose disgusting and detestable old husband has just died. Do not mention the husband or death.

    4b. Describe a lake as seen by a young man who has just committed murder. Do not mention the murder.

    4c. Describe a landscape as seen by a bird. Do not mention the bird.

    4d. Describe a building as seen by a man whose son has just been killed in a war. Do not mention the son, war, death, or the old man doing the seeing; then describe the same building, in the same weather and at the same time of day, as seen by a happy lover. Do not mention love or the loved one.

    5. Write the opening of a novel using the authorialomniscient voice, making the authorial omniscience clear by going into the thoughts of one or more characters after establishing the voice. As subject, use either a trip or the arrival of a stranger (some disruption of order—the usual novel beginning).

    6. Write a novel opening, on any subject, in which the point of view is third person objective. Write a short-story opening in this same point of view.

    
7. Write a monologue of at least three pages, in which the interruptions—pauses, gestures, description, etc.—all clearly and persuasively characterize, and the shifts from monologue to gesture and touches of setting (as when the character touches some object or glances out the window) all feel rhythmically right. Purpose: to learn ways of letting a character make a long speech that doesn’t seem boring or artificial.

    8. Write a dialogue in which each of the two characters has a secret. Do not reveal the secret but make the reader intuit it. For example, the dialogue might be between a husband, who has just lost his job and hasn’t worked up the courage to tell his wife, and his wife, who has a lover in the bedroom. Purpose: to give two characters individual ways of speaking, and to make dialogue crackle with feelings not directly expressed. Remember that in dialogue, as a general rule, every pause must somehow be shown, either by narration (for example, “she paused”) or by some gesture or other break that shows the pause. And remember that gesture is a part of all real dialogue. Sometimes, for instance, we look away instead of answering.

    9. Write a two-page (or longer) character sketch using objects, landscape, weather, etc., to intensify the reader’s sense of what the character is like. Use no similes (“She was like…”). Purpose: to create convincing character by using more than intellect, engaging both the conscious and unconscious mind.

    10. Write a two-page (or longer) dramatic fragment (part of a story) using objects, landscape, weather, etc., to intensify two characters, as well as the relationship between them. Purpose: the same as in exercise 9 but now making the same scenic background, etc., serve more than one purpose. In a diner, for instance, one character may tend to look at certain objects inside the diner, the other may look at a different set of objects or may look out the window.

    
11. From exercise 10, develop the plot of a short story.

    12. Describe and evoke a simple action (for example, sharpening a pencil, carving a tombstone, shooting a rat).

    13. Write a brief sketch in the essayist-omniscient voice.

    14. Write three acceptable examples of purple prose—that is, highly self-conscious and arty prose made acceptable by subject, parodic intent, voice, etc.

    15. Write a brief passage on some stock subject (a journey, a landscape, a sexual encounter) in the rhythm of a long novel, then in the rhythm of a tight short story.

    16. Write an honest and sensitive description (or sketch) of (a) one of your parents, (b) a mythological beast, and (c) a ghost.

    17. Describe a character in a brief passage (one or two pages) using mostly long vowels and soft consonants (
o
as in “moan,”
e
as in “see”;
l, m, n, sh
, etc.); then describe the same character, using mostly short vowels and hard consonants (
i
as in “sit”;
k, t, p, gg
, etc.).

    18. Write a prose passage that makes effective and noticeable use of rhyme.

    19. Write the first three pages of a tale.

    20. Plot each of the following: a short-short story, a yarn, a fable, a sketch, a tale, a short story, an energeic novel, an architectonic novel, a novel in which episodes are not causally related (allegorical or lyrical structure, for example), a radio play, an opera, a film that could only be a film.

    
21. In a fully developed monologue (see exercise 7) present a philosophical position you tend to favor, but present it through a character and in a context that modifies or undermines it.

    22. Write a passage using abrupt and radical—but thoroughly acceptable—shifts from the authorial-omniscient point of view to the third person subjective.

    23a. In high parodic form (in the way Shakespeare seriously parodied the revenge tragedy in
Hamlet
, for example), plot one of the following: a gothic, a mystery, a sci-fi, a Western, a drugstore romance.

    23b. Write the first three pages of the novel plotted in 23a, using the trash form as the basis of a serious piece of fiction.

    24. Without an instant’s lapse of taste, describe a person (a) going to the bathroom, (b) vomiting, (c) murdering a child.

    25. Write a short piece of fiction in mixed prose and verse.

    26. Write, without irony, a character’s moving defense of himself (herself).

    27. Using all you know, write a short story about an animal—for instance, a cow.

    28. Write a short story about some well-known legendary figure.

    29. Write a true story using anything you need.

    30. Write a fabulous story using anything you need.

B
OOKS BY
J
OHN
G
ARDNER

“
The Art of Fiction
will fascinate anyone interested in how fiction gets put together. For the young writer, it will become a necessary handbook, a stern judge, an encouraging friend.”

—
The New York Times Book Review

Writing/Reference/0–679-73403–1

One snowy night, the narrator of John Gardner’s marvelous folktale meets Freddy, a grotesquely huge and fearfully shy adolescent. Freddy has written a book, a magical tale of chivalry, with kings, bishops, shamans, peasants, and knights all locked in combat in a sixteenth-century Sweden where a very real Devil still has a scaly finger in every conspiracy—and a grip on every soul.

Fiction/0–679-72194–0

One of the oldest recorded legends is here restored to its original lyricism and excitement. The result is a rendering of myth and history, a timeless story of the search for immortality and man’s anguish in the face of the futility of that search. Accompanied by extensive notes and appendices.

Poetry/0–394-74089–0

In John Gardner’s bestselling twist on the Beowulf legend, the terrifying monster Grendel tells
his
side of the story. This modern classic is a tragic, grotesque, and often comic exploration of the noblest ideals of man and his darker nature.

“Deserves a place on the same shelf as
Lord of the Flies, Cat’s Cradle
and
Catcher in the Rye
.”

—
Christian Science Monitor

Fiction/0–679-72311–0

In John Gardner’s last and most ambitious novel, madness, mystery, the drama of a shattered life, and the beauty of the philosophical struggle combine to produce that rarest of works: an epic that is intelligent, daring, and at the same time compelling.

“Breathtaking, audacious, vast in conception, meticulous in surface detail.”

—
St. Louis Post Dispatch

Fiction/0–679-72308–0

The simple, haunting story of a fat, gentle, middle-aged man who runs a rural diner and the young, plain girl who drifts into his life and remains to become a part of it.

“Shapely and moving enough to make you believe, while you are reading it, in ancient forms and permanent truths.”

—
The New York Times

Fiction/0–394-74393–8

An old man and an old woman, the brother and sister in John Gardner’s “most touching and accessible work of fiction” (
The New York Times
), live together in profound conflict, surviving on fantasy, threatened by reality lurking outside their door.

Fiction/0–679-72133–9

AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE, OR CALL TOLL-FREE TO ORDER 1–800-733–3000 (CREDIT CARDS ONLY).

John Gardner was accorded wide praise for his works of imagination (including the novels
Grendel
and
October Light
), of criticism, and of scholarship. He was born in 1933 in Batavia, New York. Among the universities at which he taught are Oberlin, San Francisco State, Northwestern, Southern Illinois, Bennington, and the State University of New York–Binghamton.
The Art of Fiction
was completed before his death in 1982.

Vintage Books Edition, June 1991

Copyright © 1983 by the Estate of John Gardner

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. in 1984.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc.: Excerpt from “Views of My Father Weeping” from
City Life
, copyright © 1969, 1970 by Donald Barthelme. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc. This piece first appeared in
The New Yorker.
Excerpt from ‘The Fancy Woman” from
The Collected Stories of Peter Taylor
, copyright 1941, 1969, renewed 1968 by Peter Taylor. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc.

Random House, Inc.: Excerpt from
Seven Gothic Tales
, by Isak Dinesen, copyright 1934 by Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, Inc., copyright renewed 1962 by Isak Dinesen. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc. From the Introduction to
Superfiction or the American Story Transformed: An Anthology
, by Joe David Bellamy, copyright © 1975 by Joe David Bellamy. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.

Simon & Schuster: Excerpt from
The Gentleman from San Francisco
by Ivan Bunin, translated by Olga Shartse, copyright © 1963 by Washington Square Press, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Gardner, John, 1933-
The art of fiction.
1. Fiction—Technique. I. Title.
PN3355.G34   1985    808.3    90-55698
eISBN: 978-0-307-75671-8

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