39 Steps – Writing Advice from Frederick Barthelme
Frederick Barthelme’s The 39 Steps: A Primer on Story Writing, begins:
Step one in the great enterprise of a new and preferable you in the house of fiction is: Mean less. That is, don’t mean so much. Make up a story, screw around with it, paste junk on it, needle the characters, make them say queer stuff, go bad places, insert new people at inopportune moments, do some drive-bys. Make it up, please.
Expect more of the same plainspoken, excellent advice in the following 38 steps, which range from the enigmatic–#9)Grace Slick (yes, people, that’s the entire entry for #9)–to the fundamental: #11)Be sure there’s a plot for the reader to grasp; while not necessarily the center of the story, it’s key to lulling the reader into that comfort zone where he’s vulnerable.
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2 Replies to “39 Steps – Writing Advice from Frederick Barthelme”
I love hearing this advice from a standard-bearer with ties to academia. The messy, imperfect writing also has meaning. Something happens when a writer pulls from his/her gut to put the story to the page: underlying meaning they never intended is infused as well. You can’t strategize that, it just comes, if you write deeply enough.
And Grace Slick makes perfect sense to me. She embodies all the other 38.
This is excellent, and very much like what the man writes.