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The Passionate, Accurate Story: Making Your Heart's Truth into Literature
by
Carol Bly
"Escape has its value, of course, like dessert: It is not food . . ." Here, short-story writer Bly teaches you how to cook up tales that--in a time of nukes, greenhouse gas, and ozone holes--matter. Even if you don't write directly about such things, Bly argues that none of us can escape the current "stage" on which all our art must be played out. Contemporary realities lu...more
Paperback, 198 pages
Published
February 13th 1998
by Milkweed Editions
(first published September 1st 1990)
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I've read a lot of books about writing. This is, in retrospect, the only one I really ever needed.
Don't get me wrong: your mileage may vary. This book is specifically intended for short story writers, and anyone looking for specific advice concerning the structure of novels or the process of writing novels wouldn't be satisfied with The Passionate, Accurate Story. If you need a help with grammar and style, you'll find some good advice here, but you'll also need to supplement with other sources....more
Don't get me wrong: your mileage may vary. This book is specifically intended for short story writers, and anyone looking for specific advice concerning the structure of novels or the process of writing novels wouldn't be satisfied with The Passionate, Accurate Story. If you need a help with grammar and style, you'll find some good advice here, but you'll also need to supplement with other sources....more
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Carol Bly believes in setting up the short story very quickly, and provides very specific information about what to include and what not to include in order to get the short story moving with the word economy required by the genre. She generously shares all of her best bits with us. She does believe in a conscience-driven story to create the passion that she refers to in the tiitle. This is, however, an author-developed list, not one that she recommends ass a one-size-fits all morality. This is...more
What Bly brings to the writing-book shelf is a fierce sense of morality. Writing for Bly is not merely about expressing oneself, or even about creating literary art (though she has deep respect for art as a thing larger than ourselves); for Bly, writing is a moral act, and fiction must be built on strong ethical ground.
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An idiosyncratic book on the craft of writing, and one with a focus I like: the heat and emotion of a tale. Bly feels these things--feeling and the revelation of significance--are far more important than sheer technique. She objects to the cold, merely smart tale. She explores why so many writers, novice as well as professional, fall into a dishonest ugliness towards the characters and environments we depict. Bly is insightful and has many useful bits of advice to impart. She can harangue at tim...more
Second time reading. Worth the re-read. Too complex to remember all of it. Read like a fresh book. That's the first thing I thought; what's the second? Include competing ethical dilemmas in fiction. Focus on short story, but applicable to longer fiction.
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“It is very difficult to teach navigation theory to someone who clings to the shore.”
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1 person liked it
“Here is the crux of it: between the conscious and unconscious mind we are more complex and given to concept than we are just in the conscious mind. This means we must somehow get more use out of the unconscious part. But the unconscious has no idea of being dutiful. To waken it, we try laying some sensual or aesthetic or moral excitement just under its nose: the fragrance will rouse it from its torpor, we hope. The unconscious mind had much rather remain sleeping, of course: it knows what it's doing. If it wanted to be awake all the time, it would be the conscious mind. It is powerful: it holds most of our memories. It has a penchant for terror and self-defense. If not tempted by other nourishment, it will content itself with lurching to its feet just when we don't want it to, attacking someone senselessly. It is as much soup as animal. It prefers steeping away to thinking. It is a mess, but in its mess lie impressions life once gave us.”
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1 person liked it
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