What do you think?
Rate this book
Architectures of Possibility: After Innovative Writing
Ideal for individual or classroom use, ARCHITECTURES OF POSSIBILITY theorizes and questions the often unconscious assumptions behind such traditional writing gestures as temporality, scene, and characterization; offers various suggestions for generating writing that resists, rethinks, and/or expands the very notion of narrativity; visits a number of important concerns/trends/obsessions in current writing (both on the page and off); discusses marketplace (ir)realities; hones critical reading and manuscript editing capabilities; and strengthens problem-solving muscles from brainstorming to literary activism. Exercises and supplemental reading lists challenge authors to push their work into self-aware and surprising territory. In addition, ARCHITECTURES OF POSSIBILITY features something entirely lacking in most books about creative writing: more than 40 interviews with contemporary innovative authors, editors, and publishers (including Robert Coover, Lydia Davis, Brian Evenson, Shelley Jackson, Ben Marcus, Carole Maso, Scott McCloud, Steve Tomasula, Deb Olin Unferth, and Joe Wenderoth) working in diverse media, providing significant insights into the multifaceted worlds of experimental writers' writing.
252 pages, Paperback
First published February 29, 2012
23 people are currently reading
304 people want to read
About the author
Lance Olsen
51 books116 followersLance Olsen was born in 1956 and received his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin (1978, honors), his M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers Workshop (1980), and his M.A. (1982) and Ph.D. (1985) from the University of Virginia.
He is author of eleven novels, one hypertext, four critical studies, four short-story collections, a poetry chapbook, and a textbook about fiction writing, as well as editor of two collections of essays about innovative contemporary fiction. His short stories, essays, poems, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals, magazines, and anthologies, including Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review, Fiction International, Iowa Review, Hotel Amerika, Village Voice, Time Out New York, BOMB, Gulf Coast, McSweeney's, and Best American Non-Required Reading.
Olsen is an N.E.A. fellowship and Pushcart prize recipient, and former governor-appointed Idaho Writer-in-Residence. His novel Tonguing the Zeitgeist was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award. His work has been translated into Italian, Polish, Turkish, Finnish, and Portuguese. He has taught at the University of Idaho, the University of Kentucky, the University of Iowa, the University of Virginia, on summer- and semester-abroad programs in Oxford and London, on a Fulbright in Finland, at various writing conferences, and elsewhere.
Olsen currently teaches experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah. He serves as Chair of the Board of Directors at Fiction Collective Two; founded in 1974, FC2 is one of America's best-known ongoing literary experiments and progressive art communities.
He is Fiction Editor at Western Humanities Review. With his wife, assemblage-artist and filmmaker Andi Olsen, he divides his time between Salt Lake City and the mountains of central Idaho.
He is author of eleven novels, one hypertext, four critical studies, four short-story collections, a poetry chapbook, and a textbook about fiction writing, as well as editor of two collections of essays about innovative contemporary fiction. His short stories, essays, poems, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals, magazines, and anthologies, including Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review, Fiction International, Iowa Review, Hotel Amerika, Village Voice, Time Out New York, BOMB, Gulf Coast, McSweeney's, and Best American Non-Required Reading.
Olsen is an N.E.A. fellowship and Pushcart prize recipient, and former governor-appointed Idaho Writer-in-Residence. His novel Tonguing the Zeitgeist was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award. His work has been translated into Italian, Polish, Turkish, Finnish, and Portuguese. He has taught at the University of Idaho, the University of Kentucky, the University of Iowa, the University of Virginia, on summer- and semester-abroad programs in Oxford and London, on a Fulbright in Finland, at various writing conferences, and elsewhere.
Olsen currently teaches experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah. He serves as Chair of the Board of Directors at Fiction Collective Two; founded in 1974, FC2 is one of America's best-known ongoing literary experiments and progressive art communities.
He is Fiction Editor at Western Humanities Review. With his wife, assemblage-artist and filmmaker Andi Olsen, he divides his time between Salt Lake City and the mountains of central Idaho.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
September 24, 2014
An inspiring handbook for aspiring authors of innovative fiction or devoted writers in need of a creative kick-in-the-nuts, this short incisive text contains a plethora of micro-interviews from pathpaving writers (and Ben Marcus), and lucid information about the shapeshifting nature of fictional innovation. Offering no solutions to the problem of Making It New outside using one’s well-honed and well-read imagination, the book maintains an optimistic tone despite the overwhelming obstacles ahead of full-time innovative writers (no publication and no cash), urging readers to remember their reasons for writing in the first place: love of language and literature and devotion to the Logos of the Library (and a lot of love for alliteration). The book can also be read as a starting point for newbies, or for MFA students seeking reassurance once released from their cushy classrooms into the cold unforgiving world. The two authors Lance Olsen and Trevor Dodge are prolific innovators and thoroughly upstanding chaps.
March 18, 2012
"Architectures of Possibility" is a success for so many reasons--not just as a guide to writing, but also for its fascinating analysis of reading, characterization, and the composition of narrative. I get the feeling, more than anything, this piece isn't just about learning to write, but more importantly, "loving" writing (which, of course, begins only with reading).
I read "Rebel Yell" (the first edition of this textbook) a few years ago and really enjoyed it. This updated version delivers everything that was in the original and more; and no matter what angle you approach it from, the text is enervating and insightful. Definitely worth checking out for both experienced authors and others just starting out.
I read "Rebel Yell" (the first edition of this textbook) a few years ago and really enjoyed it. This updated version delivers everything that was in the original and more; and no matter what angle you approach it from, the text is enervating and insightful. Definitely worth checking out for both experienced authors and others just starting out.
March 6, 2020
Tremendously inspiring, a bit outdated though. Would have appreciated a more insightful look into the possibilities of IF
February 26, 2023
this absolutely fucks, i hate writing textbooks and courses &c bc they are most often so self-limiting without even knowing it and it’s intensely frustrating but this is a phenomenal resource for inspiration, interviews, exercises, new ways of thinking about writing & reading, and a treasure trove of recommendations of all kinds of ~innovative literature
December 8, 2020
An excellent resource for writers, this book explores what is possible with narrative form. Each section includes a brief introduction, reading suggestions, interviews, and writing prompts/exercises. I found the interviews to be most valuable.
September 28, 2012
I've been using this as a textbook in my Advanced Writing class. The exercises are phenomenal for all levels of writing, and my students have really done some terrific things with them. The chapter content is a bit too high on aesthetics for most, even advanced undergrads -- the book is better suited for graduate writing students, or for students on the verge of entering or applying for an MFA program (there's a chapter devoted to the institutionalization of writing geared particularly towards grad or pre-grad students).
I admit to finding some of the book's propagandistic rhetoric trumpeting innovative writing irritating, and its reification of the innovative/conventional dichotomy rather tiresome (though I have to admit relying lazily on it myself ALL THE TIME). However, Olsen is admirably transparent about his aesthetic leanings -- unusual for craft books, which tend to be staunchly realist without acknowledging it, and likewise without acknowledging that realist fiction is only one available mode of many. And all this, of course, raises provocative questions that, at least in my experience, generate rich, if heated, classroom debate.
I admit to finding some of the book's propagandistic rhetoric trumpeting innovative writing irritating, and its reification of the innovative/conventional dichotomy rather tiresome (though I have to admit relying lazily on it myself ALL THE TIME). However, Olsen is admirably transparent about his aesthetic leanings -- unusual for craft books, which tend to be staunchly realist without acknowledging it, and likewise without acknowledging that realist fiction is only one available mode of many. And all this, of course, raises provocative questions that, at least in my experience, generate rich, if heated, classroom debate.
April 26, 2014
Lance Olsen's English 5510 class at the University of Utah was the reason I read this book. This was our Bible. This book covers all the basics of creative writing and is full of helpful advice. Lance made us read every chapter of his book and do the exercises. Having already taken a creative writing class that used The 3am Epiphany which Lance also recommends for any aspiring writer, I found my writing improved upon doing these exercises. We did workshops and peer reviews and had a great semester.
I skipped reading the author interviews, since I was unfamiliar with most of them but I would recommend going though this book and highlighting all the best phrases and quotations. Here's mine:
"Read read read and write write write."
"Read everything-trash, classics, good and bad and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master."
"You should know more about your character than you openly share with your audience."
"Readers like the assurance that dénouement awaits us all."
No one really knows what the three rules are for writing the novel, but this textbook does a pretty good job of answering that question.
I skipped reading the author interviews, since I was unfamiliar with most of them but I would recommend going though this book and highlighting all the best phrases and quotations. Here's mine:
"Read read read and write write write."
"Read everything-trash, classics, good and bad and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master."
"You should know more about your character than you openly share with your audience."
"Readers like the assurance that dénouement awaits us all."
No one really knows what the three rules are for writing the novel, but this textbook does a pretty good job of answering that question.
Read
March 28, 2012Architectures of Possibility is both book (a "how-to" manual of writing, complete with prescriptive advice) and counterbook (a deranging/questioning/complicating of that advice and the narratives it produces). I could teach this one.
Read
December 23, 2024Dnf
April 1, 2019
“Architectures of Possibility” is a bold and biting dissection of the traditional narrative arc and why we must upend this structure to access the “Difficult Imagination—the dense space in which we are asked continuously to envision the text of the text, the text of our lives, and the text of the world other than they are, and thus contemplate the idea of fundamental change in all three” (pg. 16).
Olsen asserts that most traditional/popular novels over the past century have operated under the perceived reality that human actions/lives fit into a complete, interlocking whole, and therefore our satisfaction with completeness of plot is the same kind of satisfaction we seek from human existence.
Olsen offers an alternative: “Many of us no longer intuit existence is necessarily meaningful, if we ever did, and most of us certainly aren’t satisfied with society, so why should we write as if we do and are? Shouldn’t our task as authors rather be to explore approaches to creativity that accurately reflect our own sense of lived experience? If so, what might those approaches look like?” (pg. 13).
This book seeks to unearth these possibilities by offering writers tools to challenge and complicate our artistic process. History lessons, craft discussions, interviews, exercises and recommended readings arm the reader with new ways to take chances and write in surprising directions that lie beyond our comfort zones, thereby giving us the freedom to explore new ways to experience and express our lives in prose.
Olsen asserts that most traditional/popular novels over the past century have operated under the perceived reality that human actions/lives fit into a complete, interlocking whole, and therefore our satisfaction with completeness of plot is the same kind of satisfaction we seek from human existence.
Olsen offers an alternative: “Many of us no longer intuit existence is necessarily meaningful, if we ever did, and most of us certainly aren’t satisfied with society, so why should we write as if we do and are? Shouldn’t our task as authors rather be to explore approaches to creativity that accurately reflect our own sense of lived experience? If so, what might those approaches look like?” (pg. 13).
This book seeks to unearth these possibilities by offering writers tools to challenge and complicate our artistic process. History lessons, craft discussions, interviews, exercises and recommended readings arm the reader with new ways to take chances and write in surprising directions that lie beyond our comfort zones, thereby giving us the freedom to explore new ways to experience and express our lives in prose.
November 26, 2018
The writing is so damn pompous. Anything having to do with tech or the internet is outdated.
September 4, 2023
I've read lots of books by writers about how to write, and this was one of those books.
Does that sound kind of empty and meaningless? So this was an okay book, but it's very MFA "write bravely and experimentally and Writing Is Serious Business" which I can only take so much of, being more of a storyteller than a writer, I guess. The title, Architectures of Possibility, makes it sound more pretentious than it is, but there is some pretentiousness. This book is not meant for hobbyist writers like me; it's meant for people who are very serious about building a writing career.
I am not familiar with Lance Olsen, but this book is apparently a retread of a much older version, and something he uses while teaching university creative writing classes.
I think it would work better as a textbook for class. Chapters cover a variety of topics, and while it's not just the usual (character, plot, setting, style, etc. etc.) there also just didn't seem to be much "meat" there. The exercises at the end of each chapter seemed more substantive - I didn't do them, but I think they would be fun and useful to do in a classroom setting or with a writing circle. There are lots of short and longer writing exercises where you are supposed to write flash fictions and "narraticules" from different perspectives and with endless variations.
Each chapter also ends with one or more short interviews with an author (some of them well known, some I've never heard of), talking about their process or their inspirations. Some of these were more interesting than others. Apparently they've been collected since the 1990s.
Architectures of Possibility is a few years behind the times regarding the current writing industry (it talks a lot about digital submissions, but not much at all about indie publishers or Kindle, and I think some of the publications it references might already be defunct).
If you really like reading writing advice books (which I sometimes do, though I've sort of exhausted what I get out of them), this isn't a bad one, but it's definitely not the most inspirational or useful one I've read. I got it as part of an ebook bundle.
Does that sound kind of empty and meaningless? So this was an okay book, but it's very MFA "write bravely and experimentally and Writing Is Serious Business" which I can only take so much of, being more of a storyteller than a writer, I guess. The title, Architectures of Possibility, makes it sound more pretentious than it is, but there is some pretentiousness. This book is not meant for hobbyist writers like me; it's meant for people who are very serious about building a writing career.
I am not familiar with Lance Olsen, but this book is apparently a retread of a much older version, and something he uses while teaching university creative writing classes.
I think it would work better as a textbook for class. Chapters cover a variety of topics, and while it's not just the usual (character, plot, setting, style, etc. etc.) there also just didn't seem to be much "meat" there. The exercises at the end of each chapter seemed more substantive - I didn't do them, but I think they would be fun and useful to do in a classroom setting or with a writing circle. There are lots of short and longer writing exercises where you are supposed to write flash fictions and "narraticules" from different perspectives and with endless variations.
Each chapter also ends with one or more short interviews with an author (some of them well known, some I've never heard of), talking about their process or their inspirations. Some of these were more interesting than others. Apparently they've been collected since the 1990s.
Architectures of Possibility is a few years behind the times regarding the current writing industry (it talks a lot about digital submissions, but not much at all about indie publishers or Kindle, and I think some of the publications it references might already be defunct).
If you really like reading writing advice books (which I sometimes do, though I've sort of exhausted what I get out of them), this isn't a bad one, but it's definitely not the most inspirational or useful one I've read. I got it as part of an ebook bundle.
November 30, 2023
Yeah...well...I'm at a point in my writing career where I know I can write better and am actively looking for something to show me the way.
Sadly, this book wasn't it. For all the philosophizing and too-long monologues about which authors are unique and why, it pretty much comes down to what I wrote about re The Almanac of the Dead - truly experimental writing is favored by those who want to be experimented upon. The experimental writing examples given in the book don't seem that experimental to me or are so...experimental(?)...that only an...experimental(?)...person might enjoy them.
I mean, a book written as a series of one word tattoos on a group of people who must gather and reveal some part of themselves so the book can be read?
Not my idea of a good bedtime read, that.
Not my idea of a good any time read, that.
What's most amusing (to me) is that, when all the "Oh My!"s are out of the way, the writing advice is the same I've encountered in far more accessible volumes. There are some gems in here, yes, and that's the case with any writing text I've read.
But on the whole? Far too much effort for far too little reward.
So perhaps that's my lesson? I know how to write well, simply write well better.
Sadly, this book wasn't it. For all the philosophizing and too-long monologues about which authors are unique and why, it pretty much comes down to what I wrote about re The Almanac of the Dead - truly experimental writing is favored by those who want to be experimented upon. The experimental writing examples given in the book don't seem that experimental to me or are so...experimental(?)...that only an...experimental(?)...person might enjoy them.
I mean, a book written as a series of one word tattoos on a group of people who must gather and reveal some part of themselves so the book can be read?
Not my idea of a good bedtime read, that.
Not my idea of a good any time read, that.
What's most amusing (to me) is that, when all the "Oh My!"s are out of the way, the writing advice is the same I've encountered in far more accessible volumes. There are some gems in here, yes, and that's the case with any writing text I've read.
But on the whole? Far too much effort for far too little reward.
So perhaps that's my lesson? I know how to write well, simply write well better.
April 24, 2012
The first book on writing I read was that years annual edition of the Writers & Artists Guide a few years back, I think that that put me off guides and seeking help with writing for a long time. The Writers and Artists guide being so much the very opposite in politic of Architectures of Possibility with its directories of agents and regimented line of this is what it take to be successful.
Architectures of Possibility gives a good mix of advice on finding the method best for you, interviews with authors of note and sectional exercises for self, group or class use.
At no point did I feel like I did with other guides, like I was being preached to with a hard line THIS IS HOW TO DO IT but equally it still felt appropriately like tuition and it has given me a drive to experimentation with my poetry and suggestions of where to take that drive.
Architectures of Possibility gives a good mix of advice on finding the method best for you, interviews with authors of note and sectional exercises for self, group or class use.
At no point did I feel like I did with other guides, like I was being preached to with a hard line THIS IS HOW TO DO IT but equally it still felt appropriately like tuition and it has given me a drive to experimentation with my poetry and suggestions of where to take that drive.
March 31, 2013
Some great thoughts and exercises in this book. Thinking about writing in new ways other than the norm. It is a bit elevated for me at where I am in my writing life. It would be more suited for someone who has their MFA and wishes to explore alternative methods and possibilities for their writing.
Each chapter starts with a subject - workshop model, narrativity, temporality, point-of-view, etc. and then follows with some further reading suggestions, exercises and finally one or more interviews with successful innovative writers.
Each chapter starts with a subject - workshop model, narrativity, temporality, point-of-view, etc. and then follows with some further reading suggestions, exercises and finally one or more interviews with successful innovative writers.
Read
August 20, 2016(reading suggestions from introduction)
Barth, John. "The Literature of Exhaustion" (1967) and "The Literature of Replenishment" (1979).
Berry, R. M. and Jeffrey Di Leo, eds. Fiction's Present: Situation Contemporary Narrative Innovation (2007).
Federman, Raymond. "Surfiction: A Postmodern Position" (1973).
Marcus, Ben. "Why Experimental Fiction Threatens to Destroy Publishing, Jonathan Franzen, and Life as We Know It" (2005).
McKeon, Michael, ed. Theory of the Novel (2000).
Barth, John. "The Literature of Exhaustion" (1967) and "The Literature of Replenishment" (1979).
Berry, R. M. and Jeffrey Di Leo, eds. Fiction's Present: Situation Contemporary Narrative Innovation (2007).
Federman, Raymond. "Surfiction: A Postmodern Position" (1973).
Marcus, Ben. "Why Experimental Fiction Threatens to Destroy Publishing, Jonathan Franzen, and Life as We Know It" (2005).
McKeon, Michael, ed. Theory of the Novel (2000).
November 19, 2012
I liked the introduction, and the interviews are terrific, and once the book starts addressing innovation--in particular, language as protagonist-- the questions it poses are provocative and resonant. It takes too long to get there though, and I really didn't care for the paternal tone that permeated the exercise prompts.
May 5, 2014
Text for my advanced fiction class. Has some good advice for fiction writers, but nothing you couldn't find on the Internet.
October 31, 2014
An incredible resource for teachers of Creative Writing, and for anyone interested in the innovative narrative techniques.
April 22, 2017
This book opened my eyes to the gamut of innovative writing, but Olsen never met a multi-syllabic word he didn't like - and when he couldn't find one, he made it up. Read for a longterm/three part course.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews