ELEMENTS OF FICTION

The prolific creator of Easy Rawlins provides guidance and tough-minded encouragement to writers at any stage of development.

In this follow-up to This Year You Write Your Novel (2007), Mosley (Down the River Unto the Sea, 2018, etc.) further demystifies fiction writing through language as taut and spare as the prose in his own novels. Where his first writing guide emphasized matters of diligence and discipline, here the author focuses on such storytelling basics as character, physical details, and points of view (he occasionally suggests that using a first-person narrator is harder than it seems). Mosley elaborates on the definition of plot he used in This Year, noting that “every story is a mystery of one sort or another.” To illustrate this and other rules and assertions, the author unspools some narrative premises of his own invention. While some may seem too over-the-top to be anything more than parody, Mosley’s purpose is to show readers the array of choices a novelist faces in setting up conflicts, not least of which is where and when a story might take place. He deploys similar story premises to show when and how to disclose the emotional lives of characters and how authorial improvisation can jar open fresh perspectives and a new set of narrative paths to follow. These random premises often feel like sneak peeks into Mosley’s notebooks, but their intended effect is to make fledgling writers believe they can freely invent their own story ideas and carry them to fruition. The author is not only an inspiring instructor; he is also a bracingly open-minded one. He cites the use by some writers of outlines and biographies of major characters before getting to their novels, but he writes that he prefers meeting his characters “the way I encounter people in life—at a place and a situation where I have less knowledge than I’d like.” Ultimately, he acknowledges that there is “no preordained pathway” to a writer’s “ultimate destination.” As with other manuals, this one doesn’t shirk from emphasizing the difficulty of writing, but Mosley’s spirited generosity helps make it less daunting.

A concise work that aspiring writers will find useful.