From Where You Dream The Process of Writing Fiction

by Butler, Robert Olen; Burroway, Janet

• ISBN13: 9780802117953
• ISBN10: 0802117953
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-03-02
• Publisher: Grove Press

Summary

Jane Burroway, author of the classic text on creative writing Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, attended Robert Olen Butler's graduate fiction lectures at Floriday State University (a sort of literary "boot camp" that asks writers to abandoned their preconceived notions of fiction) and transcribes them here with an introduction telling us why his thinking about fiction is so unique and inspiring. In Method Writing, Butler argues that writing is emotional rather than intellectual, and tells writers how to slip into the dreamspace necessary for composing honest, inspired fiction. He proposes fiction as the exploration of the human condition and yearning as its compass, showing his students how to reinterpret the traditional tools of fiction through the prism of learning. He officers insights into the nature of voice. He compares fiction to cinema, to be experienced by the reader as a sensual series of takes and scenes. And he offers a system whereby revision is undertaken at the level of structure rather than sentence. The lectures include original perspectives on science, psychology, and the arts, quoting from great literature, cinema, and student papers alike to bring Butler's unique ideas to life.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(8)
PART I: THE LECTURES
1 Boot Camp	9	(14)
2 The Zone	23	(16)
3 Yearning	39	(24)
4 Cinema of the Mind	63	(22)
5 A Writer Prepares	85	(22)
PART II: THE WORKSHOP
6 Reading, Lit Crit, and the Workshop	107	(16)
7 The Bad Story	123	(18)
8 The Anecdote Exercise	141	(24)
9 The Written Exercise	165
PART III: THE STORIES, ANALYZED
10 "Flamenco" by Erich Sysak	187	(20)
11 "My Impossibles" by Brandy T. Wilson	207	(22)
12 "My Summer in Vulcan" by Rita Mae Reese	229	(24)
Appendix: "Open Arms" by Robert Olen Butler	253