4.0
Craft in the Real World
ByPublisher Description
This national bestseller is "a significant contribution to discussions of the art of fiction and a necessary challenge to received views about whose stories are told, how they are told and for whom they are intended" (Laila Lalami, The New York Times Book Review).
The traditional writing workshop was established with white male writers in mind; what we call craft is informed by their cultural values. In this bold and original examination of elements of writing—including plot, character, conflict, structure, and believability—and aspects of workshop—including the silenced writer and the imagined reader—Matthew Salesses asks questions to invigorate these familiar concepts. He upends Western notions of how a story must progress. How can we rethink craft, and the teaching of it, to better reach writers with diverse backgrounds? How can we invite diverse storytelling traditions into literary spaces?
Drawing from examples including One Thousand and One Nights, Curious George, Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, and the Asian American classic No-No Boy, Salesses asks us to reimagine craft and the workshop. In the pages of exercises included here, teachers will find suggestions for building syllabi, grading, and introducing new methods to the classroom; students will find revision and editing guidance, as well as a new lens for reading their work. Salesses shows that we need to interrogate the lack of diversity at the core of published fiction: how we teach and write it. After all, as he reminds us, "When we write fiction, we write the world."
The traditional writing workshop was established with white male writers in mind; what we call craft is informed by their cultural values. In this bold and original examination of elements of writing—including plot, character, conflict, structure, and believability—and aspects of workshop—including the silenced writer and the imagined reader—Matthew Salesses asks questions to invigorate these familiar concepts. He upends Western notions of how a story must progress. How can we rethink craft, and the teaching of it, to better reach writers with diverse backgrounds? How can we invite diverse storytelling traditions into literary spaces?
Drawing from examples including One Thousand and One Nights, Curious George, Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, and the Asian American classic No-No Boy, Salesses asks us to reimagine craft and the workshop. In the pages of exercises included here, teachers will find suggestions for building syllabi, grading, and introducing new methods to the classroom; students will find revision and editing guidance, as well as a new lens for reading their work. Salesses shows that we need to interrogate the lack of diversity at the core of published fiction: how we teach and write it. After all, as he reminds us, "When we write fiction, we write the world."
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4.0
Georgia <3
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Leah Morris
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“I adored this book. Devoured it whole. I usually have a hard time with books on writing because there hasn’t been a clear way until now to talk about the abstract nature of it while you actually give people worthy advice. I highly recommend.”jin
Created about 2 months agoShare
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The.Bell.Cat.
Created about 2 months agoShare
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“Craft in the Real World is a critique of the traditional writing workshop model. I particularly like how the book argues against universal craft rules that many who have attended writing workshops have been made to believe are sacred. These guidelines often reflect a narrow, Western, neurotypical, cis white-centric perspective on storytelling. The author pushes us to rethink how we define “good” writing.
He argues that craft isn’t objective, but it’s shaped by culture, audience, and context. He encourages writers to ask if certain writing conventions serve the story or if they’re just habits passed down without much thought. That really resonated with me, especially thinking back to all the workshops I’ve sat in where certain feedback felt more like enforcing rules than helping a story grow.
I honestly wish more instructors would approach workshops with this mindset. Just because a process has been around forever doesn’t mean it’s perfect or even helpful for every writer. I’ve already recommended this book to another English teacher because I think it’s that important.
I enjoyed this.”GaboGdeP
Created 2 months agoShare
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“Must read for any writer, really changes the way we look at the ways in which we write, edit and, especially, workshop.”
About Matthew Salesses
Matthew Salesses is the author of three novels, Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear, The Hundred-Year Flood, and I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying, and a forthcoming essay collection. He has taught at Coe College, the Ashland MFA program, the Tin House and Kundiman summer workshops, and writing centers like Grub Street and Inprint, among others. He has edited fiction for Gulf Coast, Redivider, and The Good Men Project and has written about craft and creative writing workshops for venues like NPR's Code Switch, The Millions, Electric Literature, and Pleiades. He was adopted from Korea and currently lives in Iowa.
Other books by Matthew Salesses
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