For many aspiring writers, writers’ workshops and classes
are a vital source of inspiration and advice. Those who don’t have access to
such classes must rely more heavily on their own resources and on textbooks.
In Fiction
Writer’s Workshop, Josip Novakovich, himself a teacher of creative
writing, has devised a portable writing class to encourage the writer working on
his or her own. Its format is simple yet effective.
In ten ‘classes’ Novakovich
tackles many of the issues that are important to those new to the craft of
writing, and each ‘class’ is followed by a series of exercises for the
writer to tackle. True, there is no ‘teacher’ to discuss things with at the
end of the class, but Novakovich anyway encourages his writers to be
independent, and it may be that by inviting them to question and consider their
own writing, the process of analysing one’s own work is more swiftly
inculcated. On the other hand, those who value personal feedback may find
themselves at a loss.
Nevertheless, the ‘lessons’ themselves are valuable, with
or without direct feedback. Novakovich begins at the beginning, with finding the
seed of an idea, and leads his class through the process of working out a story,
from setting to character to plot, before considering how to establish a point
of view and a voice, how best to begin or end a story, and most important, how
to revise the first draft.
His advice is clear and useful to anyone taking their
first tentative steps in the craft of writing. He demands initiative from his
‘class’ and encourages them to make their own choices and decisions about
what they write.
This isn’t a book which advises on perfect grammar or on
how to choose an agent or promote a book. It concentrates fair and square on the
business of creating a story, exactly what a workshop ought to do.
