Book #100: Steering the Craft

Title: Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew
Author: Ursula LeGuin

The following comes from a presentation I gave on the book for my Young Adult fiction seminar:

As MFA students, we’re in an unusual position. We have writing groups built into our course of study, where we’re lead by people who know the craft and know how to share their knowledge with us.  Ursula LeGuin’s book is written for the majority of writers—the ones who’ve found small groups of like-minded “sailors” (she uses a sailing metaphor throughout) or for “lone navigators” trying to work out learning how to write on their own.

While LeGuin gives plenty of advice on things like point of view and active voice, the thing that makes her book unique is that it’s more of a workbook, a launching pad for writers. Each chapter has a short introduction of a principle, followed by models of how the principle is used well in classic literature. LeGuin then suggests writing exercises, with modifications for how the exercises can be used in groups and for people working through the book on their own.

LeGuin’s topics include: the sound of your writing, punctuation, sentence length and syntax, repetition, adjective and adverb, subject pronoun and verb, point of view and voice, changing point of view, indirect narration, crowding and leaping.

I think that LeGuin’s book could be a very effective resource for teachers of introductory creative writing courses. While I haven’t done the activities she suggests, I can see that they would work well in a classroom setting. The expository sections of each chapter are just detailed enough that they could easily be adapted to lesson plans for an instructor.

Example: Chastity

Write a paragraph to a page (200-350 words) of descriptive narrative prose without adjectives or adverbs. No dialogue.

The point is to give a vivid description of a scene or an action, using only verbs, nouns, and articles. Adverbs of time (then, next, later, etc…) may be necessary but be sparing. Be chaste.

If you’re using this book in a group, I recommend that you do this exercise at home, because it may take a while.

If you’re currently working on a longer piece, you might want to try writing the next paragraph or page of it as this exercise.

The first time you do the exercise, write something new. After that you might want to try “chastening” a passage you’ve already written. It can be interesting.

For MFA students who have writing projects in mind and in progress, I can see myself turning to LeGuin’s activities when I encounter writer’s block. Keeping my story in mind, I could use one of her prompts, and get writing, even if it’s on another section of the novel.