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Meg Waite Clayton

New York Times Bestselling Author

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October 6, 2016 By Meg Waite Clayton

1 Crazy Strange Writing Tip for #1ThTH

One of my favorite writing books is John Garner’s The Art of Fiction. But in looking for it this morning to read once again, as I do so often, the chapter on plot, I mistakenly pulled out his On Becoming a Novelist. And in paging through it looking for that plot chapter, I came across something that … well, actually shocked me:

There is nothing wrong with fiction in which the plot is relatively predictable.

But he does go on to say,

What matters is how things happen, to the people involved and to the larger humanity for whom the characters serve as representatives. Needless to say, it is always best if the predictable comes in some surprising way.

He says there is basically one plot form: A character wants something, goes for it in the face of obstacles which may include self doubt, and “arrives at a win, lose, or draw.”
And–this is the part I found crazy interesting–he says, attributing this wisdom to the poet Coleridge)

There can be no great art … without a certain strangeness.

And goes on to assert that

One has to be a little crazy to write a great novel. One must be capable of allowing the darkest, most ancient and shrewd parts of one’s being to take over the work from time to time … Strangeness is the one quality in fiction that cannot be faked.
If I could explain exactly what I mean here, I could probably do what I think no one has ever done successfully: reveal the very roots of the creative process.

So there you have it for this week’s 1 Thing Thursday: Be strange. It’s the secret of great writing. No one can quite tell you why.
Happy writing! – Meg
 

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Meg Waite Clayton

Meg Waite Clayton is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of THE LAST TRAIN TO LONDON, a Jewish Book Award finalist based on the true story of the Kindertransport rescue of ten thousand children from Nazi-occupied Europe—and one brave woman who helped them escape. Her six prior novels include the Langum-Prize honored The Race for Paris and The Wednesday Sisters, one of Entertainment Weekly's 25 Essential Best Friend Novels of all time. A graduate of the University of Michigan and its law school, she has also written for the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Forbes, Runners World, and public radio, often on the subject of the particular challenges women face. megwaiteclayton.com

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