The Eleventh Draft

"Yes, and some did and some didn’t. A couple of the people in here are people I interviewed – they were my classmates when I was at Iowa, like TC Boyle and Jayne Anne Phillips. Frank wasn’t the director of the workshop when we were there, but I got to know him later when he was. This book is all over the place – each person’s contribution is unique. A lot of the writers talk about the workshop itself, the experience, the workshop method. I think for a young writer in particular, who may be contemplating going to the workshop, it’s a good book to turn to, to give a taste of what it’s about. Because I don’t think it’s changed all that much. There’s one chapter, by Francine Prose, called “On Details”, which is one of the most “how to” chapters. Like Carlson and King, her chapter talks about the importance of detail and how you handle detail. This is a particularly useful chapter, again, for young writers. In picking these books I was thinking of young writers, but every time we start writing something, we’re starting out again, so in a way we’re all beginners. My son is an investigator for a public defender’s office. His job is to interview alleged perpetrators of crimes and victims and witnesses, and get their stories. He’s dealing in detail all the time. They’re always looking for ways to get their clients off. How do you know when a person is lying? If you’ve been accused of a crime, you have the right not to talk. But he says that people always start talking and talking, thinking they can talk themselves out of the rap. They give all these details, and they start lying. You can tell a person is telling the truth when the details are fairly limited. Usually when we experience or observe something, we don’t really remember that much. When you’ve done a lot of these interviews, you begin to know that when there’s a paucity of detail – maybe just one or two little details that stand out in the person’s mind – you can be fairly confident that this is the truth. But if there are a whole lot of details it’s usually a lie. That is exactly what Francine Prose is talking about, when she writes about good detail in fiction. It’s exactly right. How do you know if you’ve got the right amount of detail? Which goes back to Stephen King and what he said about detail – that usually the first details that come to mind are the right details. Once you have those, stop layering on. Which actually is good advice to liars, too. The first details that come to mind, as you lie to the police, are the best details. Stop there. Stop elaborating. Otherwise they’re not going to buy it."