RollnSmoke Reviews: How Fiction Works

How Fiction Works by James Woods (Picador, 2008)

James woods, a prominent critic and staff writer at The New Yorker and visiting professor at Harvard, presents a highly-acclaimed short book packed with smart insights and judgments about the craft of fiction. His aim is to pose theoretical questions about novel-writing and to answer them practically. In addressing the importance of style, consciousness and characterization and the use of detail and metaphor, Woods draws exhaustively from the literary masters, which requires of his reader a near- encyclopedic knowledge of the history of literature. While no doubt intelligent, Woods’ brief but pedantic study of the novel verges on overbearing and without the benefit of his live instruction becomes boring (7/10).