The Way of the Writer: Reflections on the Art and Craft of Storytelling

Charles Johnson

Apr 2017 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Mirron Willis

About this audiobook

An award-winning novelist, philosopher, essayist, screenwriter, professor, and cartoonist, Charles Johnson has devoted his life to creative pursuit. His 1990 National Book Award-winning novel Middle Passage is a modern classic, revered as much for its daring plot as its philosophical underpinnings. For thirty-three years, Johnson taught and mentored students in the art and craft of creative writing. The Way of the Writer is his record of those years, and the coda to a kaleidoscopic, boundary-shattering career. Organized into six accessible, easy-to-navigate sections, The Way of the Writer is both a literary reflection on the creative impulse and a utilitarian guide to the writing process. Johnson shares his lessons and exercises from the classroom, starting with word choice, sentence structure, and narrative voice, and delving into the mechanics of scene, dialogue, plot, and storytelling before exploring the larger questions at stake for the serious writer. What separates literature from industrial fiction? What lies at the heart of the creative impulse? How does one navigate the literary world? And how are philosophy and fiction concomitant?

Ratings and reviews

An autobiography long on the author's accomplishments and short on practical applications The Way of the Writer, Reflections on the Art and Craft of Storytelling is long on the accomplishments of Charles Johnson, his philosophy in regards to writing and the benefits of academia. Somewhere among this rather high-minded autobiography (because that's basically what it is) are some insights about actual writing (that would be literary fiction with a capital L since Johnson considers anything else "pork" or industrial writing and not worth the effort). Much of his philosophy is similar to John Gardner's who was his teacher and mentor. Indeed, one might be better off reading Gardner's On Moral Fiction as well as The Art of Fiction for more specifics on these two areas unless you're want to know more about Johnson's career highlights beginning in grade school. I did find it interesting that he places more emphasis on plot than character development which could be considered a contradiction since one definition of literary fiction is that it's character driven. I'm now inclined to read at least one of his novels to see if it is actually as good as he thinks it is.

About the author

Charles Johnson is a novelist, essayist, literary scholar, philosopher, cartoonist, screenwriter, and professor emeritus at the University of Washington in Seattle. His fiction includes Dr. King's Refrigerator, Dreamer, Faith and the Good Thing, and Middle Passage, for which he won the National Book Award.

Prolific audiobook narrator Mirron Willis has won several AudioFile Earphones Awards and an Audie Award. An accomplished actor, he has appeared on stage, in films, and on television. His many theater credits include roles in Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, Knock Me a Kiss, and A Raisin in the Sun.