How to Write Like Tolstoy

CHAPTER 1

Grab, Invite, Beguile: Beginnings

LEONARD: So what were we talking about?

KATE: The first sentence.

LEONARD: Oh yeah, Christ.

THERESA REBECK, SEMINAR, 2011

Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to speak French.

P. G. WODEHOUSE, OPENING OF

THE LUCK OF THE BODKINS, 1925

How to begin? I m thinking of that moment when a writer stares at a sheet of blank paper (or, today, a screen) like a weightlifter assessing a massive dumbbell; the effort of setting down any mark seems beyond him. A cup of coffee is appealing ­a second cup, a quick session of emailing, a short walk, even a phone call. After all such procrastinations, a final inspiration: Focus instead on something completely different to what was planned, and likely far better. What was it Douglas Adams said? I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

Gertrude Stein liked to look at cows in the intervals of her writing, and would be driven into the countryside to do so. Woody Allen takes constant showers to aid inspiration. Those grandes dames of postwar British fiction, Iris Murdoch and Muriel Spark, never set pen to paper until they had thought of a satisfactory opening. A novel is a long job, Murdoch explained, and if you get it wrong at the start you re going to be very unhappy later on. John Irving, on the other hand, begins each of his novels by writing the book s final sentence.Before he starts to write, George Steiner, the polymath and novelist, takes a page of top prose in the relevant language and reads it aloud, often until he knows it by heart. But it will have nothing to do with the subject. In The Plague Albert Camus has his character Joseph Grand rewrite the first sentence of his novel eternally, with only minimal variations.

Beginnings are notoriously difficult. E. L.

Richard Cohen is the former publishing director of Hutchinson and Hodder & Stoughton and the founder of Richard Cohen Books. The author of By the Sword and Chasing the Sun, he has written for The New York Times and most leading London newspapers, and appeared on BBC radio and television.

The highest compliment one can pay How to Write Like Tolstoy is that it provokes an overwhelming urge to read and write, to be in dialogue or even doomed competition with the greatest creative minds . . . .  That Mr. Cohen is an editor, that his love of literature comes in large part from awe in the presence of better writers than he, is no small matter. His love is infectious, and regardless of how well he ends up teaching us to write, that is miracle enough. Wall Street Journal

[A] perfect tasting menu . . . the homage of a passionate reader to the writers who have provided his main pastime. The Sunday Times (U.K.)

This book is a wry, critical friend to both writer and reader. It is filled with cogent examples and provoking statements. You will agree or quarrel with each page, and be a sharper writer and reader by the end. Hilary Mantel

These twelve essays are like twelve perfect university lectures on the craft of writing fiction. The professor or, in this case, author succeeds in being not only knowledgeable but also interesting, charming, and engaging. . . . [Richard] Cohen reveals the possibilities that lie in wait when authors practice selection and intention, sparking the literary imagination. Library Journal (starred review)

Insightful . . . [Cohen] escorts his readers to Iris Murdoch for sage counsel on launching a novel, to Salman Rushdie for shrewd guidance on developing an unreliable narrator, to Rudyard Kipling for a cagey hint on creating memorable minor characters, and to Leo Tolstoy for a master s help in transforming personal experience into fictional art. Even readers with no intentions of writing a novel will relish the opportunity to join their favorite authors at the workbench. Booklist

An elegant, chatty how-to book on writing well, using the lessons of many of the world s best writers . . . [Cohen] draws on plentiful advice from past and present literary titans. . . .