Sol Stein, Characterization and Novel Writing

Sol Stein, Characterization and Novel Writing

Sol Stein’s Take on Novel Writing and Character Development

When you’ve been studying craft as long as moi , you collect lots of notes. Foraging through boxes recently I found a treasure trove of good stuff that needs to be shared with my #writing tribe. Hope you enjoy these tidbits, guidelines, et al, regarding the craft of fiction writing, information as relevant today as when I jotted these notes down all those yesterdays ago.

Sol Stein, known to many,  took me under wing in the early 1990’s. He liked my dialogue writing. Once accepted into his advanced fiction writing course, I learned so much from this former publisher, Stein & Day, of literary greats including James Baldwin.  Sol also wrote fiction and in my humble, he taught it better than he crafted it; often the case for noted editors who really want to be novelists. Never asked him directly but I think that was Sol Stein’s hope, too, to be a bestselling novelist.

We fall in love-or ??-with characters, not plots. Plots drive, characters ‘express’ while the plot is ‘driving.’

Character Driven Novel Writing