Darin Strauss
Darin Strauss
Darin Straussis a best-selling American writer whose work has earned a number of awards, including, among numerous others, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Strauss's most recent book is Half a Life, which won the 2011 NBCC Award for memoir/autobiography...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth1 March 1970
CountryUnited States of America
good
Write what you think is good, is the whole of the law.
guitarist jam musician perhaps slide trucks
I'm no fan of jam bands. You can take your Gov't Mule, your Phish, your Rusted Root. But Derek Trucks is a special musician - perhaps the greatest slide guitarist who ever lived.
borrowing few narrative novelist techniques tricks
If the memoirist is borrowing narrative techniques from fiction, shouldn't the novelist borrow a few tricks from successful non-fiction?
easier memoir
Not to be too 'Tale of Two Cities' about it, but I find writing a memoir easier than writing fiction, and more difficult.
crowded folding guys pads policeman scribbling supporting witnesses
A tragedy's first act is crowded with supporting players, policeman scribbling in pads and making radio calls, witnesses crimping their faces, EMS guys folding equipment.
invented
I'm very strict in my belief that non-fiction should be truthful, and fiction is for invented narratives.
guess people
I guess when you write a personal story, people feel compelled to share their own stories.
brings close either particular sets small writer
In each scene, the writer sets up a situation, which brings a conflict as well as either a small victory or a loss at the close of that particular scene.
discern few good novelist truth
It's good training for a novelist to try to discern the truth about a place after only a few glimpses of it.
concrete desire drives early known narrative order primary reader work writer
In order for a narrative to work, the primary character should have a concrete desire - a need that drives her story - and the story's writer should make this goal known to the reader pretty early in the narrative.
eager engage few giant main people sound trust whose
The main thing is to think strategically about what will engage your readers. Trust me when I tell you that few people are eager to read a story whose opening lines sound like a dissertation on giant bugs.
closest five minutes mojo peace twin
I have twin six-year-old boys. Have no mojo. The closest thing to a mojo I have is five minutes of peace.
beef great learned mile national per salads square theaters
In Minneapolis, I learned that there are more theaters per square mile than in any U.S. city but New York, and we also had great Midwestern beef in our salads in a plaza overlooking the national headquarters of Target, Inc.
good trouble
Like all writing rules, the injunction to start with the trouble can be broken, and it should be sometimes - if there's good reason.