Book Review: The Art of Fiction by Ayn Rand

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I had read pretty well everything Ayn Rand had written during her lifetime but there are some of her posthumously published works I had not got around to. This is one of them. It is an edited transcript of a series of informal discussion she held with friends and fans in her living room in 1958, finally edited and published in 2000. And it is a terrific addition to her works.

The book is an adjunct to her collection, The Romantic Manifesto, and is aimed particularly at those who want to write fiction and those who want to understand the different types of fiction around. In particular she distinguishes between two major schools of literature - romanticism and naturalism. Romanticism focuses on big issues with large than life characters. Naturalism focuses on the average and mundane - the folks next door.

She discusses the importance of writing for the intelligent reader - writing descriptively so the reader can form his own conclusions. Bad writers will use a lot of adjectives but avoid concretes. They'll describe a sunset as beautiful or use other adjectives that describe their personal emotional reaction to what they see. She says a better way is to describe concretes and let the reader form his own emotional reaction. So a good writer might say, the sun's brightness faded and flared out into a deep red covering the horizon from end to end before slowly sinking into the sea and winking out.

Rand touches on many other issues for writers including characterization, plot, climax, description, how to train your subconscious to come up with plot ideas, and style. In the two chapters on style, she includes generous excerpts from other authors' works with commentary on the good and bad points about each.

She concludes with some short discussions on narrative versus dramatization, exposition, flashbacks, transitions, metaphors, dialogue, slang and obscenities, and journalistic references. She also touches on special forms of fiction such as humour, science fiction, symbolism, fantasy, and tragedy.

All in all, this is really an excellent textbook on good writing practices. It will certainly help any future forays I might make into fiction. Now I have to find a copy of the companion book, The Art of Non-fiction!

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