“The first few pages” are essential to know whether a novel is interesting or not, believes Pierre Assouline, literary critic and one of the ten jurors of the Prix Goncourt.
In “How to Write”, which he published with Albin Michel, this author draws on the ideas given by many famous writers to create good books.
Q: It is often said that there is no recipe for a bestseller. Is this true?
A: Yes. People absolutely want there to be recipes, methods, secrets. All that comes after the fact. There is more and more universal literature, novels that are real world bestsellers, but which were not made for that. “The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Eco. It is a very specific subject, chosen by an author who is himself a big name…
Q: However, you do give several pieces of advice on what not to do.
A: There are techniques that allow you to avoid making beginner’s mistakes and to go faster. These techniques are tested by many writers that we all admire.
The starting point is that I have been teaching writing for 25 years at Sciences Po. I have always wanted to give my students lots of examples, so I collect interviews with writers. I have hundreds of them.
And there are quite a few books where writers take a break to explain where their writing comes from. The public asks itself a question: how do they do it? Philip Roth always talks about the same thing, never leaves Newark, his neighborhood, and it’s never the same book. And we wonder how it works: the dialogues, the characters, the story…
Q: One piece of advice you quote is the famous one in English: “kill your darlings”, “kill your favorites”, your preferences. Isn’t that counterproductive?
A: What annoys me the most are the commonplaces. “I wrote the book I wanted to read”: this sentence exasperates me. I don’t believe in inspiration either, a cliché inherited from the 19th century. I always tell students that it must be replaced by impregnation. I don’t hide the fact that I am strongly influenced by Georges Simenon, since I wrote his biography. He was a writer who absorbed a lot. Three years of decantation and it came out. Always three years, he didn’t know why.
Q: Today, novelists are arriving who have trained in creative writing masters, like Shane Haddad, whose “Aimez Gil” was critically acclaimed this fall. Does this mean that the craft of writing can be taught?
A: Literature is taught, it is learned, but it does not make anyone a writer. First sentence of my book: “This book will not make you a writer”. That is also what I say on the first day of my course. But also that if, among the students, some have the aptitude for writing, I will help them to do better and faster.
Let’s count the number of times on a page you write I. Stop starting sentences with I. Write a two-page story without the verbs être and avoir. Don’t write the same word four times on the same page. And then read Balzac, Maupassant, Zola…
Q: But why some people have these dispositions remains a mystery.
A: However, we feel it right away. We make them write and we see if anyone has any. On the contrary, there are people who are very advanced in their studies who have a catastrophic level of expression in writing.
Q: As a Goncourt jury member, you read a lot of good and bad novels. Do you sort through them quickly?
A: You see the story on the back cover, the first few pages… Yes. What interests me when I receive the books is to know how each one is made. I rush inside to see how the author has arranged his story. When you’re in the construction industry, you’re interested in mechanics.
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