Curious Attractions: Essays on Fiction Writing

When Debra Spark writes about writing, she spends a lot of time calling up her friends and bugging them for pointers. That's fine, considering her buddies include authors like Lorrie Moore and Mona Simpson, who have plenty to share.

But littered throughout Curious are thoughts on writing from William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joan Didion and other heavyweights who are presumably not on Spark's speed dial. It turns her book into a symposium rather than a lecture, a discussion by the greats on how they craft stories.

Spark is the director of Colby College's creative-writing program and the author of two novels, and it seems the latter has informed her approach to these essays more than the former. Many writing books push exercise upon exercise onto the reader, with no teacher there to provide guidance once the work is complete. Spark's book is a collection of essays that contemplate what makes a story work. And though Spark discusses some exercises, there's never pressure to put down the book and write about your dear Uncle Phil.

In a chapter on how to bring out emotion in fiction without falling into the trap of sentimentality, Spark writes, "Knowing the definition of sentimentality won't necessarily help you avoid it if you don't also recognize the forms sentimentality takes in literature." She then goes on to compare and contrast successes and failures in stories: A student's gruesome suicide story ends with a gunshot to the head, whereas a Stewart O'Nan story avoids the moment of suicide to focus on a moment of hope. It's an illustrative comparison, recalled less by a professor and more by a lover of literature.

Spark is so adept at avoiding the typical pitfalls of this genre, she could write a book about writing a book on fiction writing. While Curious isn't designed to supplant a classroom, it's the perfect supplement for the writer staring at the blank screen.—Jonathan Messinger