Oneworld Readers’ Guide
How to Write Like Tolstoy
How to Write Like Tolstoy - A
Journey into the Minds of Our
Greatest Writers
Richard Cohen
What made Norman Mailer change from first person to third?
Which authors borrowed plots and characters from people
they knew? Why did Turgenev envy Tolstoy, and what does
that say about how fiction writers create characters?
Richard Cohen takes readers on an enchanting journey into
the minds, techniques, concerns, tricks and flaws of the
world’s greatest writers. He reveals how literary legends such
as Eliot, Dickens, Woolf, Amis, King and Morrison grappled
with problems, questioned themselves and occasionally
changed their minds to dramatic effect as they created the
stories we love. Playful, profound and brimming with insights,
How to Write Like Tolstoy is a charming guide to the writer’s
craft, disclosing the fascinating stories behind the finest
novels we’ve ever known.
Includes revealing insights from the literary lives of Vladimir Nabokov, Fay Weldon, Samuel Beckett,
George Orwell, J. D. Salinger, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mark Twain, Kate Atkinson, Philip Roth, Emily Brontë,
Ali Smith, Franz Kafka, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Agatha Christie and many more.
Questions for Discussion
1.
Cohen argues that good writing is the result of an author being able to trust the reader to
understand what cannot be said. Why do you think this is, and how much should be expected
of the reader in this regard?
2.
Karl Marx once said that many of Balzac’s characters gained their full growth only after the
author was dead. Cohen writes extensively about how many novelists believe that fictional
characters can have ‘an existence above and beyond their author’s endeavours.’ But does this
understanding include a reader’s interpretation of a character beyond the writing process?
How far is an author able to control the reader’s understanding of a character?
3.
Cohen compares fictional characters to children who eventually come to ‘take on autonomous
life.’ Nabokov, a Russian-American novelist, on the other hand, once remarked in an interview
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Oneworld Readers’ Guide
How to Write Like Tolstoy
for The Paris Review that his characters ‘are galley slaves.’ Where do you stand on this issue,
and how does your stance affect your writing experience?
4.
There are countless stories about how iconic fictional characters such as Tess D’Urberville
and Sherlock Holmes originally went by different names. Furthermore, Raymond Chandler
once said that book titles should conjure ‘a particular magic which impresses itself on the
memory.’ Cohen devotes a lot of time in the book to names, titles and their impact on
the reader. Do you think Cohen is correct in so directly attributing names and titles to the
success, or iconic status, of a novel or fictional character?
5.
American novelist John Cheever repeatedly insisted that ‘fiction is not cryptoautobiography’. Do you agree? How far is an author able to go beyond the influence of their
own life experience in writing fiction?
6.
Cohen, in the words of Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, writes that it is ‘better to
dance, make love, write a novel without too much regard for the textbooks.’ Is this advice
itself an indictment of How to Write Like Tolstoy? What do you think Cohen’s purposes were
in writing this book, if not to teach people how to write?
7.
Cohen suggests that when writing ‘one lets down a bucket into one’s subconscious and
draws up what is normally beyond reach.’ To what extent does the subconscious play a role
in forming elements of a novel such as characterisation and plot? What are the implications
of this, particularly with regard to the question of creativity and practical methods of
writing?
8.
Readers often talk about the formative power of literature. Cohen himself mentions how his
involvement in the lives of fictional characters has shaped his moral world. But does writing
fiction play a formative role in the lives of novelists, and if so, in what way?
9.
Cohen tells the story of how Malcolm Gladwell went on to congratulate a plagiarist for
adding value to what he first wrote. Many find this ‘added value’ argument persuasive when
it comes to writing fiction. Do you find the added value argument persuasive, and did this
chapter challenge your perspective on the idea of ‘originality’ in any way?
10. Cohen makes reference to the ‘ice chip in the heart’ which Graham Greene explains is a
trait which allows a novelist to borrow from loved ones’ lived experiences and personalities.
Greene thinks this is an essential trait of a good writer. Do you agree? Do you ‘possess such
a splinter,’ and if so, to what degree?
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