In an earlier post I mentioned that John Gardner, in his book On Becoming a Novelist, cites the following as what some workshop leaders consider essential to good fiction: creation of a vivid and continuous dream; authorial generosity; intellectual and emotional significance; elegance and efficiency; and strangeness. Let’s “unpack” these.

Creation of a vivid and continuous dream. The writer creates another world in readers’ minds and allows them to dwell in that world uninterrupted. (The elimination of distractions such as grammatical and punctuation errors greatly aids this process.)

Authorial generosity. Good fiction answers every reasonable question the reader will ask. It’s complete and self-sustained. It plays no tricks on the reader that would require some special foreknowledge to figure out.

Intellectual and emotional significance. The noblest originality, Gardner says, “is not stylistic but visionary and intellectual; the writer’s accurate presentation of what he, himself, has seen, heard, thought, and felt.” Such accuracy requires a great deal of self-understanding. The writer must have some insight--”not just knowledge--into personalities not visibly like one’s own.”

Elegance and efficiency. Good fiction “...does not use more scenes, characters, physical details, and technical devices than it needs to do its job. It has design.” The writer makes it look easy.

Strangeness. “An aesthetically successful story,” he says, “will contain a sense of life’s strangeness, however humdrum its makings.”

What books have done this for you?