Lessons from MANY GENRES, ONE CRAFT: Tuning Up Your Writing with Michael A. Arnzen (@MikeArnzen)

In Many Genres, One Craft, award-winning author Michael A. Arnzen and Heidi Ruby Miller gather the voices of today’s top genre writers and writing instructors alongside their published students. It fosters the writing process in a way that focuses almost exclusively on writing the novel. Using a compilation of instructional articles penned by well-known authors affiliated with Seton Hill University’s acclaimed MFA program in Writing Popular Fiction, the book emphasizes how to write genre novels and commercially appealing fiction. The articles are modeled after actual “learning modules” that have successfully taught students in the program how to reach a wider audience for over a decade.

Excerpt from “Tuning Up Your Writing” by Michael A. Arnzen

There’s a reason we call thought “musing.” The proverbial “muse” that inspires us as writers is the same “muse” at the root of the word “music.” Think of all the musical terms we use to describe acts of writing—from “composition” classes to taking “notes” to “timing” a scene or adding “beats” to our dialogue—and you begin to realize that we writers, particularly those in the arts of fiction and poetry, share a lot more with musicians than we realize. Taking stock of the musicality of our writing can help us improve our craft and, in the process, serenade our publishers into a sale.

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Work Cited:

Arnzen, Michael A. “Tuning Up Your Writing.” Many Genres, One Craft. Eds. Michael A. Arnzen and Heidi Ruby Miller. Terra Alta, WV: Headline Books, Inc., 2011. 32–33. Print.