From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction

Having read From Where You Dream, I’d like to sit in one of Mr. Butler’s classes to ask clarification on various points. To be fair, I read the book over a week ago and since that time what I read has been percolating in my conscious and subconscious. So I guess from that impact alone—the reflection his words warrant—I would esteem him a good teacher. The things bad teachers say never percolate.In this book Butler assigns himself the task to teach how to write literary fiction. Unfortunately he never defines what literary fiction is, nor does he give a list of novels he considers literary fiction. He does give a well-written passage from Charles Dickens, but I don’t think Mr. Dickens himself or his readers would classify his fiction as literary. Classics, yes. Masterpieces, yes. But literary? No.The book has two main points. First, a stream of sensory impressions must flow one into another without any analysis or interpretation; that is, the author strives to give the moment by moment sensations of the fictional character without reflection. I agree that this can be effective, but in a novel it must be done in small doses, in those places where the author needs the cinematic lens to come in for a close-up. If it is overused--as many of the student passages in the book bring home--the effect is cloyingly claustrophobic.Second, he insists the underpinning and thrust of the work must be yearning by the protagonist. This yearning should be mostly unverbalized. Well, yes and no. I think it was John Gardner who said it best, something to the effect that ‘Fiction is the only art or science whose subject matter is emotion, both big and small.’ Yearning, as Mr. Butler uses it, is an existential emotional/spiritual desire for fulfillment. How boring it would be if every novel had as its core the longing for a sense of belonging, or of being needed, or of romantic connection, or of going home again (all of which are basically the existential longing for completion).Mr. Butler is too restrictive in defining the impetus of a novel as being yearning. A story must have a character who strives for a goal. That goal may well be yearning for completion, or it could be to save the world from cataclysm. Does one necessarily make a literary novel and one necessarily make a pulp novel?Mr. Butler does make many good points, but I don’t think the presentation in this book (It is an editorial adaptation of classroom lectures.) gets the balance of things right.Among the finest of these points is his likening the subconscious to a compost heap where all our memories, emotions, and learning melt together. He makes the point that good fiction must arise organically from that compost heap, not from an intellectual plotting of the story. I couldn’t agree more. Fiction that is plotted out, scene by scene, is much like the CSI series on television. While such fiction may be mildly entertaining, it leaves a bad aftertaste and doesn’t resonate in imagination.Butler suggests only one way to tap into the subconscious, by the willful act of sitting in your writing place for hours a day just ‘dreaming.’ Atchity’s A Writer’s Time is much more helpful in understanding the stages of creation, and the time it takes for ideas to percolate from subconscious into a tangible form.In summary, a thought-provoking read, but as another reviewer suggested, it needs to be taken with a generous sprinkle of salt. Mr. Butler is very prescriptive (narrow?), and one chef’s palate may not please, unadjusted, all diners.

I think this is the first book any beginning writer should read. Butler walks you through learning to write in vivid detail so that your read can enter into the world you've created and feel it: see it, hear it, taste it, smell it, almost touch what you describe. This is a method he calls "sense memory."But wait! Forty-five years ago, back when I was trying to seriously study drama and acting, I was reading the Russians, Boleslavsky and Stanislavski, the creators of what is now called (rightly or wrongly) "method acting." What the authors (the Russians and Butler) are trying to do is to render your story physically real and well as descriptively accurate. To this end, Butler keeps pushing his students to push through the veil of distraction, abstraction, generalizing, and get down into what Butler calls your "white-hot center" which is the immediate, the now, the moment, and would some scientists would describe as a trance of theta waves/particles. Theta is generally regarded as our source of creativity. If all this sounds vaguely meditational, it's not accidental. There's a practice of meditation called "mindfulness" in which you have to focus on as much as you can of what's surrounding you. Mindfulness is not easy, and Butler and Burroway (the editor who put together this collection of Butler's teaching) stress how difficult it is to get into the dreamspace from which you must write. And if I'd known about his focus on yearning all those years ago, I might actually have gotten some actual writing done. But, blood over the bridge. My great topic on which I'll spend the rest of my life came to me at 59, but now I know how to go about it.The style is unusual, being a recording of several sessions of Butler's teaching a small class of hopeful young writers. The book includes a number of exercises, and the last half of the book consists of his critiquing of several of the students' exercises, so you can see how it's done.This is an excellent and eminently useful book you'll probably return to often in your writing. Keep it close.

Robert Olen's book, "From Where You Dream" is a game-changer if you are a fiction writer - I can't say enough about how much I LOVE this book. I am an MFA student and this was recommended in one of my workshops.Butler's approach is so creative and makes so much sense. He takes you into one of his classes and actually teaches you how to write a scene! I will have this book next to me like a bible every time I sit down to write!If you are serious about becoming or improving your writing skills, this is the book you need!Highly Recommend!

An amazing book--written with a style directly to the reader. Informative, understanding, and directive. The concept of writing from a place where you "dream", is a way to apply character to movement moment by moment writing. For me, the reader, it simply is stating n a new way, just how to get into the skin of your character and follow their moves in a more concrete way. Rereading, or as the author calls it, "re-dreaming" as you go over sentences before moving forward to the next platform of your story, novel, etc.I would recommend this book to all writers, particularly short story writers.Mr. Butler also has a Creative writing video session in 17 videos on you tube. Very interesting to say the least, and challenges you to think and employ realism into any fiction story. Well worth the view, if you are patient.

A good and reassuring analysis/description of the way imagination conjures fiction and then shapes it to provide a fuller, more satisfying experience for the reader or potential reader - from first moment of inspiration to a finished, fully crafted piece. Only criticism I have is its concentration on fiction as art as a kind of exalted calling, which it is, but it's also a craft, learned by practice and hard slog and a growing appreciation and knowledge of the techniques of story telling. But, then, there are plenty of other writing primers and manuals covering that.

Well - I like his basic idea a lot. The book is structured in a way that may comes across a little unpolished maybe, but his method and philosophy and observations on, arguably, the hardest part of the craft are there, easily accessible. If you have watched online seminars or talks by this author or the long but thoroughly wonderful internet live-authoring of a short story over 16 days, you may not find much new stuff in here, especially seeing as his quotes seem to be most likely based on the same lectures - but the book does add some depth and context that I enjoyed. And his observations on yearning, the unconscious and the organic art object are radical and finely chiseled. As a book in itself I might be inclined to give it 3 starts - but I like the whole concept too much

I am currently working my way through this essential guide to freeing up your mind in order to write from a visceral level. Compiled with material from recorded lectures that allow you to attend without paying the course fees. It guides you through the descent into the basement where your hopes and dreams are hidden.

I abhorred (what I read of) this book. I found it next to impossible to wade through as the tone was consistently patronizing or felt 'above' the student or casual person who was reading it or in his classes. It's almost as if Butler goes out of his way to find a vague or purposefully high brow way of describing how to write or how he writes.From where you dream reads more like a nightmare in this person's humble opinion. Avoid like the plague!

Wonderful, insightful book.Highly recommended, if you're not the 'plotting' type.Just as highly recommended if you are ...