The First Fiction-Writing “How To”

Show, don’t tell. Write what you know. Don’t quit your day job.

Sherwin Cody advised and instructed beginning fiction writers to follow each of those now cliched writing truisms. In his 1894 How to Write Fiction, Especially the Art of Short Story Writing, Cody advocates clarity in writing (perhaps a good excuse for him to drop his first name Alpheus), and claims he can help you shorten the time required to become an experienced fiction writer. Learn how to write your own book. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

The seeds of the emergence of fiction writing guides came about a decade earlier from literary giant Henry James and critic Walter Besant in their 1885 book The Art of Fiction in which they argue that writing fiction was a "trainable art." But of course it took an American, Michigan-born orphan Sherwin Cody to turn the concept into a money maker based on the most extreme form of marketing, lying about who you are (a technique politicians use regularly).

Cody was 26 when he published his instruction book under the pseudonym "An Old Hand" and the publisher boasted that the author was a "well known novelist." In fact, Cody had only a book of self-published poetry called Life’s Philosophy to his credit. While he obviously was not a well known novelist, Cody clearly had the tools to become one, mainly he could lie, and he could lie on a grand scale, pushing ethical boundaries. One could argue that his first book was fraudulent (think James Frey’s "memoir").

Once How to Write Fiction was published, Cody tried following his own advice, but he quickly found out that giving advice, knowing how to write a damn good novel is much more difficult than actually writing it. He was better at giving advice than following his own advice. Cody, having already proclaimed himself a brilliant fiction writer, must have been crushed when his 1896 novel In the Heart of the Hills (fittingly an Hortio-Alger type story) failed. But he must have also learned something about himself.

His next book, The Art of Writing & Speaking the English Language, was published in 1903, seven years after his failed novel. He writes, "You and I were not especially endowed with literary talent... But we want to write and speak better than we do." That sounds like a man who has come to terms with himself. His humorless advice about humor is indicative, "The master of humor can draw upon the riches of his own mind, and thereby enliven any subject he may desire to write upon."

So, while Cody abandoned his hopes of becoming a great writer, he didn’t give up his hopes of helping others become great writers. ("If you can’t live the dream, make a living off the dreams of others.") He compares writing to a trade. "How have greater writers learned to write? How do plumbers learn plumbing?" He asserts that some great writers "who didn’t start with a peculiar genius, have learned to write" like plumbers watching a master-plumber and trying "to do likewise."

For example, this suggestion to copy The Red Badge of Courage. "After reading this passage over a dozen times very slowly and carefully, and copying it phrase by phrase, continue the narrative in Crane’s style through two more paragraphs, bringing the story of this day’s doing to some natural conclusion." The apprentice plumber mimicking the master plumber. I confess to hating these sort of exercises. For me, and I suspect many young writers, something similar happened naturally. I would read a particular writer, then find my own writing sounding suspiciously like theirs. It didn’t take too long to figure out that I was being instructed by the masters.

To be fair, however, Cody wrote just as he advocated -- clear, correct, and colloquial. And his guides were packed with advice and practice still relevant for today’s would-be writers (and copied in countless "How to Write" guides since then). In The Art of Writing & Speaking the English Language, Cody tells the reader to "rewrite this little story, locating the scene in your own home town, and describing yourself in place of" the main character. Many of us have been in classes that give similar instruction, haven’t we? (By the time I eventually took a fiction writing class, I still hated exercises, but saw the potential gain in my participation -- two short stories originated from that class.)

In a way, Cody had what most fiction writers must have today; that is, superior marketing skills. "Traditional" publishers are under siege by hoards of self-publishers (online, ebooks, hard and soft cover) and partly as a result have less and less money to market new authors, pushing more and more new authors into self-publishing. Clearly, new writers need to emulate Cody, become expert advertisers and develop marketing skills (maybe even lie a little?). At any rate, the online world has made all writers advertises of some sort. (Cody might be delighted to know that he’s on Facebook.)

Even though Cody aspired be a fiction writer, he became an entrepreneur, an advertiser, a writer and marketer of business letter guides, business practices, commercial hiring tests, English home-study courses, workbooks, and so on. His last book was published in 1950, Letters: Writing to Get People to Do Things. Perhaps by the time he died in 1959, he knew where he’d failed In the Heart of the Hills, but he’d also got lots of people to do things that made him successful. However, while Sherwin Cody knew how sell his "how to" books, even this master at marketing couldn’t sell his own bad fiction.