Craft in the Real World is very much a treatise on how to write, workshop, and peer critique/review written work. This book should be given to every student taking a writing class from high school to graduate school, teaching all writers how to read critically and teaching them how to express suggestions and observations but not unhelpful opinions that may not be helpful to the author, especially a writer who comes from a different culture or diaspora.
This treatise is more about workshop/MFA/academic programs making their course more open to receive the writer's content and have a better system of interpreting the information. This book helped my own writing. Part of my process had been to try to write to the market, making it more homogenous in alignment to other stories out there in my genre, but the reality is that I want to write my story through my own lens and experiences as a BIPOC.
The best part of the book is the appendix with an outline/plotting/questions to ask yourself when writing and use for evaluating written work of others.
Thank you to the publisher, the author, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Craft in the Real World highlights how traditional writing workshops -- where authors must sit in silence while others debate the nuances of the text -- don't equally serve all groups when the parties are diverse and the text is aimed for readers not represented in the room. Matthew Salesses offers possible changes that would better serve diverse authors writing in structures unique to their culture/lens which don't follow the dominant culture.

This text is a rich resource, and the countless examples of alternative workshops as well as writing and revision exercises are worth the price alone. This text is truly a welcome gift that should now be a primary resource for those leading writing workshops from now on.

(I received a digital ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.)

Salesses crafts a wonderful primer for writers and educators alike that delves into the creative process, expectations, and the importance of storytelling and encouraging storytelling for those who have often been overlooked or ignored.

I've been waiting for "Craft in the Real World" by Matthew Salesses my whole life.

Salesses calls out white supremacy and colonization in literature and literary spaces. He explains how craft elements are designed to explore the white Western experience by prioritizing an individual's growth with a singular aspiration in a world that functions with the fundamental understanding of Christianity, Western mythos, Greek philosophies, a specific scientific lens, and a linear way of experiencing time. Anything that defies these literary expectations are deemed "experimental," "magical realism," or "nonlinear." Even in liberal, creative spaces, nonwhite methodologies are othered and brushed off as too complicated for a general audience.

Salesses implores readers, writers, and professors to notice their literary biases. Look at who these book centers and who these books don't. What is the author/characters' world view? How do they experience reality? Who are their influences? Is the writer a student of Edward Said or James A. Michener? One denounces and deconstructs colonialism while the other romanticizes and profits off my grandparents watching their community murdered and experimented on by Japanese and American occupiers.

Growing up in the U.S. taught by women and relatively liberal instructors, I was told to identify with the white women in Western Literature. I didn't. Instead, I was more interested in their help. After all, they look more like my family. Besides, I've spent my time cleaning rich white women's stools, wiping the spray tan off their maroon walls, and been a human punching bag when they take out their frustrations on a service worker. I never see myself in literature, TV, or movies. I still don't. That's why I write.

Everyone needs to read this book. We all have our biases, cultural traditions, and occupy slightly different realities. We need to acknowledge that and open ourselves up to different realities.

Although this book is quite dense, there is so much thought-provoking material provided that it is worth the effort. The conversation about the expectations of craft from a cultural perspective has made me rethink the way I approach any story, but especially stories written from the perspective of cultures other than mine. The author provides numerous examples both from a theoretical and practical approach to how discussions of craft are experienced by workshop attendees and taught by instructors. A great book for expanding your thoughts about craft and storytelling to be more culturally aware.

Two key pieces of advice stand out. The first is to push back, not simply against the standards but against the context that created them: “Workshop has created many axioms: ‘show, don’t tell,’ ‘write what you know,’ ‘kill your darlings,’ etc. Writers have pushed back against those axioms, but we must also push back against the context that creates them, that nurtures them and passes them on.” Such pushback is possible only if we first work toward a deeper and wider knowledge of different ways of telling stories. This entails not only understanding the conventions of various literary traditions but also which exceptions and experiments might have influenced or changed them.

The second piece of advice is about determining the readership we’re writing for. Here, Salesses introduces his critical concept of two kinds of readers and two kinds of writers. First, there’s the reader-self that knows the fiction they’re reading is made up, not real. Then, there’s the implied reader: the self that experiences fictional characters as real people which is the one a writer is generally writing for. There’s also the author who creates and the implied author as imagined from the text by the reader. The author’s craft choices are not only negotiations with the cultural expectations of the implied reader, but they also determine the worldview or orientation of the implied author, the one the real reader gets to know through the text.

(please see the review link for the full text)

This really is like a workshop in a book, not only on writing but looking at craft as a big picture. Salesses included some ideas that stripped away what I thought I knew about writing fiction and I have so many highlights and notes from reading this book. It will probably be one that I reference many times in my writing practice. *Advance copy provided by the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

An utterly brilliant book that I am recommending to anyone who writes or teaches writing. Salesses unpacks the white, male history of the writing workshop and writing criticism, and uncovers how what is taught as "good writing" is just something that ticks the boxes these writers have made. By encouraging the use of different forms and approaches to writing, and with suggestions for changing the oppressive value structure present in writing and writing evaluation, he asks us all to rethink how we write and teach writing.

Excellent and highly important. A recommened first purchase for nonfiction collections where craft and education books are popular and for high school professional collections.

An essential text for all writers and instructors. Though the subtitle specifies this book is meant for fiction, I found it useful even as a nonfiction writer. I wish I'd had it years ago, when I started writing and workshopping.

I've long heard my favorite critics discuss evaluating a book according to its own goals and terms, but never quite understood what that meant. Salesses beautifully demystifies this question by pointing over and over again (without being redundant or pedantic) to the centrality of the INTENDED audience (vs. workshop audience). According to him, every craft decision comes down to this element, which makes so much sense that I'm shocked it's not more widely known and discussed. I also really appreciated his thoughtful discussion of what workshop should and can do, and what it absolutely shouldn't. I will be thinking about his advice in every workshop I'm in going forward.

Written in clear and accessible language, supplemented with loads of practical examples and exercises. Highly recommend.

I loved this book! The author is a writing teacher and this book is his philosophy of what a meaningful writing workshop could be for writers who fall outside of the Hemingway demographic (white, straight, male, cis, affluent, able, etc.)

He articulates why I have typically found traditional workshopping a less than helpful experience and I want to be part of these new workshop structures! The book seems like its primary audience is writing teachers who lead craft workshops, but it has a broader appeal for anyone who writes and has questioned the "traditional" writing workshop structure.

Salesses explains in clear terms why the "traditional" structure works well for straight, white, cis, affluent, able, male (etc.) writers but often doesn't provide meaningful writing development opportunities for writers who fall outside that narrow "Hemingway"-esque demographic. Really upliftng and validating to read and realize that past workshop experiences which felt unhelpful at best (bullying at worst) might be chalked up to the structure of the workshop itself as being a space not created for me.

I received an ARC from NetGalley for an honest review.