Replay: Isabel Allende shares Five Things She's Learned about Writing Fiction
Check out the first five minutes of her recent class.
“How do you know when you’re done? Well, it’s like a marriage, you know, there’s a point where you can’t stand it anymore!…There’s a point where you just give up. You’ve done enough.”
– Isabel Allende, Five Things I’ve Learned about Writing Fiction
Isabel Allende is one of the most widely read authors in the world, having sold more than 75 million books. Chilean born in Peru, Isabel won worldwide acclaim in 1982 with the publication of her first novel, The House of the Spirits, which began as a letter to her dying grandfather.
Here’s the first five minutes of our recent 90-minute class in which she shares the Five Things She’s Learned about writing fiction, discovering your voice, and writing the work you were born to create.
Isabel’s Five Things I’ve Learned about Writing Fiction discusses the distinctive characteristics and requirements of different literary genres, her unique brand of plot shaping, how to delve into research and the challenges of creating characters and environments that are believable.
She also proposes questions that have to do with the very act of writing: How do you instill discipline in your schedule? What should you do when you get stuck? How do you kill off characters you love? And how do you know when you’re done?
“I am passionate about fiction writing, and it’s my honor to share my experience with other writers, wherever they are in their own writing journey,” Isabel writes in the introduction to her class. “Maybe I can help a little to discover your voice and to write the work you were born to create.”
Isabel has authored more than twenty-five bestselling and critically acclaimed books, including Of Love and Shadows, Eva Luna, Daughter of Fortune, Island Beneath the Sea, Paula, The Japanese Lover, and Long Petal of the Sea. Her work has been translated into more than forty-two languages. Her books entertain and educate readers by interweaving imaginative stories with significant historical events.
In addition to her work as a writer, Isabel devotes much of her time to human rights causes. In 1996, following the death of her daughter Paula, she established a charitable foundation in her honor, which has awarded grants to more than 100 nonprofits worldwide, delivering life-changing care to thousands of women and girls. She has received fifteen honorary doctorates, including one from Harvard University, was inducted into the California Hall of Fame, received the PEN Center Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2014, President Barack Obama awarded Allende the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, and in 2018 she received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation. She lives in California.
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