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CFA Master Class: Walter Mosley on the Craft of Fiction with Jonathan Santlofer

September 12, 2019

“Fiction is one of the few constructive human activities in which we have the potential to make something from almost nothing. Something from nothing. That kind of alchemy is a recipe for failure and also the hope for the miraculous.”

So writes Walter Mosley in the preface of his new book, Elements of Fiction. The slim eloquent treatise on the craft of fiction writing—part writing guide, part study of the mechanics of the genre—guides writers along the path from failure toward achieving “the miraculous” in their own work. Jonathan Santlofer, author of The Widower’s Notebook, joined Mosley in conversation.