Learn to Write Great Stories in 63 Minutes — Jonathan Franzen

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Jonathan Franzen is one of the most influential novelists alive today. He sees fiction as the most fundamental human art, and in this conversation he explains how he actually makes it: the discipline, the daily grind, and the psychological spelunking required to write characters who feel startlingly alive.

Franzen has always had an outsider’s eye. He questioned the hype of the Internet long before it was fashionable, and he’s been ruthless in diagnosing the spiritual emptiness of modern consumer life. Practically, more than anything else, this episode is about how he develops rich characters. For Franzen, the people are the story. When they’re real and true, fiction has a way of getting to the core of the human experience in a way that gives people a visceral experience, as if they’ve lived the story firsthand.

00:00:00 Creating rich characters
00:02:40 Should novels be funny?
00:12:00 Examining your own life
00:14:49 Why novels must be fun
00:25:15 How clichés ruin fiction
00:29:16 How to observe society
00:43:28 The dangers of modern tech
00:49:22 Lies about the “good life”
00:52:38 Does chaos make you creative?
00:54:49 Jonathan’s writing routine
00:59:37 Why he loves birds

About the host
Hey! I’m David Perell and I’m a writer, teacher, and podcaster. I believe writing online is one of the biggest opportunities in the world today. For the first time in human history, everybody can freely share their ideas with a global audience. I seek to help as many people publish their writing online as possible.

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