The Book Every Vocal Creator Should Read

While Palahniuk taught us that the First Rule of Fight Club is 'You do not talk about Fight Club", I am here to tell you we should DEFINITELY talk about Palahniuk's book Consider This.

This is the first of his books that I've read (I KNOW! OK? I was a bookseller during peak Fight Club and didn't read him.) because his visceral fiction has been too blunt of a weapon for me.

However- THIS book? This book is gold. I have borrowed it from the library, listened to the audio, and now have a copy on my shelf for ready reference.

Why YOU Need to Read This Book!

Why, you may wonder, would I suggest reading a book by an author who had a story rejected by Playboy as 'too disturbing'?

Chuck Palahniuk has AUTHORITY to write this book. He is a successful Fiction, Suspense, and Horror writer, but that barely scratches the surface. He also has three non-fiction books (this is one of them), two graphic novels, and two adult coloring books (really!). He has shared the small screen with Anthony Bourdain, cozied up to literary folks at the request of his agents, and includes nods to booksellers that have had an impact on his writing career. He's been a journalist, mechanic, and lifetime learner.

Palahniuk conducts a two-way conversation with the reader, constructing the book as a private class on storytelling. This is an opportunity that would endlessly delight you in real life and keep you engaged and aware. It does the same thing in written form.

This is no Anderson's fairy tale storytelling! No- it would best be the Brother's Grimm versions of a story, and Palahniuk dissects each element, gives practical examples, and ends each section with the assignment as if the reader was his student.

I cannot take months off of work to attend a class like this, even it such a thing was available. I CAN, however, read and reread this book.

Give Me An Example, Judey!

Palahniuk uses personal stories, many are not his own, which makes it extra-delicious at times, to give the reader/student 'tools' that they can use for their own work. I found his suggestion that writers are like DJs, using and mixing different tools like the DJ mixes different tracks.

Some of those tools had me putting down the book, walking around, and then re-reading to truly soak in what he was saying. When he suggested a myriad of gruesome fiction takes build around the germ of Schrodinger's Cat (If you don't know it or won't click on the link: it's a principle of quantum mechanics where a hypothetical cat in a sealed is both alive and dead at the same time until the box is opened and the true state of the cat is discovered)- I was in awe.

Now. Would I write any of those stories? It is unlikely. Would @Dharrsheena? I just kept mumbling "Oh my. Dharrsheena would love this book' over and over again. Heck to the YES she would and I'd love to see her write all of the suggestions he outlined. She would SMASH them and I'd end up obsessing over the denouement as I did this story of hers two years ago. To this day I still hold my breath as I read her work waiting to be shattered anew.

Am I saying that a chapter that has a principle of quantum mechanics at it's core is riveting? Darn tooting I am. You will love it.

But. But; I Don't Write Fiction... so...?

Oh, my dear sweet Pumpkin. We all write Fiction. Storytelling. In our own way everything true we write could be written by someone else in a different way, from a different point of view, and the reader of each of them would walk away with different thoughts. We are each the Teller of Our Own Tales.

Some people (me- I am some people) some people might say that Fiction is just something that hasn't happened exactly the way it's written. We all write it as we see it, or want to see it, or should have seen it, or wished we had seen it, or thought we had seen it. We all bring our own point of view to our writing and that POV influences what we write and the way we write it. Poetry, narrative, biography, training materials- you name it and it can be seen as storytelling.

Vocal Writer/Creators tell stories. It's right there in the top left corner of the screen as I write this:

So from this (metaphorically points to myself as I type) Storyteller to all (imagining an inclusive arm wave that embraces all readers and writers everywhere) Storytellers: You need this book.

I suggest getting it from your local bookstore or library. But if you want to purchase it from the alternative to the big @m@z0n, you can use this link to my affiliate shop on Bookshop.org, where part of all purchases are distributed to independent bookstores. (I may also get a few cents... just like I do if/when 100 people read my writing here on Vocal)

Please leave me a comment: have you read this book? Will you read this book? Have you talked about Fight Club? Should we have a gonzo-cool Storyteller tshirt?