“There is no ‘right’ way to write a novel… it is always a unique process of discovery,” says Rick Reiken, a professor within Emerson’s Writing, Literature & Publishing department. He is also the author of three books, the most recent of which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. For twenty-six years, Reiken has guided ambitious writers through the unpredictable journey of novel writing. Since his first semester at Emerson in the fall of 1999, he has been teaching WR 652: Novel Workshop, a graduate course designed to help students navigate the challenges of drafting and revising a novel.
Meet the Professor: Rick Reiken’s Approach to Novel Writing
Reiken first began writing novels in his early twenties, perhaps by accident. Inspiration struck during the summer after his junior year of college while working on a barrier island off the coast of North Carolina. “I was doing research on wild horses for my undergraduate thesis project,” he says. “The island was seventeen miles long and maybe half a mile wide. I walked ten miles or more each day, often at long stretches, and for the first time in my life, I was spending extended periods without any other human contact. I’d get into a trance-like state, in which I began imagining a novel, or actually several novels, that I might write. I would think through the opening chapters in my mind and wonder if I could do it.”
It wasn’t until years later that Reiken actually made his first attempt at novel writing on paper, eventually completing a draft and a full revision. “Although it did not turn out to be a publishable book, the process taught me a great deal about what does and doesn’t work when writing a novel,” he asserts.
Following this first attempt, Reiken worked as a journalist for several years. “By then, my approach to telling stories, mostly due to the nature of my job, was much more outwardly focused,” he says. During that time, Reiken started a new novel, which took two years, eventually becoming his first published book. Looking back on his writing process at this time, Reiken says that “the more [he] looked outward at things, with greater psychic distance, the more intimate [his] writing seemed to become. That felt like a radical discovery at the time.”
When asked about any rituals or habits that help him stay productive, Reiken says, “I write longhand and usually start a story or chapter of a novel somewhere other than my desk. I get a lot of work done in cafés and often I get ideas when I am driving and will pull over into a parking lot and write.” Through his years of trial and error, Reiken continues to hone his unique writing rhythm—a process he encourages his students to practice as they begin their own novel writing journeys in WR 652.
Inside the Workshop
The novel writing workshop helps students explore story premise, stylistic approaches, point of view, and revisions while focusing on the opening chapters of a novel. Like all Emerson writing workshops, this course emphasizes the importance of feedback and collaboration in the writing process. “The weekly focus on their own novels-in-progress and those of other students, including having to give written and oral feedback, can create an immersive, multilayered experience. Students often tell me they learn as much or more from other people’s workshops as they do from their own,” says Reiken.
He also likes to focus extensively on pacing, an element of novel writing that many students struggle with. “In some cases, there is an impulse to put too much into the first chapter, and many elements compete aesthetically for the attention of the reader. In other cases, the pace of the novel moves too quickly through its opening scenes and does not take the time to ground the reader in the most important situational details that cue the reader on how the novel should be read.” These issues, which Reiken maintains can be easily resolved once noticed, are integral to the writing process. “I am a firm believer that once you are able to write a successful novel opening of about fifty pages with the narrative traction that comes with a good story framework, everything else can build on that,” he says.
In addition, Reiken encourages students to take several lessons from the novel workshop into their writing careers. First, he hopes students resonate with the fact that “the style you choose for a novel is inextricable from the content, and so it’s important to become conscious of what your stylistic choices are with regard to things like point-of-view, structure, timeframe, etc.”
Secondly, as mentioned above, “There is no ‘right’ way to write a novel,” Reiken emphasizes. “It is always a unique process of discovery, in which you will usually come to understand the story more by writing and revising it than by thinking about it or outlining. The feedback you get in a workshop class will hopefully galvanize this process, as you consider different, and sometimes even contradictory, takes on what you’re writing.” And even so, Reiken also reminds students that “all feedback is subjective and even when everyone in the class agrees on something, it is not always the right advice for the narrative.”
Reiken continues to integrate his own writing journey lessons into the classroom as well. “All of my novels started out as something else and then morphed into what they became,” he says. “It seemed accidental each time, and I’ve learned to go with the unexpected. So, I do urge my students to follow the unexpected discoveries that they make, even if it opens up new pathways that were not part of the original plan.”
Ultimately, the goal of Reiken’s novel writing workshop is to “get a writer thinking about a variety of artistic possibilities, in precise ways. Once students engage in this process, a lot of magic can happen.”
A Student’s Perspective: Vivian Walman-Randall
Vivian Walman-Randall, a recent December ‘24 graduate of the Creative Writing MFA program, credits the novel writing workshop and Professor Reiken as integral to her Emerson experience.
Going into the workshop, Vivian’s novel concept was about a woman in her twenties who becomes a climate refugee after an unprecedented disaster. “Although I knew what the important themes for my book were. Figuring out the actual timeline of the story and different locations and characters was really a lot of the work that I did while in the workshop,” she says.
“It really helped me just to hear [Professor Reiken] affirm the idea of the story. When I entered the class, I still wasn’t sure if the narrative would intrigue people. After that, hearing his advice for where to add chapters and scenes was always beneficial. It helped me build out a lot of the scaffolding for the story.”
Vivian benefited greatly from the theoretical and structural advice that Reiken would teach within the class. “Hearing elements of the novel and various structures broken down and explained clearly really worked for my brain. It gave me more knowledge in my tool belt. I loved how I could apply the thinking Rick offered not only to the books and manuscripts we read in class, but also to the books I was reading on my own, and my own work.” Some of these pivotal books that Vivian mentioned include The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy and The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
In terms of the collaborative aspect of the course, Vivian maintains that in her experience, workshops have almost always been a very productive space, especially at Emerson. “I appreciated all of my classmates’ encouragement about my story, and it was their enthusiasm about the narrative that really got me to believe in this novel,” she says. “For me, one of the most helpful things about the workshop is hearing what questions readers have—it helps me know what I need to expand on and what can be left up to interpretation. I always leave workshop with my notebook pages full of different questions, and it’s working through these questions that really helps me hone in on my story and build the world in a way that works for both the narrative and the reader.”
Throughout the course, Vivian faced challenges as simple and daunting as knowing what to write next. “Even when I know where my story needs to go, trying to figure out the next steps to get there is often the hardest part. The only way to solve it is by writing and trying different things out,” she reasons.
But overall, now as a recent graduate, Vivian maintains that Emerson and her Creative Writing MFA have prepared her in so many ways. “For starters, I feel like I am so much more equipped to do longer writing projects than I was when I entered the MFA. Coming into this program, I had a half-written novel that was sort of in a million, disconnected pieces, and that I didn’t really want to write anymore. Being in the MFA, I was able to give that novel a rest, and work on a new one [in the novel writing workshop]. I quickly realized that was what I really wanted to write about. I had a lot of great support for this novel and its progress, which the program really provided for me.”
Advice for Aspiring Novelists
We asked Professor Reiken and Vivian if they had any advice for current students or aspiring authors based on their own novel writing experiences. “Figure out what you’re really interested in,” says Vivian. “It’s okay not to jump into the novel right away,” she adds. “It’s more important to think about what matters to you as a writer and what you feel drawn to write about. Also, read contemporary work! I’m so glad I spent my MFA mainly reading things by living authors. I’m leaving the program with a whole mental bookshelf of work that’s influential to my own writing and that I want my own work to be in conversation with.”
Similarly, Reiken is an advocate for staying as long as you can within an open creative space, getting the story down within the style, voice, or technique you have chosen. “The rest can be figured out later,” he says. “The main task is to carve out space in your life to write, whenever and wherever you can… When you start to connect with the narrative you are writing and feel pulled to return to it because you can anticipate how the narrative space may unfold, that’s a good sign that you are ‘in’ and that you’ve found a narrative approach that you can stay with for a full-length novel.”
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