Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

How to Write Like Tolstoy
A Journey into the Minds of Our Greatest Writers
By: Richard Cohen
Narrated by: Richard Cohen
Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
4.9 out of 5 stars (9 ratings)

Failed to add items

Sorry, we are unable to add the item because your shopping cart is already at capacity.

Add to basket failed.

Please try again later

Add to wishlist failed.

Please try again later

Remove from wishlist failed.

Please try again later

Adding to library failed

Please try again

Follow podcast failed

Unfollow podcast failed

$0.00 for first 30 days

Try for £0.00

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.

Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.

Access exclusive sales and deals.

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

How to Write Like Tolstoy

By: Richard Cohen

Narrated by: Richard Cohen

Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £15.99

No valid payment method on file.

Add payment method

Switch payment method

We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method

Switch payment method

Pay using card ending in

Switch payment method

By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Listeners also enjoyed...

Writing Fiction, Tenth Edition cover art

Page-Turner: Your Path to Writing a Novel That Publishers Want and Readers Buy cover art

This Year You Write Your Novel cover art

Summary

Behind every acclaimed work of literature is a trove of heartfelt decisions. The best authors put painstaking - sometimes obsessive - effort into each element of their stories, from plot and character development to dialogue and point of view.

Veteran editor and teacher Richard Cohen draws on his vast reservoir of a lifetime's reading and his insight into what makes good prose soar. Here are Gabriel Garcia Márquez's thoughts on how to start a novel ("In the first paragraph you solve most of the problems with your book"); Virginia Woolf offering her definition of style ("It is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can't use the wrong words"); and Vladimir Nabokov on the nature of fiction ("All great novels are great fairy tales").

Cohen has researched the published works and private utterances of our greatest authors to discover the elements that made their prose memorable. The result is a unique exploration of the act and art of writing that enriches our experience of reading both the classics and the best modern fiction. Evoking the marvelous, the famous, and the irreverent, he reveals the challenges that even the greatest writers faced - and shows us how they surmounted them.