Episode 26: How to write literary fiction with author Scott Alexander Hess

Behind the Prose

In this meta-writing hour, author and fellow New School alum Scott Alexander Hess, dissects his use and balance of language to create scene and character in his latest book, a historical novel, The Butcher’s Son (a literary fiction hell-of-a-work if I do say so mahself.) The author of three books, Hess masters juxtaposing elements of nature to “aggravate and propel things that are already happening” in the plot. The novel, set in 1930s in New York City, gains its viscosity from something Hess calls “method writing” as well as immersion research. “When I’m writing a book, I basically live in a world,” Hess says. “So for a year and a half, I’m living in the 30s.” The result? For a day and half, the time it took me to read The Butcher’s Son, I too lived in the 30s in a Hell's Kitchen tenement with three brothers taking divergent paths that eventually lead Hess right onto my bookshelf of “writers I want to be when I grow up.” But in the words of the first book reviewer I ever knew, “Don’t take my word for it.” Listen. Learn. Write.