Or, How Good Writing is Just Like Good Conversation By Natalie Serber Much to my delight, The New York Times Magazine recently published a feature on “The Art of the Dinner Party.” Along with recipes (try this one for my…
I have heard more than one writer say that they have created mixtapes while they were working on a story or novel and listening to that music, and that music alone, while they were writing was hugely helpful. If you’re…
Holly Willis: You are both a filmmaker and a fiction writer: how do those two very different vocations influence each other and in turn impact your work? Mary Kuryla: I started as an English major in college — though I…
Most of the time, our narrators are speaking directly to our readers. We may not do so as directly as Charlotte Bronte (“Reader, I married him.”) but it is implied, no matter the voice that we’re using. Second person can…
The tournament is the highlight of our year at the Simmler School, figuratively and literally: Abe Larson, math teacher and advisor to the tech club, uses acid-bright bulbs in the auditorium spotlights. He likes to make the contestants sweat. Abe…
On Ending Polyphonic Novels by Rachel King I write multivoiced fiction, a technique also known as writing polyphonically, from the musical technique polyphony, where two or more melodies are played at once. However, in writing, unlike in music, different voices…
Here’s a quick look at some of the great books out over the past two weeks. Happy pub day to all! Lizzy Attree, editor, THE GODDESS OF MTWARA AND OTHER STORIES The Caine Prize For African Writing 2017 Interlink…
On Crafting Suspense: Keep the Bodies Hidden By Dustin Heron Suspense is an important element of fiction—and not just for stories where things go bump in the night. Suspense is “the feeling of excited or anxious uncertainty about what might…
Be God. Step way back for a second. Imagine this folded earth as bed sheets dropped in heaps onto the floor. Now stick a steep winter light off to the east. Call this a landscape. Tall shadows form across the…
So often in crafting fiction we think about character, plot, and setting. But thinking about specific objects and placing those objects in our fiction can be a great way in to a character and even a plot point. An object…
