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How to Give Your Characters a Kick in the Pants
Paige Schilt’s memoir, Queer Rock Love, was called a “well-balanced, soul-searching family memoir with broad appeal” by Kirkus Reviews. One of the hardest things to learn as a writer is that it’s...
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How to Set Up a Story’s Hook
“The Key Bearer’s Parents” by Siân Griffiths appeared online at American Short Fiction. A story must hook its readers. Everyone knows this. The problem is that a hook can sometimes feel as if it’s...
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How to Add Interiority in the Midst of Suspense
Alexandra Burt’s novel The Good Daughter tells the story of a woman uncovering secrets from her childhood that some people don’t want her to answer. The death note for any work of fiction is just...
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How to Create Suspense in Any Story
John Pipkin’s second novel, The Blind Astronomer’s Daughter, “captures our own awe and sense of puniness as we look at the skies,” according to a New York Times review. One of those hoary claims about...
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How to Create “People Like You”
Yoojin Grace Wuertz’s debut novel, Everything Belongs to Us, was called “a Gatsby-esque takedown, full of memorable characters” by the New York Times Book Review. In real life, we often fall into an...
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Create Tension by Using Character Stand-ins
Man and Wife is the debut story collection by Katie Chase. The title story appeared in Missouri Review and Best American Short Stories 2008. For my money, one of the most intense scenes in any film is...
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How to Warm Your Imagination Up for Metaphor
Sonya Huber’s essay, “The Lava Lamp of Pain” is included in her collection, Pain Woman Takes Your Keys and Other Essays from a Nervous System. When I was starting out as a writer, I would sit at my...
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How to Create Desire with Opportunity
Maria Pinto’s story “Love Song of a Femme Fatale on Scholarship” appears in the Winter 2017 issue of Flapperhouse. When I was a kid, my dad once claimed that if you left your car running while you ran...
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How to Defy Readers’ Expectations with Paragraph Structure
Samuel Peterson’s memoir, Trunky (Transgender Junky) tells the story of the author’s stay in an all-male drug and alcohol rehab facility in the South. There are probably more personal essays published...
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How to Turn Emotions into an Existential Threat
Joseph Scapellato’s debut collection, Big Lonesome, was called “gobsmackingly original prophecy” by Claire Vaye Watkins. Writing teachers have a lot of ways of saying basically one important thing...
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How to Give Depth to Character Descriptions
Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich’s The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir was named one of Entertainment Weekly‘s “Books You Have to Read in May.” Beginning writers tend to approach character...
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How to Make Setting Striking to All and Personal to One
Julia Fierro’s novel The Gypsy Moth Summer is one of the most anticipated books of the summer. Some stories are blessed with great settings, such as shadowy mansions with secret gardens and skeletons...
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How to Introduce a Character with Misdirection
Kaitlyn Greenidge’s highly anticipated debut novel, We Love You, Charlie Freeman, tells the story of the Freemans, an African-American family that moves into a research institute to live with a...
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How to Improve Narrative Pace on a Paragraph Level
Roxane Gay’s story “Contrapasso” first appeared in Artifice Magazine and then in Mixed Fruit. The unique structure highlights the importance of paragraph structure. When talking about structure in...
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How to Make and Thwart Plans
Danish writer Mathilde Walter Clark’s story, “The Disappearance of Things” appeared in The Chattahoochee Review along with works by Roxane Gay and Aimee Bender. In his poem, “To a Mouse,” the Scottish...
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How to Play “This I Believe” with Your Characters
Owen Egerton’s novel Hollow, according to a NPR review, contains “the kind of grace not usually seen in accessible modern fiction.” A few years ago, National Public Radio ran a series called “This I...
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How to Introduce and Name a Cast of Characters
Christopher Brown’s debut novel, Tropic of Kansas, has been called “a modern dystopian buffet” in a NPR review. One of the questions that will drive writers—and not just beginners—crazy is whether to...
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How to Bridge Between Scenes in a Novel
William Jensen’s debut novel, Cities of Men, tells the story of a boy whose mother disappears, leaving him to search for her with a father who may not want to find her. When you move from writing short...
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How to Use a Light Touch in Heavy Moments
Joe Jiménez’s essay, “Cotton,” appears in the most recent issue of The Adroit Journal. One of the most difficult things to learn in prose, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, is how much certain...
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How to Help Readers Intimately Connect with Characters
Buckskin Cocaine, the new story collection by Erika T. Wurth, tells the complex, gritty stories of eight characters working in the Native American film industry. When I teach characterization, I often...
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