Why Write Fiction?
One of the more interesting classes I’ve taken during the course of my writing career was a class on novel structure in my MA program. We read six novels, all of which had unique structures, some wholly fitting of the…
Category: Craft Discussion
What Keeps My Writing Alive: The Long-Distance Free Write
Belle Brett has just written a great blog post on what keeps her writing alive, and I wanted to add onto that idea. For me, it’s exchanging free writes with a friend in Virginia. Like the long-distance romance or long-distance…
Writing the (Quiet) Omniscient Narrator by Celeste Ng
If you’re in the Boston area, please join us at Craft on Draft tonight, April 7th, at Trident Booksellers and Café, where authors Celeste Ng, Christopher Castellani, and Daphne Kalotay discuss their point of view choices. Below, Celeste gives us…
Friday Feast: 12 Links for Friday the 13th
My primary association with Friday the 13th — as is the case for many of us, I suspect — is Jason Voorhees. But there are also those who are superstitious about making travel plans on this unluckiest of Fridays. Many…
Lessons on Narrative Distance: What Essays Can Teach Novelists
How Not to Write I used to keep a book on my shelf to remind myself how not to write. The book, call it Stricken, consisted of a collection of essays on the author’s recent widowhood. She had written it perhaps…
Leitmotifs For My Characters
Feeling a bit of cabin fever? Try coming up with a theme song for each major character in your novel. Fellow incubee Anjali Mathur gave me this idea last spring when she said she put on certain songs when she…