Character Arcs to Warm the Heart
You could chalk it up to nostalgia: Re-watching a childhood classic to remember a loved one or a Christmas past. But often, I find turning to classic Christmas movies can be a way for me, my family and friends to…
Exploring Character Through Memoir
Fiction readers expect more of characters than they do of people in real life. In life you can have a person who does inexplicable self-destructive or transgressive shit, and friends and colleagues just shake their heads and say, “Oh, that’s…
DNA, Memory and Fiction as Magic: A True Story
Every fiction writer, it’s safe to say, has had the experience of writing something, then asking: “Where the hell did that come from?” Sometimes our next act is to delete it and try again, but on occasion we’re lucky, and…
Interview with October ’17 Craft on Draft Contest Winner: Charlotte Gross
October’s Craft on Draft reading event asked the question every writer wants on their reader’s mind. “What happens next?” Authors Kelly J. Ford (Cottonmouths), Stephanie Gayle (Idyll Fears) and Crystal King (Feast of Sorrow) read from their novels and shared…
Four Writing Struggles of Abuse Survivors
Abuse kind of fucks up your head. Anybody who’s been there will tell you that. And while we survivors can respond to the injustices done upon us in a myriad of ways, I’ve noticed a significant ratio of us seem…
Of Poetry, Sounding Good and Being Useful
I took a course called Technical Writing in grad school. The professor assigned a short manual that he had written himself as the required reading. He spent a lot of the time talking about the precision of language required to…