Recently The New Yorker magazine ran an extended piece called “Unreliable Narrator” (February 11, 2019), in which it takes best-selling author Dan Mallory to task for (among other things) the close similarities of his new novel The Woman in the Window with Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train, not to say the film, Copy Cat, a thriller […]
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Question: when does too much plot overwhelm a good story? Answer: when a “twist” is needed for resolution. The plot twist is one of the many fiction techniques in your writer’ tool bag, but it’s one to be wary of. A twist can work splendidly. A twist fail spectacularly. A successful examples might be found […]
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Authors always wonder if we’re making connection. Here’s a sweet letter from a reader: “Hi! A couple months ago I came across your short fiction story “Dispersal” inside a collection of short fiction from the Midwest. I absolute loved the feelings i got from “Dispersal”. I had a question for you. I’m writing a paper […]
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If you don’t have time to read novels, why not short stories? The really good kind. Fiction, as Poe advised, “that can be read in one sitting.” That was his definition of the short story form. And it’s a still a good one. A great place to find good short stories in is the yearly […]
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