Netflix just launched its latest series, The Haunting of Hill House, an atmospheric, timely addition to its October fare. So it seems like a good time to resurrect that show’s source material as we set out the pumpkins, coat the door with ectoplasm, and cob the webs for All Hallows Eve. In an earlier column, I talked about setting as a literary character in itself, something inseparable from the story. I used Manderley, in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (1938), to … Read More »

If you write science fiction or fantasy, or aspire to, you’ve probably heard of worldbuilding. In a nutshell, worldbuilding means constructing an imaginary setting. If you do and it’s consistent and logical within its own parameters, however outlandish they may be, you’ve won readers. Build a world without really thinking it through and veteran readers of the genre will abandon it in droves. And what better teacher to start with than one who pioneered worldbuilding? H.G. Wells was a thinker … Read More »

In 1939, The New Yorker published James Thurber’s wonderful short story, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” If you’ve read it, you the better for it. If you haven’t, shame on you. The story opens with a bang: “We’re going through!” The Commander’s voice was like thin ice breaking. He wore his full-dress uniform, with the heavily braided white cap pulled down rakishly over one cold gray eye. “We can’t make it, sir. It’s spoiling for a hurricane, if you … Read More »

Got a story you’re itching to get out, but worried there’s not enough material to turn it into a full-length novel for adults? Consider following the lead of Jackie Minniti and her novel Jacqueline, written for middle grade readers. It’s the simple, straightforward tale of a little girl in France during the Second World War. The story relates the fictionalized account of her father’s experience there as an American GI. Jacqueline’s family clings together, her own father missing in the … Read More »

The name of Marjory Stoneman Douglas entered the news this year with the tragic loss of seventeen lives in a South Florida high school, so this is a good time to remember her for arguably the most important book ever written by a Floridian. The Everglades: River of Grass (1947) almost singlehandedly launched the modern conservation movement in America. A sample: Clouds and the smoke of fires stand far off and are sunk in it, like the smoke of ships … Read More »

Imagine your story’s protagonist is a standup guy or gal. The main character, the one who stirs the cocktail. But you find that the protagonist is missing something, and getting plot points out there seems awkward. Her character is a bit flat. Could be, she needs a foil. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “foil,” when used in the writerly, literary sense, as “someone or something that serves as a contrast to another.” Simple and straightforward, that. Think Lou Costello to Bud … Read More »