We often write best about the times and places we inhabit, filling our prose with the little details of our existences. To get there, we sometimes sprinkle the work with brand names. Stephen King does this to good effect, giving the work real-world flavor. His rationale—and it’s a good one—is that a person buys a Pepsi, not a soft drink. However, King runs the risk of readers a hundred years from now having no idea what he’s talking about when … Read More »

It’s a dark and stormy night. The electricity is off, so, TV-less, you and your Significant Other are in bed reading by clip-on battery lights. After a brief while, he/she slams down the book and says, “This book stinks. I’m going to bed.” S.O. turns off the light, pulls up the covers, and before long, you hear snoring. You, on the other hand, have hit a Golden One. You can’t put it down! You devour that book, losing track of … Read More »

What story is really worth writing? Worth spending your time, energy, and imagination on? I like what Susan Sontag says, “The only story that seems worth writing is a cry, a shot, a scream. A story should break the reader’s heart.” Whenever I read that—it’s on a slip of paper tacked on corkboard above my desk—what comes to mind is flash fiction. It’s bite-size insight. It’s sudden. It surprises. What’s Flash Fiction? Whatever you call a brief prose story, it … Read More »

Writing dialogue can feel as innate (or as awkward) as having an actual conversation. Conversations convey information, carry ideas, and connect people to each other. They are do the same in a written narrative. So what is the best way to use dialogue for your story? And where can you develop it? There are rules to using dialogue: use it to advance plot, reveal character, and avoid redundancy. But there are no rules with how you pace the dialogue inside … Read More »

You’re sitting in an eatery in the Garden District in New Orleans, patting your belly after a fine meal of jambalaya, enjoying coffee and a beignet. If you’re easy-going, the cook might just add another beignet. A little something extra, no charge. Lagniappe, they call it. Feeling generous, you transfer that experience to your writing and throw in a little lagniappe at the end of your new novel. You add an epilogue. Don’t expect your editor to react with the … Read More »

One of the best novels featuring a character in self-denial — a masterpiece and one of my personal favorites — is The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. The story follows an English butler, Mr. Stevens, as he attempts to make sense of his life in a modernizing world, one where it’s become a novelty for homes to still have old-fashioned English butlers. Stevens is clearly an unreliable narrator. Ishiguro writes the book in first person point-of-view across two … Read More »