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Category: short stories
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Starter for you and your writing: Take it from here!
Ok, I’ve had a marvelous time in Phuket, Thailand, and soon I’ll be off to Malacca, Malaysia. In the meantime, it’s time to get back to the writing. Here’s a starter to get us going this week… First, read this beginning from “River of Toys,” by Edward Allen: I love to walk with my…
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Nonfiction openings #005: Life bites back!
First, read the following opening: KILLING MY BODY TO SAVE MY MIND, by Lauren Slater, from Elle My blood is in a blender. It’s just about the only bit of brightness in this drab office of a life insurance company that, before betting on my body, wants to sample its various fluids. First, it…
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Nonfiction beginnings #004: When reality hits hard!
First, read… THE BITCH IS BACK, by Sandra Tsing Loh, from The Atlantic During menopause, a woman can feel like the only way she can continue to exist for ten more seconds inside her crawling, burning skin is to walk screaming into the sea—grandly, epically, and terrifyingly, like a fifteen-foot-tall Greek tragic figure wearing a…
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Nonfiction beginnings #003: Sarcasm to the ultimate!
In the following passage, watch how Mark Edmundson creates a long buildup, lulls us into what we expect to hear–and then snaps us out of it in an instant! WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? by Mark Edmundson, in The Oxford American Welcome and congratulations: getting to the first day of college…
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Nonfiction openings #002: “The Good Short Life” by Dudley Clendinen
As you read the following introduction, keep in mind that it is NONFICTION: THE GOOD SHORT LIFE, by Dudley Clendinen, from The New York Times Sunday Review I have wonderful friends. In this last year, one took me to Istanbul. One gave me a box of handcrafted chocolates. Fifteen of them held two rousing, pre-posthumous…
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Nonfiction openings #001: “You Owe Me,” by Miah Arnold
I’ll begin this week’s look at nonfiction openings with a tear-jerker from Miah Arnold: YOU OWE ME, by Miah, Arnold, from Michigan Quarterly Review The children I write with die, no matter how much I love them, no matter how creative they are, no matter how many poems they have written or how much they…
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Horror week #005: “What are you afraid of?” Michael Slade
8+ FEARS TO THINK ABOUT In October, 2005, I attended a session given by Jay Clarke, aka Michael Slade, horror/thriller novelist. The subject of the workshop was FEAR. Here’s a few of the notes I took: “No one ever lost money by offering readers a good ride to hell.” –Michael Slade –“Fear is the…
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Horror week #004: VOICES make your horror fiction unsettling…
As writers, we all have those little voices in our heads; they’re called characters. But voices in the head of your character can be downright creepy. Look at how Ronald Kelly makes it even worse by making an INTERNAL voice EXTERNAL in his novel, Blood Kin: Dudley Craven stared at the piece of wood…
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Horror week #003: Exaggerate in your writing to grab your readers!
Exaggeration (hyperbole and understatement) is a tool often used in horror fiction. Stating that things are the absolute worst (hyperbole) sends a clear message to the reader: this character doesn’t want to be here right now–and neither would YOU! Look at how Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguie use it immediately…
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Horror writing #002: Miss you…!
If you want to create some mystery, right out of the gate, then have something missing that really ought to be there. Look at how horror writer Patricia Windsor manages that in The Blooding: They were found in the woods, curiously and awkwardly lying in the first leaves of autumn. The girl had fallen…