Writing a title for a flash fiction or nonfiction piece is like dipping your oar into the roaring water while whitewater rafting. That oar stroke had better do some major work. The flash title is the oar that steers your little…
What really exists is not things made but things in the making. —William James How other kinds of beings see us matters. That other kinds of beings see us changes things. —Eduardo Kohn In my upcoming class, Memory Space: Inherited…
I just need to find the right way to write this. This is the refrain that comes up sometimes when I open a new blank document for an old story I’ve tried to write about seven times over the course…
In the beginning of my writing career, it was a given that I’d say “Absolutely” or “Yes” to almost anything asked of me—oftentimes watching others reaping the benefits or, even worse, finding out that the heartfelt energy I’d put into…
Characters are the reason I write. Their voices lodge themselves in my brain. They tug on my sleeve and insist that I tell their stories. The greatest compliment that I can get as a writer is that my characters stay…
Have you ever picked up a book—a romance, one that the blurb promises to be a story that’s right up your alley—and found that it just doesn’t do it for you? The story, the theme, even the author, they all…
“To be an immigrant is to always live in some state of exile, even if its shadow seems to have grown faint inside us; you cannot forget your old homes, no matter how comfortingly familiar your new destination becomes, or…
As MFA classmates, we had the fun and honor of learning how to write short forms with a master of both the prose poem and flash fiction: the speculative writer Bruce Holland Rogers. Bruce is famous for coming up with…
We’ve all struggled, at one point or another, to explain in conversation what, exactly, our stories are about. We hem and haw. “Well, you see…” And one of the reasons that we get in such a muddle is because sometimes…
Whether you’re just dipping a toe into the waters of your story (fiction or memoir) or you’re stuck rowing around in circles, there are seven basic steps for integrating character development, plot, and structure that will enable you to navigate…
We live in an age where writing is genre-fluid. Some of us have learned, some of us have adapted, and some of us have always been there. Wherever you are in the spectrum right now, it is a wonderful time…
What is a lexicon? A wordbook. The vocabulary proper to some department of knowledge or sphere of activity. The vocabulary or word-stock of a region, particular speaker, etc. A list of words or names. Why have a lexicon? “The writers…
Writing character—whether a fabricated one in fiction, a remembered one in memoir, or an imagined historical figure in a poem—can be daunting. Often, we focus too much on how the character looks. We write them as if we were…
A powerful story ending is both inevitable and surprising. Most fiction writers are familiar with this bit of wisdom. But how to pull it off—that sense of an ending that the reader never quite saw coming, even as it seems…
Andre Dubus III is the author of five novels, including the New York Times bestseller House of Sand and Fog, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and was adapted into the Academy-Award nominated film. His other books…
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