By Joseph Young • Writers are often told, whether by their instructors or about the internet in general, that in their finished stories, there should be no wasted words, no extraneous sentences, no details or lines of dialogue, that…
Wheels, puzzles, the art of Zen—how do these seemingly unrelated topics pertain to the craft of condensing prose? Three authors and friends who bonded over their love of writing “short” explore how writers can fine-tune their flash or novella…
Sibling Parenting Ai Ping’s brother said women who habitually declared they found happiness in everyday things were the hardest to please. If a woman required x affirmations of happiness a day, each having an effect which lasted an average…
The trick is to write about the body without deploying the body, which has been strained by overuse and anyway tends to make objects or corpses of us: the animals in question. And, we are such animals; my sister…
In the winter of 2014, Sadaf Ferdowsi took a creative nonfiction class taught by Dr. Sarah Fay. A longtime contributor at The Paris Review, Fay taught her the interview form while instilling a healthy suspicion on the limits of…
Essay by Michelle Ross • Since the first time I read a Sara Lippmann story, I’ve been smitten. Among the inventory of qualities I admire is her wit, her raw honesty, her faith in her readers’ ability to keep…
Thea Prieto and Peg Alford Pursell first became acquainted when Pursell submitted her hybrid flash writing to The Gravity of the Thing, a literary journal edited by Prieto, and over the years their conversations on writing have grown to…
By Mike Goodwin • Part I: In Action On its own, readers see a sentence like the opening of Raymond Carver’s “The Bath” which reads, “Saturday afternoon the mother drove to the bakery in the shopping center,” and react…
By Matthew Duffus • Every fiction writer I know is familiar with Ernest Hemingway’s “Iceberg Theory,” explained most succinctly in Death in the Afternoon, his nonfiction book on bullfighting: “If a writer of prose knows enough about what he…
Suzanne Grove: On your list of “Seven Deadly Sins: Common Errors,” creating false suspense via the withholding of information earns the second spot. I appreciate the distinction you make between what you call “plot questions” and questions that tease…
