How to Write a Page-Turner: What Essays Can Teach Novelists
The Da Vinci Code is fast paced, a “page-turner.” Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is not. We don’t need Writer’s Digest to define...
Without Geography You're Nowhere: Why Setting Matters
We are awash in narrative. It arrives on every platform in ever-shorter form. (A Little Life not withstanding.) Which has me wondering,...
When Less Really Is More: What Comics Can Teach Novelists
Consider the Comic where what’s not on the page is as important as what is. So says comic artist and writer Scott McCloud in his...
Making Lemonade: Turning Bad Juju into Good Writing
Bad juju comes to most of us, and sometimes it comes all at once and sometimes it is a staccato of bad news, one thing, another thing,...
Lessons on Narrative Distance: What Essays Can Teach Novelists
How Not to Write I used to keep a book on my shelf to remind myself how not to write. The book, call it Stricken, consisted of a...
Pow! Zap! What Short Stories Can Teach Novelists
Novels are my second love, the roast beef in my diet. And I relish the meal. But I down short stories like chocolates. For their density....
Dharma Buds: Revision Road with Buddha and the Gecko
I have just spent two-and-a-half years revising my novel.* The odds on getting it published feel, well, long. My writer friends...
How Do You Say Hamburger in Farsi? What Ad Writers Can Teach Novelists
Some years ago I taught Communications 201 at Boston University. It was a plum job, as adjunct jobs go, because our students longed to be...
Scents and Sensibility
I lost nearly all my sense of smell when I was eight. One day my socks itched and the next day I was allergic to seemingly everything...
