The Year of the Villain: Discovering the Engine of Story Through Your Antagonist
Valuable lessons about characterization, the fundamental core of storytelling, can be found in the panels of superhero comics.
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craft
I Wasn’t Born Yesterday: The Beauty of Backstory
Novelist Eleanor Henderson discusses the beauty and necessity of backstory in fiction, offering a counterpoint to a previously published article in which novelist Benjamin Percy warned writers about the dangers of backstory.
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Don’t Look Back: The Problem With Backstory
Benjamin Percy cautions beginning writers to avoid overusing backstory in their fiction, offering strategies for moving the story forward by slipping a character’s history into the dramatic present.
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Order Out of Chaos: Revising Your Poetry Manuscript
The author, who has published a chapbook and a full-length book of poetry, suggests several strategies for ordering a poetry collection, and describes how these approaches can help poets generate new pieces to make a stronger, more cohesive book.
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Telling #Stories: Can Social Media Make Us Better Writers?
The effects of social media on the creative process—although it can help writers identify and pay attention to the quotidian moments of their lives, does it siphon off their storytelling energy?
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Historical Fiction: The Pleasures and Perils of Writing About Other Eras
How do you handle research? How indebted do you feel to stick to the historical record? Two novelists discuss their experiences researching, imagining, and depicting earlier times.
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Why We Write: And Why We Stop
The author relates how becoming a father helped him find peace in not writing and deepen his understanding of what drives writers to the page.
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Craft Capsule: Craft Is Not Objective
The author of Horsepower examines and resists the racism and subconscious anxieties that infect the U.S. literary imagination.
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The New and Enduring Secrets of Writing Past Dark: A Q&A With Bonnie Friedman
The author of Writing Past Dark: Envy, Fear, Distractions, and Other Dilemmas in the Writer’s Life talks about the impetus for writing the book, response after its publication, and its lessons for a new generation of writers.
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The Written Image: Eda Temucin
On her Instagram account, German artist Eda Temucin pairs found artwork with book covers, uncovering striking similarities between contemporary visual art and literary design.
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