How to Listen so your Characters will Talk, & Talk so your Readers will Listen
Do not remove a fly from a friend’s forehead with an an axe. Italian proverb
1. Any satisfying story has three basic elements: conflict, crisis and resolution of the conflict.
2. Conflict is what makes a story. Multiple kinds of conflicts show up on the page. Good storytelling is about many conflicts, small and large, layered together in interesting ways.
3. A conflict only works if opposing forces are truly equal in some way, have some kind of power over each other. It might not look on the surface to be the case, but they do.
4. A story moves because the power flows. A stagnant story is a dead story.
5. Somehow, somebody changes. Subtle or massive, the primary character or characters change in some way.
6. Storytellers lie. What’s the sign of a really good, inventive, successful liar? Writing good fiction is about developing an eye for the right detail.
Example: So what’d you do for your summer vacation? Oh, I worked as a roadie for Elton John.
Now, make me believe that.
7. Perfection is the enemy. Nobody writes beautiful, interesting, good stuff on the first go or even the second or fifth. You have to be willing to rethink and to rewrite rewrite rewrite. You have to be willing to take constructive criticism and use it well. Get the words down on paper, and then the real work begins.
Successful Storytelling
In Short Fiction
- Allen, Woody. The Kugelmass Episode. The New Yorker. May 2 1977
- Baldwin, James. Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone. McCall’s. Feb 1967
- Bambara, Toni Cade. My Man Bovanne. Gorilla my Love. 1972
- Bambara, Toni Cade. The Lesson. Redbook. Jan 1973
- Bausch, Richard. Aren’t You Happy for Me? Harper’s. June 1993
- Bloom, Amy. The Story. A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You. 2006
- Bradbury, Ray. The Sound of Thunder. Collier’s. 1952
- Cisneros, Sandra. Eyes of Zapata. Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. 1991
- Cunningham, Michael. White Angel. New Yorker 25 Jul 1988
- Erdrich, Louise. The Fat Man’s Race. The New Yorker. November 2008
- Everett, Percival. The Appropriation of Cultures. Damned if I Do. 2004.
- Faulkner, William. Spotted Horses. Scribner’s. June 1931
- Hemingway, Ernest. A Clean, Well Lighted Place. Winner Take Nothing. 1933
- King, Stephen. The Reach. Yankee Nov 1981
- Le Guin, Ursula K. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. New Dimensions 3 1973
- Lehane, Dennis. Until Gwen. The Atlantic Monthly June 2004
- Malamud, Bernard. The Magic Barrel. The Paris Review. Winter 1954
- Matheson, Richard. Button, Button. Playboy June 1970
- Moody, Rick. Demonology. Demonology: Stories. 2002
- Munro, Alice. Friend of My Youth. New Yorker Jan 22 1990
- O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Esquire Aug 1986
- Oates, Joyce Carol. Extenuating Circumstances. Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque. 1994
- Oates, Joyce Carol. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Epoch 1966
- Orner, Peter. The Raft. The Atlantic Monthly. April 2000
- Orringer, Julie. Isabel Fish. How to Breathe Underwater. 2003
- Packer, Z.Z. Brownies. Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. 2004
- Prose, Francine. An Open Letter to Doctor X. Virginia Quarterly Review. 2006
- Robison, Mary. Yours. Tell Me. 2002
- Rosenfeld, Stephanie. Grasp Special Comb. What About the Love Part. 2002
- Segal, Lore. The reverse bug. Shakespeare’s Kitchen. 2007
- Steinbeck, John. The Chrysanthemums. Harper’s. October 1937
- Vaughn, Stephanie. Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog. The New Yorker. June 5, 1978
- Vonnegut, Kurt. Welcome to the Monkey House. Playboy. 1968
- Walker, Alice. To Hell with Dying. In Love and Trouble. 1988
- Welty, Eudora. Why I Live at the P.O. Atlantic Monthly Apr 1941
Reading about Writing
- Bennet, James. The Work of Art. The Atlantic Monthly. 2011
- Charters, Ann. The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction (most recent edition).
- King, Stephen. Herman Woulk is still Alive. The Atlantic. May 2011.
- Paul, Richard and Linda Elder. How to Read a Paragraph: The Art of Close Reading. 2006
- Schwarz, Christina. A Close Read: What makes good writing good. The Atlantic Monthly