Craft and Creativity
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Understanding Story Structure
How do you scaffold a story? You may have heard about things like Freytag’s Pyramid or the 3-Act structure, but while those tools are helpful in a vacuum, it feels hard to actually hang a working story off of this abstract scaffolding. Great stories don’t just follow certain pre-assigned trajectories—they use real life as a…
Introducing Readers to Life Itself
Essay Recommendation: “My Stint as the Adulterous Flavor-of-the-Month” Read it here, from the New York Times. I don’t think of myself as prone to righteous indignation, but this essay by Paz Pardo made me feel enough of it that I almost stopped reading a few paragraphs in. I’m glad I didn’t, because it shifted my…
On Making What’s Familiar Feel New
Do you ever read a poem, and it makes you see something normal and everyday in a new and strange light? Great poetry has the power to completely shift our worldviews, to make the familiar seem strange and the strange, familiar. Poets accomplish this feat through close attention to craft and to the images they…