Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘craft’

Reviews |

Call It What You Want, by Keith Lee Morris

by J.T. Bushnell

In these thirteen stories, which move from gritty realism in the first half to magical realism in the second, characters are constantly engaged in the act of narrative construction. Again and again Morris structures his stories to obscure actual events, thereby forcing the characters to remember, speculate, or fantasize them into being, much like writers do. Only these characters are not writers—they are a meth addict, a car salesman, a bartender stranded on a desert island.


Shop Talk |

Brief is beautiful

by Lee Thomas

Over on the Wall Street Journal’s newly-launched Book Review, Alexander McCall Smith laments the pitfalls of overwriting in “Block that Adjective!” Smith writes: Concise prose knows what it wants to say, and says it. It does not embellish, except occasionally, and then for dramatic effect. It is sparing in its use of metaphor. And it is certainly careful in its use of adjectives. Look at the King James Bible, that magnificent repository of English at the height of its beauty. The language used to describe the creation of the world is so simple, so direct. “Let there be light, and […]


Essays |

Quotes & Notes: The Writer as Apprentice

by Steven Wingate

“Young writers should be encouraged to write, and discouraged from thinking they are writers. If they arrive at college with literary ambitions, they should be told that everything they have done since their first childhood poems, printed in the school paper, has been preparation for entering a long, long apprenticeship.” —Wallace Stegner, On Teaching and Writing Fiction


Essays |

Finding—and Losing—Memories in Fiction

We’ve all had the experience of knowing we recorded, somewhere, a great line or perfect image, only to futilely search for it. Could it be that unconsciously we don’t want to recover that perfect line? Because when we finally do come across it, weeks or months later, we discover that the exact phrasing doesn’t fit the story we’re telling or the character we’ve developed. What fits is the approximate version, conjured from the shadows of memory. To be truly “found” or recovered for creative purposes, memory may indeed depend on the process of transmutation.


Interviews |

Talking with the Dead: An Interview with Yiyun Li

Yiyun Li (Gold Boy, Emerald Girl) discusses with Angela Watrous what it means to be an American writer; the elusive process of revision; the art of transforming stories into screenplays; and the act of talking aloud to famous dead writers.


Reviews |

A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan

In a generation of “Pointers,” the relationship between and among songs on an album—its narrative—is all but lost in favor of hit single after single. But in Jennifer Egan’s new book, A Visit from the Goon Squad, an array of stories mix into a cohesive novel, each chapter self-contained yet fluid as the grooves of an LP.


Interviews |

Imagined Landscapes of History: An Interview with David Ebershoff

by Brian Bartels

Brian Bartels talks with David Ebershoff–author, editor-at-large for Random house, and Columbia professor–about such topics as the role research plays in his writing, writing the book you want to read, the advice his gives his students about drafting, and how he approaches revision.


Interviews |

The Truth About Fiction: An Interview with Peter Selgin

by JT Torres

Peter Selgin’s debut novel, Life Goes to the Movies, is based in large part on his experiences growing up in New York in the 1970s. JT Torres talks to the author about bringing fact to fiction, strategies for the revision process, why identity is so important in his work, and more. Following the interview is an exclusive excerpt from Selgin’s novel-in-progress, Hattertown.




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