Place

What is there, then, about place that is transferable to the pages of a novel? The best things - the explicit things: physical texture. [Stories]. need the warm hard earth underfoot, the light and lift of air, the stir and play of mood, the softening bath of atmosphere that give the likeness-to-life... (Eudora Welty)

from "Place in Fiction" in
On Writing
by Eudora Welty

Writing Advice: Children & Critics

When I was young I used to read books and I never really looked at who the author was. I didn't care. When I was a boy of twelve, I read Tolstoy, but I didn't know it was Tolstoy. I didn't even know that I was reading a translation. What's the difference? I was interested in the story, not the author. I could not repeat the word Dostoyevsky. I didn't care because a real reader, especially a young reader, never cares too much about the author. On the other hand, the aca­demic reader doesn't really care about the story; he cares about the author. We are living now in a time when people are so interested in the author that the story is almost secondary, which is very bad. Many of the readers of today themselves want to be writers. They are interested in the shop; they are interested in the maker. The good reader, the real reader when he is young, doesn't care so much who Tolstoy was and what he was. He wants to read the book and he enjoys it.

Children are wonderful because they are completely independent readers. A child would not read a book because it was written by a "great writer" —a man with great authority. The fact that Shakespeare has written it will not impress a child‑the child will look over the story by himself and see if he likes it or not. You cannot impress a child by criticism. You cannot say, "This is a wonderful book because such and such critic has said it's wonderful." A child doesn't care about the critics, because the child himself is a critic. A child will not read a book because it was advertised in a very big way. He is actually a more independent reader than the adult, who is impressed by authorities, criticism, and big advertisements in the New York Times or on television. It's harder to fool children than to fool adults when it comes to literature.

from Conversations with Isaac Bashevis Singer

Faulkner

Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use. (Ernest Hemingway)

Don't Write Stage Directions

"Don't write stage directions. If it is not apparent what the character is trying to accomplish by saying the line, telling us how the character said it, or whether or not she moved to the couch isn't going to aid the case. We might understand better what the character means, but we aren't particularly going to care." (David Mamet)

Short Story Writing Tips

Why do some stories truly ring in the mind while others leave you with the feeling of 'what was the point?'. To make your short stories more effective, try to keep in mind these following points while writing:

1. Have a clear theme. What is the story about? That doesn't mean what is the plot line, the sequence of events or the character's actions, it means what is the underlying message or statement behind the words. Get this right and your story will have more resonance in the minds of your readers.

2. An effective short story covers a very short time span. It may be one single event that proves pivotal in the life of the character, and that event will illustrate the theme.

3. Don't have too many characters. Each new character will bring a new dimension to the story, and for an effective short story too many diverse dimensions (or directions) will dilute the theme. Have only enough characters to effectively illustrate the theme.

4. Make every word count. There is no room for unnecessary expansion in a short story. If each word is not working towards putting across the theme, delete it.

5. Focus. The best stories are the ones that follow a narrow subject line. What is the point of your story? Its point is its theme. It's tempting to digress, but in a 'short' you have to follow the straight and narrow otherwise you end up with either a novel beginning or a hodgepodge of ideas that add up to nothing.

Teaching Myself to Write

. . . at 19 or 20, I'd started writing short prose pieces. Those developed into the one-page fictions in my first book, Sweethearts, which was published by a small press. I taught myself to write fiction by writing very compact, spiral-shaped pieces that moved according to language rather than plot or idea.

The Writer's Chronicle, May/Summer 2002
An Interview with Jayne Anne Phillips by Sarah Anne Johnson

Dealing with the Unspoken

[Thornton] Wilder taught me that what a writer deals with is the unspoken, what people see or sense in silence.

--from Sol Stein in Chapter One


Stein on Writing: Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies