I’d been thinking about writing an article on the power of using an unexpected detail in a scene, and then the interior design folks on the internet made me aware of the “unexpected red theory”—just the catalyst I needed. The gist of the theory is that adding a bit of red to a room, where…
This past fall I read Rachel Stone’s debut novel, The Blue Iris. As a writing coach, one of the things that captured my interest was the fact that the book was written from multiple points of view—nine, to be exact. It’s not unheard of to do this (Lincoln in the Bardo fan here), but it’s…
How lucky I am that I came across Little, by Edward Carey, while digging around on the internet for book recommendations. My Google search phrases must have included the words “brilliant”, “absurd”, and “hilarious”, because this book is all these things. Little is the dark and dazzling story of the young orphan girl who becomes…
When I was a kid, I used to sit in my grandpa’s filling station and eat peanuts I’d poured into my bottle of pop. I didn’t know other people did this until I read a most gratifying account from a student of their own childhood Planters/Pepsi snack. Food is memory and connection. It’s also a…
On my Instagram page, I regularly share great opening lines from books, memoirs, and short stories. Great opening lines are their own kind of art form, and I love collecting them for their variety and imaginativeness. There are so many approaches to beginning a story, and the fact that your choices are wide open is…