Craft and Creativity
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Prufrock Howls: A Look at Inverted Story Arcs in Poetry
Most fiction writers and dramatists are familiar with the classic story arc: an inciting moment, rising action, climax, and resolution. Poems, while not always plot driven, contain story arcs as well. Here we will look at two examples of atypical story arcs: poems with falling action, and narrative momentum that is cyclical—in what I am…
On Timing and Tension
Fiction, like time, contracts and expands in surprising and unexpected ways. The relationship your story has to time reveals something crucial about your characters and the conflicts they navigate. By manipulating time, fiction writers can heighten the tension that makes a reader keep reading. Storytellers have two useful tools for playing with time: scene and…
The Power of Audiobooks
As a writer of poetry and creative nonfiction, and a reader of all genres, I am often juggling several books at once. Currently haunting my bedside table or getting stuffed into my tote bags to accompany me during spare moments in doctors’ offices and on public transportation are Hoa Nguyen’s collection of poems A Thousand Times…