American - Writer | March 1, 1970 -
In each scene, the writer sets up a situation, which brings a conflict as well as either a small victory or a loss at the close of that particular scene.
Darin Strauss
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A subplot is a distinguishing characteristic of the novel; the short story, for example, does not need subplots.
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It's good training for a novelist to try to discern the truth about a place after only a few glimpses of it.
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In Minneapolis, I learned that there are more theaters per square mile than in any U.S. city but New York, and we also had great Midwestern beef in our salads in a plaza overlooking the national headquarters of Target, Inc.
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What's Denver's feel? I know there're mountains, and people in western hats, but I never got a good sense of the city.
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Often it's the people who know a place least well who write about it best because they see it fresh.
BestPeoplePlaceKnowWriteSee
A good writer knows that if her style and perceptions are really cooking, she can bring anything off. It's okay, of course, for novelists to depict bland, average families living bland, average lives in bland, average towns. But it isn't okay when those novelists don't outshine their bland, average subjects.
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Maybe the 'Million Little Pieces' of the world are so popular because no one ever writes memoirs about PTA chairwomen; what memoirists do, and often get in trouble for, is bring interesting lives to light.
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Even the best novels have their share of stinker lines.
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Too much contemporary fiction seems purposefully to address small things in small ways. And yet why not try for the all-inclusive, the gripping, for the audacious?
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To a lot of us, literature's eternal significance had seemed beyond arguing - like, say, the illegality of government-sponsored torture.
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If the memoirist is borrowing narrative techniques from fiction, shouldn't the novelist borrow a few tricks from successful non-fiction?
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