Activity

“A story about a beautiful day at Palisades Amusement Park is out of the ordinary,” the writer says. “It was a rare day, a wonderful day, a day when everything went right. Why isn’t that a story?”

The writer’s argument only makes our point stronger. His example can be a story. There is real te…

Writers often respond to the charge by conjuring up reality. Perhaps a story has a high school principal who is a pompous, rigid, overweight person in a bow tie who fails to understand his students and thinks them worthless.

“A stereotype,” say the readers.

“But I know a person just like this…

When writers try to manipulate their readers by making them feel emotions that the writers haven’t honestly earned, we call the work sentimental. Certain situations will make readers teary-eyed—the death of a child, the reunion of long-lost loved ones, the call to action of a group of unjustly oppr…

We read for delight, for insight, for thrills, and for comfort. But how do we read as writers?

The answer is—differently. Some writers read gingerly, fearful of being overwhelmed by the eloquence of others and losing confidence in their own powers. Others read savagely, looking for weaknesses th…

The anonymous Spanish work Lazarillo de Tormes (1554), the first picaresque novel, began an enthusiasm that spread to other countries, but the masterpiece of the form is Cervantes’ Don Quixote.