Activity

When you have an idea—“Abortions are bad,” “Alcoholism destroys homes,” “Old people are neglected”—and you write a story mainly to exemplify that idea, you’re giving your readers an exemplum, a little sermon that preaches by example. In a good story, however, the experience is primary, not a messag…

Rather than giving us license to write about what we don’t know, Henry James wants us to understand that the notion of experience is complicated. “The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life …

A broader application of write what you know recognizes that the idea of you is complex in itself. You, in theory at least, know yourself. But your self is made up of many selves—the girl who wanted an older brother, the high school misfit, the college student who dressed in black and wanted to…

In certain kinds of problem stories, there are only two possibilities. The character wins or loses, hits or misses, triumphs or fails. Those stories can work well enough if they are rendered excitingly, but there is something disappointing in them, a predictability readers feel. Though readers’ hea…

Unfortunately this form can also be trivialized by accepting the notion that a recognition is a solution. A sullen girl realizes that her haughty mother loved her all the time, and the haughty mother realizes that she must express her love for her sullen daughter more openly, and now all their prob…