Story Craft

Think of the great characters from fiction. Gustave Flaubert’s romantic and unfocused Emma Bovary. Mark Twain’s spunky Huck Finn. Larry McMurtry’s lusty Gus McCrae. Margaret Mitchell’s willful Scarlett O’Hara.Each is…

This essay is based on presentations given in advanced feature writing seminars the author taught at The Washington Post. On Thinking About Intimate Journalism It’s the kiss of death for anyone aspiring…

“It wasn’t by accident,” wrote Hemingway, “that the Gettysburg Address was short.” His 1932 letter to his editor, Maxwell Perkins, went on to lament every writer’s tendency to write too…

When writers, readers, English teachers, librarians, bookstore people, editors, and reviewers discuss extended digressive narrative nonfiction these days, they’re fairly likely to call it literary journalism. The previous term in…