Story Craft

Essays on how the craft works, and how to work the craft.

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Building Character in Three Dimensions

By Story Craft January 1, 1998

We’ve heard it to the point of numbness: “Get people into your stories. Tell it in human terms.” Who’s to argue? Yup, human beings are more interesting than paper creeping through a bureaucracy. Yup, real human experiences bring abstractions to … Read more

The Art of the Short Story

By Story Craft January 1, 1997

“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 long, drifting beyond the story’s natural focus. He … Read more

Breakable Rules for Literary Journalists

By Story Craft January 1, 1995

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 circulation was Tom Wolfe’s contentious “New Journalism.” Coined in the … Read more