I love when magic realism works. Two authors whom I enjoy are Gabriel García Márquez and Haruki Murakami. Both blend the fantastic with the mundane, Murakami especially. It seems that…
One central question to any story is why. Why does a character rob a bank? What drives someone to go to the same boring job day after day? Why does…
Great stories are full of great characters. They seem full of life. They are memorable. They may complete jerks, but we sympathize with them on some level. Currently, I'm thinking…
Five days of trading the field glasses and taking turns crawling back into the trees to smoke out of sight. Five days on surveillance, waiting to see if by some…
"Corrie" by Alice Munro reminds me of an Alfred Hitchcock film. There's something sinister in the story below the surface. It opens with Howard, an architect hired to work on…
Whether you're writing a story set on a made up planet orbiting two stars or in Cleveland, Ohio, there is one thing these stories will share: they're settings are fictional. …
There are moments when writers who are just starting out may be intimidated to write about certain subjects. Scratch that, there are moments when writers who have been writing for…
In "Birdsong," Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie does a good job describing the characters in ways that make them come alive. The story starts with a young woman stuck in traffic in…
"Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" by ZZ Packer is a story that embraces the voice of its narrator and uses it to push the story from beginning to end. It takes place…
Out of the stories publicized under the "20 under 40" media affair, "The Landlord" by Wells Tower makes for one of the better reads. Sure, as a short story it…