Digital Storytelling for Creative Writers

TL:DR: Here’s the syllabus. (Links are clickable and they’ll get you to the “readings”, tutorials, etc.) This last semester I got to teach a class fully focused on digital storytelling for the first time. I’d been adding units on digital stories and essays to my composition and creative writing classes for many years, but thisContinue reading “Digital Storytelling for Creative Writers”

A Beginner’s Guide to Publishing

If you’re just here for the publishing handout and would prefer not to read my rambling lamentations about leaving teaching, here ya go! This summer will be the first summer since I turned 21 that I won’t be readying syllabi for my fall courses. The details are complex and, frankly, boring, but after a lot of thought, my partnerContinue reading “A Beginner’s Guide to Publishing”

Describing Your First Person Narrator

Re-blogged from my monthly column over at Flash Fiction Chronicles. Among the challenges presented by writing in first person point of view, one of the toughest (for this writer at least) is describing your first person narrator. Offering details about a character’s age, physical appearance, and clothing is a great way to build that character,Continue reading “Describing Your First Person Narrator”

A Fiction Writer’s Guide to Poetry

I consider myself to be primarily a prose writer, but I have dabbled a bit in poetry. It’s fun. It’s short. And publishers can fit more of it on the same number of pages, so I’ve found it to be easier to market (not “easy,” just “easier”). Plus, it’s good to be versatile: Sometimes somethingContinue reading “A Fiction Writer’s Guide to Poetry”

How to Avoid Avoiding Plot

I wrote the brief craft essay below, about common traps that keep writers from writing well-plotted flash fiction, for Flash Fiction Chronicles. I’m currently teaching a flash fiction course and my students and I have spent a fair amount of class time discussing the borderlands between flash fiction and prose poetry. While I agree that there’sContinue reading “How to Avoid Avoiding Plot”

Never Again & Word Choice

Doug Nufer’s book Never Again has only just come to my attention, despite being published in 2002 (apparently). As the title hints, Nufer uses any given word only once—never again. I only read enough of the book to see how this constraint would work, and I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised. Most ofContinue reading “Never Again & Word Choice”