Build the Chapter Around the Story, Not the Other Way Round
A chapter is a building, and most writers treat the story as the paint. The test is removal. Take the story out and see whether the chapter still stands.
Category: Writing (Page 34)
Behind the BookI Made $25,000 in a Year From Things in My Closet. Here Is What Changed.
A thousand items, twenty-five thousand dollars, one year. eBay has changed under sellers since 2003, and most of the advice out there describes a platform that no longer exists.
Behind the BookThe Rose Parade Pins That Stopped Me Decluttering
I had the display case open and the pins counted. Then I checked what they were worth, and the arithmetic stopped me. Knowing when to stop is the part nobody teaches.
PublishingNonfiction Works Best When It Is Written With Emotion
A thermometer tells you the temperature of a room. It does not tell you whether anybody wants to be in it. Most nonfiction reads like a thermometer.
FictionThe Arena
Two wizards — father and son — meet in magical combat that neither can win and neither will abandon. Based on Metagaming's 1978 game Wizard.
FictionThe Lighthouse Keeper’s Last Shift
When a lighthouse gets automated, the keeper goes home and the machines take over. But after twenty-two years of a human presence, the lighthouse starts to notice what's missing.
FictionConfessions of a Mars Rover
NASA's official last message from the Opportunity rover was short and poignant. But the engineers who received it that day found something else buried in the data, something that shouldn't have been possible to generate at all.
FictionThe Woman Who Sold Her Shadow
In the back corridors of Istanbul's Grand Bazaar, Claire meets a woman who offers to buy her shadow, the grief and guilt that have weighed her down since her mother's death and divorce. What starts as an impossible transaction becomes…
FictionCheckout Line at the End of the World
When an asteroid fills the sky and the world has forty minutes left, a grocery store cashier named Denise keeps doing her job, scanning items and asking paper or plastic, because the routine is the only thing holding everything together.
FictionThe Surgeon Who Operated on God
A surgeon works through her thirty-second hour straight when an unidentified man arrives with stab wounds. His blood types don't match any classification. His wounds heal faster than surgical sutures can hold them.
FictionMy Grandfather’s Compass
Nate finds his grandfather's compass in a shoebox of leftover things and discovers it doesn't point north, but toward the people and moments he needs most. When his marriage starts falling apart, the compass points directly at his wife, and…
FictionThe Last Beekeeper
Ruth Okafor hasn't seen a bee in eleven years. When one lands on her kitchen window one September morning, she follows it into the hills and discovers something she thought was gone forever.