Craft Capsule: Break It Down or Shorter Forms
The author of This Is One Way to Dance reflects on using fragments to build a larger structure.
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Craft Capsules
In our weekly series of craft essays, some of the best and brightest minds in contemporary literature explore their craft in compact form, articulating their thoughts about creative obsessions and curiosities in a working notebook of lessons about the art of writing.
Craft Capsule: Feel Your Way
The author of This Is One Way to Dance considers the consonances and dissonances between dance and writing.
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Craft Capsule: Notes From the Cutting Room Floor
The author of This Is One Way to Dance shares how notes—footnotes, codas, prologues, corrections—figure into her writing process.
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Craft Capsule: Obsessions, Hobbies, Dreams
The author of The Prettiest Star shares strategies and questions that help him get to know his characters.
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Craft Capsule: Minor Characters
The author of The Prettiest Star celebrates the magic of minor characters.
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Craft Capsule: Catalogues, Cetaceans, and Casey Kasem
The author of The Prettiest Star explores a variety of archives to help him capture the specific spirit and look of the eighties.
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Craft Capsule: Multiple Points of View
Carter Sickels recalls the challenges of juggling multiple first-person narrators in his novel The Prettiest Star.
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Craft Capsule: Cut for Time
The author of The Prettiest Star recommends keeping a novel-dedicated notebook for ideas, research, and informal experiments.
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Craft Capsule: Reading Backwards
The author of the novel The Prettiest Star shares an exercise to help you approach your manuscript from a new angle.
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Craft Capsule: Metabolizing
Emma Copley Eisenberg finds inspiration on the open road, driving more than ten thousand miles in three months.
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Craft Capsule: Living Images
Emma Copley Eisenberg borrows a creative exercise from beloved writer and comics artist Lynda Barry.
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Craft Capsule: Researching IRL
“You ask the right person the right question at the right time, and they’ll tell you something that has never before been told in the history of the world.” Emma Copley Eisenberg celebrates the magic of reporting as a research tool.
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Craft Capsule: Consulting the Tarot
Emma Copley Eisenberg remembers her introduction to the tarot and shares how the cards became an integral part of her writing process.
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Craft Capsule: In Praise of Drastic Measures
Feeling stuck with a work-in-progress? Mimi Lok suggests changing up an element that previously felt off limits.
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Craft Capsule: Voice in the Epistolary Story
“It’s important to understand why the characters are writing to each other, what kind of language is particular to them, and what the form reveals or hides.” Mimi Lok contemplates the challenges and rewards of the epistolary form.
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Craft Capsule: Stillness and Silence
“Meditation is not a quick fix,” writes Mimi Lok. “It requires practice so that the mind gets used to stilling and quieting itself enough to listen.” In this Craft Capsule, Lok offers her method for cultivating stillness and silence.
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Craft Capsule: Start, Stop, Change
“What needs to start? What needs to stop? What needs to change?” Mimi Lok shares an exercise that helps her persevere through difficult writing projects.
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Craft Capsule: The End
How do you know when to stop revising? Cameron Awkward-Rich shares a memorization exercise that helps him recognize when a poem is done.
Craft Capsule: Elegy
Cameron Awkward-Rich weighs the ethical demands of elegy.
Craft Capsule: Writing “After”
Cameron Awkward-Rich considers the possibilities and pitfalls of “after” poetry—poetry inspired by or borrowing from another writer’s work.
Craft Capsule: Revising the Archive
Cameron Awkward-Rich discusses turning archival research—traces of the past—into poems.
Craft Capsule: Looking Elsewhere
The author of the story collection Black Light finds the best writing lessons in the most unlikely places.
Craft Capsule: The Art of Brutal Editing
The author of Black Light explores the pleasures of cutting a manuscript down to size.
Craft Capsule: In Praise of Writing in Longhand
The author of the story collection Black Light explores the problem-solving benefits of writing in longhand.
Craft Capsule: Ordering the Story Collection
The author of Black Light explores the daunting process of ordering a story collection.