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Genre: Pick it and stick with it

by David Benjamin Before the liberating moment when I forsook the quest for a new literary rep, I pitched to one prospective agent a novel called The Voice of the Dog. I got a swift brushoff from the guy’s assistant, whose most salient comment—although obtuse—was: “I just can’t seem to go for animal protagonists. It…

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  2. The allure of formula in mystery prose
  3. A novelist’s guide to dining in Paris
  4. The Elements of Character
  5. The Ember of Anger
  6. The Midwest: American Literature’s Diaspora
  7. The seven keys of storytelling
  8. Don’t Do It, Kid!
  9. The agent rejection I’d like to see
  10. The mirage of the market
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  16. The first ‘graph Blues
  17. Why writers talk about movies
  18. The evolution of a character
  19. Write Away: The fatal cup of tea
  20. The nexus of fiction and journalism
  21. The telling detail
  22. A nose for news
  23. Writing in lost wax
  24. Bill Faulkner makes an elevator pitch
  25. Cold coffee and hot copy
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  27. Finding the “Everyman” sweet spot
  28. Cumulative, agglutinative, intuitive
  29. Genre: Pick it and stick with it
  30. Be clever, kid, but not …
  31. A body of work
  32. The writer as reader
  33. The author as housekeeper
  34. The church-lady factor
  35. The invisible poetry of prose
  36. The moment of narrative confidence
  37. Toying with time
  38. The author as educator
  39. The author as entertainer
  40. The author as expert
  41. To recur or not recur
  42. Swimming the sea of metaphor
  43. Emotional distance and reader empathy
  44. Satire: Bathtubs and edible babies
  45. Satire revisited
  46. The rabbit pellet in the caviar bowl
  47. Characterization in shades of gray
  48. Seven Mutations of Recollection
  49. The aggressive mind
  50. Why every author needs a gun catalog
  51. The Kafka thread
  52. “Where do you get your ideas?”
  53. The Ed McBain Factor
  54. The inwardness of the dead-serious teenager
  55. The other me
  56. Michelangelo strokes his brush
  57. Sympathy for the Devil
  58. The query trap
  59. The “creative type”
  60. “A high-concept gritty romantic suspense thriller”
  61. The paradox of smalltown crime
  62. The seven species of memory
  63. Jim Otis’ gun
  64. “Professional”
  65. “What’s your story?”
  66. Characters and types
  67. “Style” is not fashion
  68. The magic of “narrative transportation”

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