Regardless of how long you’ve been writing, or how successful you’ve been in your literary career, you have more to learn. This series of essays is dedicated to that proposition. Each is a boiled-down observation on some element of the craft I’ve been trying to master for more than fifty years. I offer these thoughts to my colleagues and welcome your lessons in return.
Write Away Essays:
Among the most important characters in television history is Tony Soprano, a murderous adulterer who was, nevertheless, likable. His guilt and insecurities inspired empathy in his audience and instilled in them a sense of moral ambiguity rare in popular entertainment. This installment of Write Away ponders the writer’s imperative to create bad guys who are……
Read More...Where do you get your ideas? Everybody has ideas, both mundane and fantastic. They run constantly through our heads. When I was sixteen, I remember leafing through ahigh-school yearbook whose editors had captioned, with exceptional wit, every photo in the gallery of seniors. One thumbnail, beneath a boy with a smirk of mock worldliness, has……
Read More...by David Benjamin Before publishing my novel, Jailbait, first in a crime series featuring smalltown police chief Jim Otis, I had top consider the impact of the title. The term, “jailbait,” has a long American history asa mild vulgarity not spoken in polite company. However, because the title is appropriate to my story, I kept……
Read More...Write Away — #13 Among the commonest—and most perplexing—comments I encounter when talking to readers at a book talk is: “I never read fiction.” I understand that reading nonfiction, about history, political science, economics, etc., carries an “educational” cachet, casting upon the reader a glow of seriousness. By contrast, then, fiction is somehow frivolous, a……
Read More...The road to bitterness When I was in tenth grade, I developed an infatuation with James Drought, an author whose yellow-backed Avon paperback, The Secret, I found on a revolving rack at the drugstore. Drought’s autobiographical novel—more of an extended diatribe—exuded the sort of educated rage and gloom that appealed to a cautiously rebellious and……
Read More...by David Benjamin When I began writing essays, I took advantage of a captive market. I was both editor and a multifaceted reporter for a Massachusetts weekly, The Mansfield News. Both to gratify the urge to express myself and to fill the great white void of column inches in each issue, I assigned myself three……
Read More...The gateway to publication and success as a writer is the “literary agent.” There are hundreds of these, mostly in New York City and each harboring strongly held “genre” preferences. This edition of Write Away illuminates the unsubtle art of rejection by literary agencies, a baptism of blood that every aspiring author must eventually encounter.……
Read More...As the benefactor of a scholarship competition for young writers at my alma mater, La Follette High School in Madison, I have a chance, at least once a year to converse with promising young writers. I cheer them on, but also worry about the challenges they face if they expect their talent to bestow fame……
Read More...This issue of Write Away derives from a presentation I’ve given several times to young writers. There are many habits, some of them peculiar to a particular writer, that a storyteller learns and then cultivates. The seven I’ve listed here are—or ought to be—universal. The seven keys of storytelling A question every author hears is……
Read More...This issue of Write Away examines a quandary: Why is there a Southern school of literature, but no equivalent Midwestern pantheon? It is arguable that the heartland has produced more great storytellers than any region in America. Why doesn’t the midwest get any respect? The Midwest: American Literature’s Diaspora Among a hundred threads of American……
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