Over Thanksgiving weekend, my family discovered a small library sale, and I picked up a few paperback mysteries, including a book of shor...

(Or, What I Learned from Ursula K. Le Guin and Jules Verne) UPDATE: I expanded this blog post into an article for The Federalist , ( re...

Stories are powerful. Can the arts (broadly defined to include popular forms of storytelling) be used to shape people's beliefs? Can th...

Some literary authorities cite seven basic  plot types,  but I propose an eighth And now for something... completely differe...

             Should a writer provide "what readers want?"         Human relationships are tricky things. Romance, for exa...

It is supremely difficult to venture outside one’s own head and see life as it appears to someone else. Yet the desire to do so is one o...

I’ve been reading more contemporary fiction than usual, which prompted me to think about literary patterns. Throughout the history of sto...