Back when I was still in school, where I had to read Serious Texts and Think Seriously about them from a Serious Creative Viewpoint, I read a lot of books in which people died. Character death wasn't just popular--it was required. Once, in a short story class, I received the packet of required reading and my friend… Continue reading The Thematic Gravity of Death
Tag: gormenghast
Stories With No Conflict
There's a common saying in writing classes--one of the first you will ever hear--that goes like this: stories require conflict. If you don't have a conflict, you don't have a story. This is good advice most of the time, because characters who go through their whole story with nothing but smooth sailing are boring as… Continue reading Stories With No Conflict
M.M. Jordahl 