Creating a compelling main character is essential to any work of fiction, but creating a character that is perfectly good in every way can be a recipe for a dull story. That’s why it’s important to make your main character flawed. By making your main character flawed, you can create tension, conflict, and depth that […]
Writing is a hard way to make a living, which is why a whole ecosystem exists to help you feel like you’re succeeding at it. Hashtags like #amwriting provide steady pep talks for people wading through the muck of a first draft. Dubious-seeming ads on Facebook peddle frictionless methods for selling thousands of copies of […]
The Writing Retreat could have been a decent little thriller, and there’s definitely glimmers in here of a better book under the overwhelming amount of baggage that comes packed in the 400 or so pages this one operates with. Between the angst-filled characters, the laborious pace, and the generous helping of the ludicrously incredulous, this […]
“THE WASTELAND GROWS,” wrote Nietzsche over a century ago. “Woe to him who hides wastelands within.” Since then, the wastelands have grown more indiscriminately within and without. Our social and spiritual lives wither on our cell phone screens. Our cities, habitats, and public arenas suffer from a blight whose causes remain obscure while the effects […]
The Yahara Writing Center isn’t trying to turn anyone into the next Henry David Thoreau. Although if that happened, that would be okay too. Troy Hess, the center’s founder and guiding spirit, started leading small group classes on poetry, nature writing, and mindfulness almost six years ago as informal get-togethers in area coffee shops. “It […]
We are delighted to announce that on April 4, at our Spring Revel, Harriet Clark will receive the George Plimpton Prize, and the inaugural Susannah Hunnewell Prize will be presented to Ishion Hutchinson. The George Plimpton Prize, awarded annually since 1993 by the editorial committee of our board of directors, recognizes an emerging writer of […]
I began listening to Wicca Phase Springs Eternal’s Full Moon Mystery Garden after I took two road trips through Death Valley, the first literal (in California) and the second figurative (in a hospital). So when I heard him say, “On a mountain under full moon / I could say goodnight and mean it” and then, […]
Writing a personal narrative is probably one of the most enjoyable writing assignments. People, by nature, are very fond of talking about themselves and sharing their experiences as a part of a text, and this is what this type of writing requires of you. Whether you’re a beginner blogger and share your life story with […]
If a group of people is presented with a body of text, will they be able to spot the human-written passages over the AI-generated ones? The answer is, well — maybe. AI detection work is at the center of a University of Pennsylvania study in its School of Engineering and Applied Science. Chris Callison-Burch, an […]
For the past three years, Associate Professor of the Practice in Letters Charles Barber has spearheaded a writing-oriented speaker series through the College of Letters with the goal of giving students the opportunity to learn from and speak with professionals in the field. The series first took off in 2020 with a series of nonfiction […]
