Category: Storytelling

Don’t Take Writing Advice

1/1/2026

by Adam Buckley

Via Aaron Burden on Unsplash

The irony of this statement is not lost on me. By telling you not to take writing advice, I am, in fact, giving you writing advice—however!—if you follow me where I’m headed, you’ll see where I’m coming from. Age-old axioms like “show, don’t tell,” and “good characters have agency,” have kernels of truth to them; that’s why they’re so often repeated, but what comes after? How do writers really get better? My goal here isn’t to rebuke the institutions of writing criticism or education entirely, more so to make the case against generalized platitudes and advocate for contextual and self-motivated methods of improving one’s work.

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If You Want to Write, Watch as Well

5/1/2025

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by Ethan Gross

If you want to write, read a lot. It’s good advice, generally speaking, and very common. If you’ve ever taken a writing course or looked up writing advice online, you’ve almost certainly been given this tidbit. Most of my peers come from writing and literature backgrounds; they’re the kind of people who read all the time. Having come from a background studying film and TV, I had only read every so often, and even then it was usually for high school English class. As time went on, I focused more and more on creative writing, and I found myself being given this same piece of advice over and over again.

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Don't Stop Writing Fanfiction

12/1/2024

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by Bethaney Randazzo

“Stop writing fanfiction, and go get published.”

I often wonder where I would be if a twenty-three-year-old me had listened to that creative writing professor. Would I currently be in a masters in writing program, while teaching first-year college writing, on my way to transforming some of nearly eighty stories I’ve written over the decade since that comment was made into publishable works? Probably not.

via Canva

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Who Can Write What?

8/1/2024

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by Eric Noon

Image by nugroho dwi hartawan from Pixabay

One of the most common sayings for writers is to “write what you know.” Pulling from your own experiences and the things that you’re already familiar with are great ways to get the juices flowing and to fill in the gaps of otherwise tiresome or troubling writing in which we writers can often get bogged down. After all, it’s much easier to put a twist on a story you already know, or embellish something that’s happened to you--the bulk of the work is already done! The real question, and maybe where the advice needs to shift, is “what can we learn from the things we don’t already know?”

If all we’re to write about is our own experiences, then what room does that leave for us to learn, to empathize with, and to appreciate the stories of others? Writing about what we don’t know, the experiences we personally will never have to go through, could potentially help us to connect and build bridges with one another in ways we couldn’t see before. But as with any work of art, the court of public opinion holds a lot of sway in what is acceptable and what is not. I’m often left with the burning question of “Who can write what?

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In Defense of Short Stories

7/1/2024

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by Courtney R. Hall

Photo by Hyoung-Won Park on Flickr

As a lifelong reader, avid writer, and recent graduate student pursuing a MA in Writing degree ('24), I have a confession to make: I cannot recall reading a short story for my own pleasure prior to attending graduate school. I, of course, had to study short stories throughout primary and high school, but they always seemed to be one-off stories in a textbook rather than part of a cohesive and meticulously curated collection. Craving an escape, my younger self epitomized the stereotypical book-obsessed-child, and this yearning has profoundly shaped my literary journey. It predominantly drew me toward novels and longer works of fiction and nonfiction—a literary habit I didn’t know I possessed until recently.

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Don’t Take Writing Advice

If You Want to Write, Watch as Well

Don't Stop Writing Fanfiction

Who Can Write What?

In Defense of Short Stories

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