Posts Tagged ‘back story’
Storytelling: A Few Lessons from Life to the Page
I’m snoozing for ten minutes before my alarm is set to go off when I hear my wife fall. Lesson 1: A story begins with an inciting incident. Said incident is the beginning of a chain of events, none of which can happen without something to put the narrative into motion. So I begin with…
Read MoreAnd Then What Happened?: Plot in Short Fiction
Jhumpa Lahiri’s story, “A Temporary Matter,” opens with this sentence: “The notice informed them that it was a temporary matter: for five days their electricity would be cut off for one hour, beginning at eight P.M.” Eerily resonant with the shocking news out of Texas this past week about the cold weather and the failure…
Read More