By Aaron Gansky @ADGansky Much to my father’s chagrin, I studied poetry in college. Yes, I’m that guy. What’s worse, I studied it at the post-grad level as well. Pops likes to remind me that poetry is what people write when they can’t write novels. I like to say that novels are…

By Aaron Gansky @ADGansky Study writing long enough, and you’ll hear someone talk about complex characters and the importance of believable villains, the significance of sympathetic slime-balls. Anyone can craft a one-dimensional bad-guy bent on world domination, but it takes a certain sense of subtlety to create a character we…

By Aaron Gansky @ADGansky Admit it, you’ve seen the plot mountain to the left countless times. This is how you learned the parts of plot, yes? But, if I may be so bold, I’m not a fan of this diagram. Sure, all the parts are present, and the names are…

By Aaron Gansky @ADGansky Some time ago, I had my Creative Writing students draw up a map of the town in which their story takes place. I had them label streets, buildings, homes, shops, etc. The response was greatly varied, from island villas to battleships, to starships, to fantasy worlds…

By Aaron Gansky @ADGansky Flannery O’Connor is one of my favorite writers of all time. I’m a bit of a fanboy. So when she writes about writing, I pay attention. In her essays Mystery and Manners, she says, “I often ask myself what makes a story work, and what makes…

By Aaron Gansky @ADGansky One of the first things an amateur writer hears is the age-old adage, “Write what you know.” It’s a simple statement, suggested plainly, as if we must take it at face value, but it’s an assertion that goes far beyond what we first take it to…