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How (does) one recognizes good writing? "It's alive." It's the essential question, the ultimate test: one way you you can always sort out the best stuff--yours or anybody elses--is by how alive it feels. What often goes along with that feeling is that the story gets smarter than the writer, exceeds his initial conception, or starts making moves that the writer doesn't think of fast enough to make on his own. When stories start misbehaving like that, you suddenly reach the point where there's this overwhelming urge to digress from a nice, tidy narrative line, and allow what might have been an easily written story to become far more chancy and complicated. That critical recognition lasts a split second, and then it's too late: you're off digressing--or rather, the story is off digressing and you're riding along with it. If it's going to be one of those better stories you asked about, the digression ultimately expands or extends its reach and depth--and does all that without finally disrupting the narrative flow. There's an undercurrent to it, some kind of chemistry and interplay between the original narrative line and the digressions, that makes for greater resonance and allows the story to throw a longer shadow. -Stuart Dybek in an interview by James Plath |
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Up For ReviewStand Out WritingAdditional Reading
