Social

Menu

  • Home
  • About
  • Cam’s Process
  • Cam’s Research
  • Author Insights
  • Book DNA
Cameron Dryden's OriGenes, where stories come from, and where they go
Cameron Dryden's OriGenes, where stories come from, and where they go
  • Home
  • About
  • Cam’s Process
  • Cam’s Research
  • Author Insights
  • Book DNA
Other posts by Sea Stachura

Book DNA

Drive with Me: Terror and Tenderness

July 24, 2019

Driving scenes are ubiquitous in movies, but some authors turn their noses at them in fiction. Unless the scene of two people side-by-side in a Toyota Camry is crucial to your story, most will suggest you trash it. I get why they happen in film: chronological, visual storytelling requires that the viewer see the character…

Continue Reading
0 comments • 76

Book DNA

You Can Use the Second-Person POV, if You’re Careful

December 5, 2018

you and only you

I’ll bet not a single editor in the world would encourage their authors to write from a second-person point of view. Many publishers and editors say the POV is wearing, potentially confusing, repetitive and not worth the trouble. But, come on, is it really that bad? After all, it’s as natural to our self-expression as…

Continue Reading
0 comments • 86

Author Insights

Partly True: The Inspiration for “Do I Look Sick to You?”

November 9, 2018

Author C.J. Hribal was in love, so he asked his love to marry him. She was a sharp-witted, one-hundred-watt-smile woman, a mother, an academic and a cancer warrior. She had also just been re-diagnosed with cancer after five years of remission. “Officially, I asked her to marry me after she got her re-diagnosis. I knew…

Continue Reading
0 comments • 100

Book DNA • Uncategorized

Add Some Mystery to Your Story

September 26, 2018

man in top hat writing on a typewriter in the wind

By now, you probably know that unicorns and Santa Claus aren’t real, but wouldn’t it be great if they were? The human mind loves to believe in the unusual and unlikely. Some still believe that the crop circles of the 1990s were made by extra-terrestrials, even though the pranksters who made them have long since…

Continue Reading
0 comments • 91

Beginnings • Cam's Process

The Muse vs. the Plan, or Another Way to Begin a Story

August 30, 2018

scribbles

I’m not much of a planner. This is not a philosophical stance, just the way my brain works. I jump with both bare feet into whatever stream interests me. I don’t pick the best spot on the stream or check the speed of the current. I go. It’s only after I’ve experienced some of the…

Continue Reading
0 comments • 97

Author Insights

The Making of Sonya Larson’s “Gabe Dove”

June 29, 2018

Sonya Larson didn’t set out to write “Gabe Dove,” one of the stories chosen by Meg Wolitzer for inclusion in TheBest American Short Stories 2017, differently than her previous stories. But circumstances forced her hand. “I was in a state of exhaustion. I had no more ideas.” Her job was demanding 10 and 12 hour…

Continue Reading
0 comments • 121

Author Insights

The Past Haunts People and Places in Flournoy’s Debut Novel

May 16, 2018

cover of The Turner House

In American vernacular, we often call a shameful or troubling past, “buried.” We know there’s some unfortunate event left unspoken, and to bring up those bodies is messy and largely unwanted. Instead, an order arranges itself around the unspoken, and we get used to the roles and assumptions needed to carry on with the silence….

Continue Reading
0 comments • 103

Book DNA

“Improvement” Works Its Magic from the First Line

April 5, 2018

cover of improvement

“Everyone knows this can happen,” is the first sentence of Joan Silber’s incredible—and award-winning—2017 novel, Improvement. It’s the sort of opening that lures in the reader. The eye reaches for the next words that will define the “it,” and that word “happen,” suggests a story right from the get go. What, we ask? What do…

Continue Reading
0 comments • 101

Follow Us

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Site design by Sea the Creative
Back to top
 

Loading Comments...
 

You must be logged in to post a comment.