Lincoln Michel Recommends...

“When in doubt, go further, deeper, weirder. Take the elements that make your story unique and double down on them. There's a tendency in writing classes and craft essays to suggest that writers work on their weaknesses and round out their skills. If you're great at dialogue and structure, you should put your efforts into character and plot. And certainly that can help. But if instead you work on using the dialogue and structure to your advantage and emphasize them even more, you might come up with something original. Not every shape needs to be round. Often what makes great writers great is not doing everything well, but doing a few things in exciting, original ways. Franz Kafka, Flannery O'Connor, Jorge Luis Borges, Shirley Jackson, Thomas Bernhard—we remember these writers for their unique qualities, for the way they pushed their art into strange new shapes.”
—Lincoln Michel, author of Upright Beasts (Coffee House Press, 2015)