By Ray Foy How deliberately do you build your fiction from units of problem-complications-climax? Maybe you don’t think about it and write “by the seat of your pants.” Even so, a good understanding of this “unit of fiction,” better known as “the dramatic arc,” will only improve your storytelling. The dramatic arc is a vital… Read More The Dramatic Arc
By Jayne Padgett Bowers The first South Carolinian to win the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, Julia Peterkin won the coveted award in 1929, and though the honor was controversial at the time, Peterkin’s Scarlet Sister Mary, a novel about the Gullah people of the South Carolina coast, triumphed. Recently, I’ve become aware that many South… Read More South Carolina’s Pulitzer Prize Winner
by Denise Lynn Two things the husband-of-thirty-some-odd-years did every Sunday morning in place of religion: watch the TV news talk shows and accompany his wife to eleven o’clock hot yoga class. This was the concession he made to his wife and her frequent admonitions that he needed to take better care of himself. In… Read More Namaste
by Laura Lanni He stood very still. The children, unable to be still, watched him open the thick binder and feel the pages. He must hold their attention for only half an hour, their eight-year-old selves in his care. When the bell finally rang (after the incessantly loud second hand on the clock ticked… Read More Feel the Music
by Trilby Plants Mary Trull believed in duty. Her most important duty was grading student papers in a timely way. By the time she finished, the impotent winter sun visible through her classroom windows had sunk behind snow clouds. She put on her coat, gathered her things, turned off the lights, and locked the… Read More Retirement
by Barbara Evers Heather shivered from the cold as she juggled Mandy in her arms and attempted to unlock the trailer’s door. Behind her, her husband, Jonah, stomped his feet on the concrete step, his not-so-subtle way of urging her to hurry. The door swung open, and she scurried inside the small entryway. “Brrr,… Read More Cedar Revenge
by Bob Strother There were lots worse places to live. On the Southside, he’d once shared a second floor room in an abandoned hotel with a bunch of meth-heads missing half their teeth and most of their brains. The busted window let in the elements—which under different circumstances, would have been worth it to help… Read More Casey’s Alley
