Writing for The Millions, M.C. Mah turns over all the cards in the deck on structure in storytelling. He gathers words of wisdom—and many metaphors—from luminaries like John McPhee, Borges,…
Maybe my faith that the profoundest feeling we're offered by art that really hits us deep in is a setting free, a series of screens or horizons obliterated somehow lovingly.
In writing, what is not said can be just as important as what is. Over at the New Yorker, John McPhee discusses the art of choosing what to include and what…
In some piece or other, early on, I said of a person I was writing about that he had a “sincere” mustache. This brought Bingham, manuscript in hand, out of…
For the New Yorker, John McPhee writes about our dwindling frames of references: Frames of reference are like the constellation of lights, some of them blinking, on an airliner descending toward an…