Issue #31

Whatever your obsessions, or neuroses or fears, they probably are ones that you will continue to have. There is something about that image that is very powerful for me, and mysterious, and rather dreadful. I don’t mean to use it again. I vow that won’t, and then I do.—Alice Mattison, interviewed by Barbara Brooks

So, I wrote a story titled “The Immortals” about a man who sees his ex-wife on the train, and it’s only after she gets off the train and the doors have suctioned shut that they recognize each other. A year later, he hears that she’s been decapitated in a boating accident.—John McNally, interviewed by Stephanie Kuehnert

In general, I start with an image, a resonant visual image that stays with me. And I have some sense of the feeling of the end of the story, where I want to end up. Then I discover what lies between this beginning and end.—Vikram Chandra, interviewed by Jennifer Levasseur and Kevin Rabalais

There are about five questions you can ask yourself about stories, and they’re not foolproof, but they’re useful. One is, what do these characters want? Second is, what are they afraid of? Third is, what’s at stake in this story? Fourth is, what are the consequences of these scenes or these actions? And the last one is, how does the language of this story reflect the world of the story itself?—Charles Baxter, Interviewed by Linda B. Swanson-Davies