The Seventy Percent, by Yiyun Li
When designing a character, it’s often useful to think of them in terms of their theory of control. How have they learned to control the world? When unexpected change strikes, what’s their automatic go-to tactic for wrestling with the chaos? What’s their default, flawed response? The answer, as we’ve just seen, comes from that character’s core beli
... See moreWill Storr • The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human, and How to Tell Them Better
This idea is familiar to psychology, too. To remove a fear, you first have to name it. To purge a repressed emotion, you must give it the right label. One friend tells me all the young women she knows spend hours discussing Sally Rooney novels and in this way are examining their romantic lives more closely than they ever would otherwise. Another re... See more
Henry Oliver • Notes Towards an Applied Literature
The resistance in the stories is quiet, at a slant, and comes from perhaps the most radical idea of all: that every human being is worthy of attention and that the origins of every good and evil capability of the universe may be found by observing a single, even very humble, person and the turnings of his or her mind.