(The Importance of Women in STEM Representation in Fictional Works.)

Still, something was missing. My tribe’s stories are sacred, so I was reluctant to stretch tradition too far, but early drafts lacked cohesion.

Then, in 2020, Covid afforded me the unsolicited opportunity to wait in school car loop lines four hours a day with my kids. I listened to hundreds of hours of kids’ audiobooks. This was when I encountered Chinese-American author Grace Lin.

Grace Lin’s novels, inspired by Chinese folklore, sounded like traditional stories that could have been. Just like that, I found the missing ingredient—a way to write from tradition without cannibalizing my tribe’s stories. I wrote a capstone myth for Undrowned in the rhythms and imagery of traditional Chickasaw tales. My story stood apart yet honored its origins.

I knew feedback from my tribe’s leaders was essential. I may be Chickasaw, but I don’t represent every tribal member, after all. I shared Undrowned with Chickasaw Press and eventually came to be a Leaning Pole Press author. What I learned from tribal editors and elders reinforced my opinion of the importance of traditional stories.

Why is traditional storytelling so alluring?

Simply put, because it’s revealing. Tradition speaks of dietary habits, resource availability, priorities, landscape, how time is spent, family dynamics, how problems are solved, and what is worthy of celebration. Storytelling reminds us that solutions often come from unexpected relationships, like the eight-legged spider who brought fire to two-legged Chickasaws by protecting the ember in a web. It would behoove you not to overlook others, the story intones. Traditional storytelling is chalk full of cultural values. And culture is fascinating.

Storytelling is a portal to a past when oral tradition framed the way in which information was disseminated through clans. Within the Chickasaw Nation, storytelling remains as fun as it is formative, and storytellers continue to shape the way Chickasaw values impart to the next generation.

Though some Chickasaw stories have been written down, tribal memory is alive in oral storytelling. Our stories are defining. They answer the million-dollar questions: Who am I? What am I to do? They are sacred, our stories, and storytellers are revered as keepers of the flame.

Because traditional stories speak to identity, retelling them without a relationship to the tribe is ill-advised. I’m talking, of course, about the cringe-worthy awkwardness of cultural appropriation.

My story has Native American characters. Will you take a look and let me know what you think?

Since I first began writing, I’ve been asked this question in every writing group. I welcome such good faith questions. Most writers are not trying to perpetuate stereotypes, after all. Usually, writers ask because they have no tribal connection, they want to feature a diverse cast of characters, they believe they are showing appreciation for tribal heritage, or they’re looking for a sensitivity reader.

So, at what point does writing from a different cultural perspective become cultural appropriation?

Cultural appropriation occurs when marginalized groups have no control over their cultural expressions. A nontribal member borrows a cultural element and strips it of all but one dimension. Markets it as Indigenous. Sells it. Never confers with tribal elders. You see it with music, dance, regalia, literature, art, you name it. Culturally appropriated artistic expressions are often poor imitations of the original, cheaply made, lacking context, and sold outside the tribe without consent.

This pattern of cultural appropriation is neither new nor unique to First Nations tribes. It occurs across all marginalized groups the world over. It’s why tribal elders protect their most sacred rites with the same zeal that major corporations defend their logos.

So, I can’t write anything Native American?

True appreciation begins with curiosity, listening, building trust. Not just borrowing stories. If you have no tribal connection, you might start by reading Native authors. Become familiar with the tribe’s history. Then, when you reach out to tribal literary groups, you’ll understand the context. Share your genuine curiosity, be respectful, and explain your intentions are to collaborate, not appropriate. Retelling traditional stories, whether they’re yours or another’s, requires nuance.

If given the opportunity, share your writing not just with recognized tribal members but respected elders. Be ready to have your literary characters and themes challenged. And don’t be surprised if tribal relationships enrich far more than your writing. In seeking to honor the tradition of storytelling, you may find yourself heartily uplifting the Indigenous voices, not of strangers, but friends.

Check out G. M. DiDesidero’s Undrowned here:

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(The Power of Hopeful Fiction in Difficult Times.)

From the beginning, I grappled with the immensity of the task. The story spans nearly 300 years of human history across 400 pages. Where would I even start? What could I possibly find that proved humanity deserved redemption?

The deeper I dove into research, the worse it got, delving through some of humanity’s darkest moments—human chattel slavery, genocide, wars, sexual violence, torture, and mutilation—so many gaspingly depraved acts of cruelty that boggle the mind. Each discovery forced me to confront how far we’ve fallen and how often we repeat the same mistakes.

The further I went into the research, the more I identified with the character of Death—the enigmatic, jaded, eternal being—burdened by his purpose and resolute in his belief in the irremediability of humans. When Death appeared on the page in June 2023, I understood him right away. He is haunted not by the act of taking souls, for that is natural and the way of life, but by what humans do to each other long before he arrives, squandering the gift of life, for no good reason.

On top of contending with the horrors of the past as I wrote, I often felt caught in the present, amid ever-expanding examples of human depravity. I know every generation says that things have never been this bad, but with the constant barrage of breaking news, texts, snaps, TikToks, and newsfeeds, like Nella, I often felt overwhelmed by the weight of it all.

It would’ve been easy to stop there—to write a book mired in misery, and numb to the devastation of it all. But I didn’t want to write another story steeped in despair, absent of hope, because the darkness means nothing without the light. In this instance, knowledge of my own family history—of sharecroppers becoming college professors, of immigrants becoming doctors—of people who endured despite the challenges. Like Pandora, holding that near-empty box, I had to believe, if only for the sake of meeting my deadline, that there was hope enough, and proof enough for us all. 

That belief became my compass. A simple reminder from my childhood came back to me—Mr. Rogers’ advice to “look for the helpers. There are always people who are helping.” 

So, I did. I searched for moments when people chose kindness and worked to make the world better, even at the cost of their life, liberty, and freedom. 

Once I started looking, they began to crop up everywhere, in the millions of small acts, all testament to the search for human connection, kindness, and consideration. From the overflowing GoFundMes for families who’d lost everything; worldwide protests demanding a better world; free haircuts for the homeless, and fostering dogs and emptying shelters during the pandemic to collecting thousands of birthday letters for a 100-year-old veteran; raising hundreds of thousands of dollars from strangers for a mother and her sons living on the street, all these acts demonstrate that the capacity for human kindness continues, and the potential for human progress persists. For every livestream of devastation, there’s another showing people rebuilding after storms, feeding neighbors, or offering comfort to strangers. The helpers are still here—the ones who see the dignity of every human life, soul, and spirit—proving the capacity for human kindness persists.

Writing this book taught me to see those small moments for what they are: evidence. The older woman who spent an hour teaching my five-year-old to play ping pong at a hotel pool. The neighbor who keeps the food pantry stocked. The hundreds of people who helped me in small ways have become the person I am today. Each act, however small, is part of something larger—the ongoing effort to make life a little better for someone else. Time is measured in those moments—the glimpses when we see one another clearly, without labels or noise. 

All of this shaped the character of Nella, as she existed in the shadow of history, moving through the rise and fall of empires, always in the background, helping in whatever capacity, making a difference for others, creating space for the beauty she believed to be true in the world. For Nella, enslavement was only one part of her story—not her whole identity. I wanted to explore what she’d do with her freedom and how she’d use it to help others.

Writing as Proof of Life

Like Nella, I write to connect. Early in my career, I thought writing was about cracking some secret code—finding the formula that would make everything click. What I’ve learned instead is that the real key is truth. Vulnerability. The courage to say, This is what I’ve seen. This is what I’ve felt.

Writing is how I make sense of being alive. It’s how I gather the tiny, true pieces of the human experience before they disappear. Reading does the same thing—it lets me borrow bits of other people’s lives and carry them forward. We are here, not because of the great acts of a few, but millions of small acts by the many. 

That’s all any of us are doing, really: recording proof that we were here, and that it mattered.

Finding the Light

When I think about Nella’s story—a woman who begins as abandoned and enslaved, and still finds her way to love, joy, and freedom—I see her as a reflection of what’s possible for all of us. She witnesses the worst of humanity, and yet she keeps searching for reasons to believe. For every atrocity she sees, Death can point to another one. But still, she looks for the helpers. Still, she chooses to love.

That’s what I wanted this book to be: not a story about suffering, but a story about endurance. About finding the small lights that make it possible to keep going. Just because a thing is small, doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing.

Writing The Wondrous Life and Loves of Nella Carter changed me. It reminded me that the world will always offer reasons to give up—and yet, there will always be more reasons not to. The proof of our goodness is everywhere. You just have to keep looking.

Because even in all that pain, I still believe in us. I see humanity in the people who show up, who care, who demand better. We forget that we don’t have to wait for someone else to fix things. We already have the power to make the world we want—right now.

And maybe that’s what writing is for—to remind us, again and again, that even in darkness, humanity is still worth saving.

Check out Brionni Nwosu’s The Wondrous Life and Loves of Nella Carter here:

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(10 Interviewing Tips for Journalists.)

Although I hated doing homework when I was in high school and college, I got a thrill as a journalist from unearthing facts and details that would inform the questions I asked and the stories I wrote. That was even more true when I began writing biographies and directing documentaries, wading into the oceans of archival material that awaited me there.

One thing I always enjoyed about being a reporter was the license it gave me to ask people nosy questions. That comes in handy when writing fiction. While I might be able to imagine what it’s like to be a cruise director on a luxury ship or the proprietor of a cannabis dispensary (if I were writing a novel about characters in those professions), I’ll learn more if I interview someone who does those jobs to find out what the work itself is like. People are surprisingly amenable to requests to talk about their work, particularly when you tell them that it’s strictly background for a novel.

Of course, the act of doing research has changed significantly since I wrote my first book, a biography of the film director Sam Peckinpah, in 1991. In those days, I spent my research time searching endless physical volumes of the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature at the New York Public Library and other archives in the New York area. Which was only the beginning of a multi-step, labor-intensive process.

The Readers’ Guide offered citations of articles about Peckinpah in various magazines, as well for reviews of his films. Armed with these citations, I would fill out request slips, one for each citation, so the reference desk librarians could fetch old magazines from the library’s physical archive. After finding the articles in these musty editions—and hopefully, having remembered to bring sufficient change with me—I would make Xerox copies to take home, which I would later read, highlight, and mine for information.

That, of course, was 35 years ago. Today, the same information is available with a few keystrokes of an internet search.

My new novel, Hemlock Lane, is set in the boroughs of New York City and suburbs of Westchester County. While the story’s present takes place in 1967, parts of the story are told in flashbacks that extend from the 1920s to the 1960s.

As the saying goes, sometimes a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, which is another reason research can be helpful. In recounting a character’s history in Hemlock Lane, I made a passing reference to an older brother who had died in World War I. To lend it authenticity, I mentioned the only WWI battle whose name I remembered: the Battle of the Somme.

A helpful copy editor subsequently sent me a note asking, “Did his brother fight with the Canadian Army? Because the Battle of the Somme was in 1916, and the U.S. didn’t enter the war until 1917.”

While information retrieval is speedier, research still serves the same function it always did: to add a dimension to whatever you’re writing, whether it is journalism or fiction. In the case of fiction, research adds information that your imagination lacks, but which it can build upon.

Part of being a reporter is the ability to explain a news story to readers who come into it with no knowledge of what came before; in other words, the reporter provides context. Because our lives don’t happen in a vacuum, there is always history happening around us, whether we know it or not. 

When you set a story in the past, even the recent past, research allows you to ascertain the facts of that moment in history. Imagination allows you to extrapolate from those facts in that moment. 

Dates can also be signifiers, to which readers bring their own resonance. To readers of a certain age, the year 1967—which included the so-called Summer of Love—was one of great cultural upheaval; as a writer you only need mention the date to those readers to unleash a flood of memories of the period. To others, you’ll be acting as a historian plumbing the distant past, so act accordingly.

In the case of Hemlock Lane, my research—again, simplified by the internet—extended to everything from when the old Shea Stadium was built at Willets Point, Queens; to how the scrap-metal business works; to what movie might have been playing at Radio City Music Hall on a Sunday in 1934, when two characters go on a date.

The object of the research isn’t total factual accuracy; you’re seeking to create verisimilitude and plausibility and avoid anachronism. In Hemlock Lane, for example, I created a scrap-metal concern whose owners were enriched when their business was purchased to make way for Shea Stadium. It wasn’t factually true, but it was plausible, given the history. Being able to ground the work with a handful of salient facts lends it a truthfulness that can add depth to the work.

While the novelist has license to create, the facts you include in a novel should be close enough to reality that readers won’t go, “Wait a minute—that’s not right” and, instead, will be left saying, “Wait—did that really happen?” If you do your research, the answer to that question will be, “No—but it could have.”

Check out Marshall Fine’s Hemlock Lane here:

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(21 Popular Fantasy Tropes for Writers.)

At first glance, Uruk seems an open-and-shut case of historical fiction. It’s set in a real place, a gritty version of Ancient Mesopotamia. It also focuses on a historically significant period, the Neolithic Revolution, when tribes abandoned their hunter-gatherer lifestyles to farm and build the first cities. I researched the period heavily, looking for interesting details. Did you know, for instance, of a technique called “persistence hunting,” in which teams chased an animal all day in relays until it overheated and collapsed? Or that ancient Sumerians were master irrigators, rerouting entire rivers to feed their crops? Finding a wealth of these details, I happily layered them into the world of Uruk, both to add interest and to increase the ring of truth.

However, a closer look at the story also revealed elements native to low fantasy. This is a genre which, according to one blog, is “…almost better [called] intrusion fantasy, where elements of the fantastical are ‘intruding’ on the realistic world.”[1] For context, Game of Thrones has often been called low fantasy, with its strong echoes of the Wars of the Roses and only the occasional intruding dragon. High fantasy, on the other hand, boasts classic examples like The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia, with worlds entirely unlike ours. In high fantasy, “you might see giants and unicorns living side by side, using their magic to handle mundane daily problems.”

Uruk flirts with a few low fantasy elements. Its heroes sometimes have mystical experiences with Mesopotamian gods, and fall just shy of being mythical heroes themselves. One, an ex-thief named Ta, becomes a Moses-like prophet who leads his people through storms, battles, and floods of Biblical proportions. Another, a genius girl named Ki, is so brilliant that she drives the development of the region by inventing agriculture, irrigation, bronze age weapons, and mud-brick city walls in one lifetime instead of over thousands of years, the way it probably occurred. Indeed, the feats of these two become so renowned that tribal storytellers weave them into real-life cultural myths like the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh and the Akkadian Legend of Sargon the Great.

I have long felt that “genre smashing” can yield powerful effects, much like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland does when it crashes particles together at high speeds to gain insights into the fundamental forces of the universe. The power of this technique first became apparent to me while watching The Talented Mr. Ripley, an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s most famous novel. The film stars Matt Damon in one of his best performances, along with Jude Law, Cate Blanchett, Gwyneth Paltrow, and the great Philip Seymour Hoffman in a side role (it’s really quite good). Going into the film blind, with no expectations, I felt for the first hour that I was living comfortably in a modernist literary story in the vein of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night or Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. All the elements were there. Young good-looking Americans vacation in Europe, drinking copious amounts of fine liquor, eating delectable food, and bathing at one fashionable beach after another. As expected, they banter and flirt and betray each other, and betray themselves, usually with an elegantly phrased riposte or two.

But suddenly, in the middle of Ripley, the register switches. Two characters sit alone in a rowboat in yet another picturesque Italian bay…and start saying things a bit too true, a bit too painful. Abruptly one character stands up and swings an oar. In the blink of an eye, the white gunwale is red with blood. And the murderer is weeping and hugging the victim’s head to his chest, while around him the world, vast and silent and blue, rocks up and down with the waves. I found myself stunned. Not only because of the blood. But because I was no longer safely in the genre of modernist literary fiction, with its expected sadnesses and small epiphanies. I was now in a crime story, or a psychological thriller…or, more accurately, in a Patricia Highsmith novel. The “pasteboard mask” of the world (as Ahab calls it in Moby-Dick) had been punctured, leaving me in a realm far deeper, with infinitely more possibilities. Wherever I was, I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

And that’s true to life, isn’t it? Haven’t our own lives switched genres many times? The Pulitzer Prize winning play Long Day’s Journey Into Night, by Eugene O’Neill, illustrates this when one of the main characters recalls the Romance Story of her youth. “Then in the spring something happened to me,” reflects Mary Tyrone, a character based on O’Neill’s own mother. “Yes, I remember. I fell in love with James Tyrone and was so happy for a time.” But by the end of the play, it becomes clear that her romance genre days are lost to her forever. Now she is aged and sad, a morphine addict and insomniac haunted by the failings of her family and herself. She exists in the genre of literary tragedy, in which she must utter heartbreaking lines like this: “None of us can help the things life has done to us. They’re done before you realize it, and once they’re done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you’d like to be, and you’ve lost your true self forever.”[2] In the same way, haven’t our lives skipped from adventure story to romance to comedy to travel story… even to horror, suspense, or cautionary tale from year to year?

In my MFA Fiction program at UC Irvine, my writing professor Ron Carlson challenged us to surprise ourselves in our stories. “If you get what you expect, it isn’t good enough.” The act of “genre smashing” can help us meet that exhortation. Take the novel Watership Down. It starts with what seems like a Beatrix Potter-inspired children’s fantasy about rabbits looking for a new home, then elevates it into an Aeneid-esque epic full of violence and sex and rabbit mythology and heartache. The seeming incongruity of the childish elements with the adult startles us into paying attention. 1984, while primarily a piece of political fiction, also gives its main character dream sequences that seem prophetic, such as visions of the “Golden Country,” which haunt Winston before he even visits it—almost as if George Orwell is suggesting, very faintly, that the Party’s maniacally controlled reality is not the final word. Then there is Jurassic Park, one of my favorite novels by Michael Crichton, the great pioneer of the techno-thriller. Did you know that at the end of the book, the character Ian Malcolm, dying from T-Rex bites, has a near death experience? “Don’t care about…anything…,” he says. “Because…everything looks different on the other side.”[3] To me, this intrusion of spiritual fiction (or fantasy, depending on your worldview) deepens Crichton’s world invaluably, making it more truly echo our own with its layers of change and mystery.

Do all genres smash well together? Which pair best? Worst? And do any pairings remain underexplored (leaving the entrepreneurial storyteller a potential gold mine to claim)? I’d love to read a deeper study of this topic. As one would expect, most genres seem to benefit from additional literary fiction elements. The genre’s focus on deep characterization and crafted prose—as in Cormac McCarthy’s Western masterpiece Blood Meridian—usually just means “better,” perhaps disqualifying it as a distinct genre for our purposes. On the other hand, some genre elements can feel overpowering. Throwing aliens into the fourth Indiana Jones movie jarred so badly with the more spiritual elements of the earlier installments that even Indy couldn’t make it work. From this, a formula might be deduced: Pairing two genres is good company; three is a crowd.

Luckily for Uruk, pairing historical fiction with low fantasy has a good track record. Successes like The Seventh Seal, Outlander, and Interview with a Vampire bear this out. What makes the combination work? Perhaps we, like ancient cultures, feel there is more to this world than what the eye—or the microscope—can capture. A world with every corner of it explored, explained, leaves us unsatisfied. A “sense of mystery” is needed. According to novelist Flannery O’Connor in her fine book Mystery and Manners: “The type of mind that can understand good fiction is…the kind of mind that is willing to have its sense of mystery deepened by contact with reality, and its sense of reality deepened by contact with mystery.”[4] Maybe that is why my internal homing system led me to this version of Uruk. I suppose in November, when the book comes out, readers will let me know how well the experiment worked.

Check out James Zwerneman’s Uruk here:

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[1] Lauren Donovan, “High Fantasy vs Low Fantasy: A Quick Guide,” The Book Foundry (blog), https://www.bookfoundryediting.com/blog/high-fantasy-vs-low-fantasy-a-quick-guide

[2] Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night, Yale University Press 2014

[3] Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park, Ballantine Books, 2012

[4] Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970

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(Why I Keep Coming Back to the Same Questions in My Novels—and Why You Should Too.)

Yet one of the most important questions we need to ask ourselves is often left unspoken: Why do we write? The answers vary from person to person, particularly for those of us who are on the road to publication. Among the most common reasons are the need to tell a story, the desire to share knowledge, and the hope that becoming an author will turn into a full-time career. Money and fame can fall onto the list as well. Most of us will find our reasons fit several categories.

For me, I started writing because I had stories circling through my head, and the only way to get my fictional characters to behave was to write their stories. My motivation progressed when I discovered a gap in the market, one I wanted to fill. At the time, readers couldn’t easily find adult fiction suitable for younger audiences, but it was something I enjoyed creating. Finding my target audience, having a story to tell, and getting it on paper, though, were only the start of my journey. I also needed to hone my craft.

I found a trusted friend who provided crucial feedback on my early drafts. Equally important, I read. A lot.

My leisure reading turned into an exercise in analysis. What did I love about what I read? How did the author capture my emotions and allow me to fall into their fictional world? And the questions went on. My understanding of creating a novel expanded, and I tried to implement my new knowledge in a way that allowed me to develop my own voice while also learning from the masters in the publishing world.

As part of my early writing process, I also had to give myself permission to stop worrying about making everything perfect. It’s okay to write a messy first draft. After all, we can’t edit a blank page.

My first novel took six years to write and revise, followed by another year of revisions after a publisher asked me to revise and resubmit. Now, over 20 years after my first novel released, I typically only need two to three months to draft a novel and have it ready for submission. The increase in my efficiency comes from both years of practice and an increased understanding of how to jumpstart my creativity. So if you’re one who tends to wait for your muse to show up, here are a few tips that have worked for me as I drafted my first 50 or so novels:

1. Set a schedule. Even if you spend your “writing time” staring at a blank screen, with practice, your creativity will be awakened when you sit down to write.
2. Read through a page or two of what you wrote last. This can help refresh your memory and put you back into the heart of your story.
3. Don’t be afraid to write out of order. Sometimes we can jumpstart our creative process by beginning with something we’re excited about, even if that means skipping forward.
4. Set a goal—and adjust when necessary. Whether it’s a certain amount time spent writing, a word count, or a specific number of pages, setting achievable goals gives us a sense of accomplishment on a daily level for a project that can take months or even years to complete.

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which happens every November, is one great way to connect with other writers with similar goals. (Editor’s note: The official NaNoWriMo organization shut down in early 2025, but many unofficial NaNoWriMo groups have sprouted, including NaNo 2.0 here.)

Which brings me to another helpful tip: If possible, find an accountability partner, someone you can report to each day or week to help keep you on track. When I know my accountability partner is expecting me to tell her whether I hit my goal or not, it definitely makes a difference in how committed I am during the day.

Writing sprints is another tool that can be helpful, whether using an online group or an in-person event. But an important note to remember is don’t compare. Theodore Roosevelt said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” It’s so true. One person’s success doesn’t equate to another’s failure. And every word we draft is a step closer to finishing our book and moving our career forward.

I hope we all find joy in our writing, but more than anything, we need to understand that we all have a unique perspective, and because of that, our story is one no one else can write.

Whether you are writing 50K words in a single month or plugging along at a few hundred words a week, every success in writing comes the same way: one word at a time.

Check out Traci Hunter Abramson’s Victim #8 here:

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(3 Things to Consider When Retelling Myths.)

Retellings are everywhere—from gritty reimaginings of Greek tragedies to fresh takes on medieval folklore to contemporary spins on Victorian novels. Some of your favorite songs, movies, and novels are probably retellings. Bridget Jones’s Diary? A retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Oliver & Company? A retelling of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist. The Fate of Ophelia from Taylor Swifts latest album? A retelling of a character from Hamlet.

At first glance, a retelling seems easier than creating an original story. After all, the plot structure is already there, and the characters are familiar. But anyone who has tried to write one knows that retellings come with their own unique set of challenges. Striking a balance between honoring the source material and crafting something new requires precision, creativity, and courage.

The central dilemma of a retelling is how faithful it should be to the original. Lean too heavily on the source, and the new version risks becoming redundant; just a reheated version of a story that’s already known. Diverge too far, and the connection to the original may feel tenuous or gimmicky. Readers often come to a retelling with expectations too; they want to see the familiar beats and themes but experience them in a surprising or refreshing way. For instance, Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad retells The Odyssey from Penelope’s perspective. The bones of Homer’s epic remain, but Atwood brings in modern wit and feminist critique, providing a story that is both recognizable and revelatory. Achieving this kind of balance is one of the most demanding parts of the process.

Readers can also be fiercely protective of beloved stories. A retelling of Pride and Prejudice that alters Darcy’s character too dramatically may upset Austen purists, while a reinterpretation of Cinderella that eliminates the magical elements might frustrate readers expecting enchantment. Writers of retellings must anticipate these expectations and decide how to engage with them.

Some authors lean into controversy, deliberately subverting or dismantling the original story to spark conversation. Others tread more cautiously, layering nuance without discarding the essential spirit. Either way, the challenge lies in navigating an audience that comes armed with prior knowledge and strong opinions.

Another danger is leaning too much on the familiarity of the original tale. It can be tempting to assume that readers will fill in emotional or narrative gaps, but a retelling must still function as a complete and coherent work on its own. This means developing characters with depth, constructing arcs that feel earned, and crafting a narrative voice that doesn’t depend entirely on the reader’s prior knowledge. A retelling should reward those who know the original but remain accessible and compelling to those encountering the story for the first time.

Many tales were born in times and cultures vastly different from our own. Retelling them involves deciding how to handle those contexts. Should the story remain in its historical setting, potentially preserving elements that modern readers may find problematic? Or should it be transplanted into a new context that reimagines outdated norms?

For example, many traditional fairy tales contain gender roles, punishments, or moral lessons that clash with contemporary sensibilities. This was something I wanted to particularly address in my novel Spellbound, a retelling of Sleeping Beauty. I was uncomfortable with the lack of agency that the princess—and all the women in the classic fairytale—are afforded, so I set about subverting it. Instead of being a passive figure awaiting rescue, my version of the princess becomes an active agent in her own fate, wrestling with the curse and making choices that shape the trajectory of the story along with the women around her. This required careful thought: How much change would still allow readers to recognize the bones of Sleeping Beauty, and how much change was necessary to make her feel like a fully realized character? In the end, retelling is often a negotiation between tradition and transformation; respecting the echoes of the original while daring to let the silenced voices finally speak.

Retellings also exist in a crowded literary ecosystem. The most famous stories of Greek myths, Arthurian legends, and Shakespeare’s plays have already been retold countless times. This raises the bar for originality. What can you say about Achilles or Hamlet that hasn’t been said before? This challenge can also become an opportunity.

Writers often find fresh angles by shifting perspective, genre, or tone. Madeline Miller’s Circe takes a minor figure from The Odyssey and builds a rich, character-driven narrative around her. Some authors lean into genre-bending: a cyberpunk Beowulf, a horror-infused Little Red Riding Hood, or a science-fiction King Lear. Distinguishing a new retelling from the vast body of existing adaptations requires ingenuity and a willingness to take creative risks.

Retellings demand a distinctive narrative voice. When the broad strokes of the plot may already be familiar, the voice becomes even more important in drawing readers in. A lyrical retelling might emphasize atmosphere and emotion, while a sharp, humorous version could bring new light to familiar events. The challenge is ensuring that the voice feels authentic to the story being told while also showcasing the writer’s unique style. It’s this alchemy of melding the old with the new that makes retellings vibrant and worthwhile.

Finally, retellings are challenging because they are conversations between past and present. They require a deep respect for the original text while daring to innovate boldly. Writers must wrestle with questions of fidelity, originality, cultural sensitivity, and reader expectation, all while producing a story that stands confidently on its own. But it is precisely because of these challenges that retellings remain such a vital form of storytelling. They allow us to revisit familiar tales with fresh eyes, uncover overlooked perspectives, and remind ourselves that no story ever truly ends, rather it evolves, reshapes, and continues to speak across generations. For writers, the struggle of the retelling is also its gift: an invitation to participate in the living tradition of storytelling, to join a centuries-long dialogue, and to discover anew why these stories endure.

Check out Georgia Leighton’s Spellbound here:

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(Navigating the Emotional Impact of Writing Vulnerable Content.)

I had no idea where to start, so I wrote about a dream I had. There was a waterfall and a bear and a complete lack of narrative. Four other students read it during a workshop, and it did not go well. Reading had always been a transformative experience for me, and that’s what I’d hoped that moment could bring to them. It didn’t. And, honestly, I don’t blame them.

It was bad.

I scrapped it, and the night before the assignment was due, I started from scratch.

I realized that if I wanted my writing to mean something, to do something, it had to make my readers feel something, and I couldn’t do that without feeling something myself. In one of my other classes—one focused on memoirs—we were reading a book titled Writing as a Way of Healing, by Louise DeSalvo. The book, published in 1999, showed the power of writing to help people heal from their trauma. It focused on how DeSalvo worked with her students to write their way to healing, and how writing allowed DeSalvo and other prominent writers (Virginia Woolf, Henry Miller, Audre Lorde, and others) heal themselves. I read it in the context of a creative nonfiction class, but I thought: If fiction could be an escape, couldn’t it also be a way to heal?

This was my first step into the types of books I write now, what I refer to as healing fiction.

What exactly is healing fiction? It’s the stories we write to heal ourselves and the stories we hope will help heal others. It’s not so much a mining of trauma as it is an alchemizing of our darkest memories and deepest pains into something new—something universal that allows readers to see themselves or someone they love on the page in a new way.

I don’t write the trauma; I write the healing from the trauma.

When I was working on that first short story back in college, I was in the middle of trying to define my relationship with my emotionally abusive mother. We had a tenuous bond at the time. It had only been a few years since I’d told her about the sexual abuse I’d endured at the hands of her husband when I was nine years old. Rather than leaving him, she pushed a reconciliation narrative that I had no interest in participating in. I was only still in contact with her because she was paying my way through college, and I wasn’t ready to come to terms with the idea of living a life without a mother.

So I decided to write a story from the perspective of a woman like her. I imagined the moment when this character came to terms with everything she’d done to destroy her relationship with her daughter, the moment where she went from lying to herself that she was right in all of her choices to finally, finally recognizing just how wrong she had been. In the story, she didn’t fix anything. She didn’t take steps to undo the damage or make amends or even apologize—that wasn’t the point. It ended with her recognizing the consequences of her decisions and what those decisions had cost her, because that’s what I needed at the time, even though I never got it in real life.

When I read the story to the class, my professor (and several students) cried. I’d done it; I’d taken a piece of fiction that healed me with each word on paper and created something that crossed into the invisible space between author and reader. I went no-contact with my mother a few years later, in part because I knew a different future had been possible, even though she never chose it.

With my latest novel, Witches of Honeysuckle House, I once again took my own heartaches and alchemized them into something new, this time through a story of sisterhood, shared trauma, and what it means to not be able to go home—three heartaches that have followed me into my adult life.

In the novel, there is a scene where one of the characters, Florence Caldwell, finally realizes she has complex PTSD, and that it’s this disorder that has kept her from returning to her childhood home even though her abuser is dead and gone. This moment of realization for her is so deeply tied to my own, and my hope is that readers will recognize themselves in Florence and start on their own healing journey or take the next step in whatever healing they’ve already begun:

*****

What had happened to her wasn’t one moment of darkness, one act that separated Florence’s life between before and after. It came in minutes and hours and days. One moment, her mother would tell her the world was a better place because she was in it, the next that her family would be better off without her—if only the curse had taken Florence instead of her father or her grandmother. It was the shift from a tender brushing of Florence’s hair to a sharp tug, making Florence’s eyes sting. It was a warm cup of chamomile to help Florence sleep, offered with love in her mother’s eyes, then the hot water pouring down her throat as Linda pushed the cup into her face after her first sip.

Of course it was trauma.

“I never realized it was PTSD. I thought . . .” She shook her head, not sure what she thought. That the memories were too much. That she wasn’t strong enough. That she was broken beyond repair, and somehow she was to blame. But if it was trauma, then it wasn’t her fault at all.

*****

People tell you to write what you know. For me, there are two things I know so deeply that they’re a part of who I’ve been and who I’m becoming: trauma and the path to healing. Writing is a part of that journey for me. But I don’t only write to escape—to cope with the aftereffects of my childhood—but to face the pain head on and achieve real change not just for myself, but for my readers. To explore a different outcome, the possibility of hope. And that examination of an alternative future is the essence of healing fiction.

Check out Liz Parker’s Witches of Honeysuckle House here:

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(How to Keep Your Story Moving.)

Yet despite—or perhaps because of—their deep or bizarre characteristics, the unhinged and weird women from the contemporary literary fiction scene are mirrors to modern womanhood. They often double as catalysts for surreal plot lines and symbols of the struggles of femininity. Take, for instance, Monika Kim’s serial murderer in The Eyes are the Best Part, who cannibalizes men’s eyeballs in both a gory body horror plot and an indictment on the fetishizing male gaze. Or Ainslie Hogarth’s narrator Abby in Motherthing, whose descent into madness leads to a Shakesperean murder sequence but is also, symbolically, an allegory for the ways in which we relate to motherhood, from fertility struggles to inter-generational trauma.

But in a landscape where the “weird girl” or “unhinged woman” is trendy and proliferating, writers need to differentiate themselves, and their characters, to add something new to the literary niche. Recently, several novelists have used innovative narrative structures to stylistically differentiate their unhinged female characters. These strategies include the use of metafiction, intertextuality, embedded narratives (a story within a story), and shifting points of view, all of which dynamize unhinged women narratives and offer new angles and subtexts through which we understand the trope.

Take, for instance, Alana Saab’s Please Stop Trying to Leave Me, in which the author moves deftly between metafictional short stories, essay-type narrative nonfiction, and fever dream style hallucinations to evoke Norma’s “Oblivion” (her depression and derealization). Saab’s constant shifts in genre, and her frequent shifts in perspective, complicate the very essence of the unhinged woman narrative by asking, perhaps, the most important question: Who is actually the unhinged one here? Is it the struggling fiction writer who produces the short story sections of the book, or is it the version of Norma who suffers through each therapy session? Or, in a metafictional nod, is it “Alana Saab,” the author of a book which is mentioned in one of the stories? By destabilizing genre and perspective, Saab’s “unhinged woman” narrative also becomes a question about who tells which stories, and whose stories we understand as “fictional” or not.

Ainslie Hogarth’s Motherthing deploys a similar shift in perspective, especially as Abby descends further into madness as she is haunted by her dead mother-in-law, Laura. As Abby’s grip on reality loosens, she begins to refer to herself in the third person, using [brackets and italics] to denote those scenes which she experiences as an omniscient onlooker. To further emphasize this dramatic shift in perspective, Hogarth writes these scenes as one might write a screenplay, with characters denoted clearly (Abby: or Laura:) followed by their line of dialogue. These punctuation choices pronounce the jarring change in perspective; Saab uses a similar detached, screenplay-esque perspective to narrate the therapy scenes in Please Stop Trying to Leave Me. This stylistic detachment represents possible derealization—the fracturing of the “unhinged” woman narrator from herself, as she moves from the first-person perspective to an uncanny omniscient purview.

Such shifts in perspective can add more gravity to certain scenes, as can the use of literary intertextuality, in which the author nods to another piece of literature or art, whether implicitly or explicitly. Meredith Hambrock uses intertextuality throughout her recent novel She’s a Lamb!, a book about ruthless and obsessive ambition in which Jessamyn, a young actress blinded by her desire to play the lead role, begins to conflate reality with a musical theatre performance. Hambrock uses intertextual allusion throughout the novel by writing an unhinged narrator who is herself fixated on another fictional woman: Maria from The Sound of Music. A sense of irony arises when the reader, but not Jessamyn, becomes aware of just how dissonant the narrator is from her image of the ideal female figure in the caretaker Maria. Additional irony emerges throughout She’s a Lamb! through an unstated but evident literary parallel—that of the book’s allusions to Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Like Macbeth, Jessamyn’s initial crime leads to a succession of rapid and manic murders which become her own undoing.

Something similar happens in R.F. Kuang’s Yellowface, in which Macbeth also emerges as a subtext: While June enjoys literary fame after she steals and appropriates Athena’s unfinished manuscript, she sees the ghost of Athena in the audience at a major public book event—just as Macbeth is haunted by the ghost of Banquo at a dinner party. Like Macbeth, June’s unhinged narrative is catalyzed by the appearance of a ghostly figure who returns for vengeance and destabilizes the sanity of the protagonist. Evoking other works of literature or art—as in, for instance, The Sound of Music or Macbeth—can call attention to a body of work which engages with similar themes as the contemporary novel; intertextuality, however, can also differentiate contemporary literary fiction from its predecessors by highlighting how timeless themes emerge in the contemporary world

In my own work, I’m interested in the use of stories-within-stories and how we can use multiple points of view, including omniscient narrators scattered amongst first-person speakers. In my debut novel The Gilded Butterfly Effect, the main character Stella tells a story-within-a-story as a means to describe to her new friend Penny, and the reader, her traumatic experience with a fraternity brother the prior year. Her embedded story therefore becomes omniscient in the midst of her usual first-person narrative, giving readers a broad remit of the scene and its several characters. Her story-within-the-story serves several purposes. First, it gives her the chance to claim the story for herself and tell it however she wishes—rather than as dictated by a third-party or a fraternity brother. It also allows her to omit certain key information from Penny, enabling dramatic irony—the reader now knows more about the true story than Penny does. These point of view shifts create miscommunications and misunderstandings amongst characters, which lead to discordance, and eventually contribute to their undoing.

As writers, I think we tend to restrict ourselves when it comes to points of view—but embedding stories within broader narratives can fracture and complicate the plot in important ways. Such fracturing, whether through an embedded story, a change in perspective, or an intertextual nod, can deepen the work’s overall sense of irony and gravity, and heighten the stakes for characters. These literary techniques in turn complicate the “unhinged woman” trope in several ways. Intertextual allusion can locate contemporary fictional women within a broad literary history, recalling the unhinged demises of similar but different characters. Embedded stories can give characters agency and can heighten the readers’ awareness, whilst ironically confusing the perspectives of other characters. By shifting perspective, a book can ask more than “what” might happen to an unhinged female character—it might interrogate who, exactly, she really is at all. In a crowded literary world, in which fictional women seem to be getting increasingly unhinged, stylistic and structural choices can differentiate characters and plot lines, and can keep an “unhinged woman” from falling into the trappings of an overused trope.

Check out Heather Colley’s The Gilded Butterfly Effect here:

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(The Power of Love Stories.)

As an author of heartwarming contemporary romance and historical fiction, I’ve experienced firsthand the impact of hope-filled storytelling. The first note I received from a reader wasn’t long after my first book was published. The opening line brought me to tears and left me supremely humbled:

I just wanted to tell you how fantastic your books are, and to let you know you saved a life.

The letter was from a young mother suffering from postpartum depression, who had teetered on the edge of thinking she had nothing to live for. Then, a friend brought her a Kindle, and she started reading in her moments of desperation. She found the courage she needed in the hope-filled pages of the story and climbed out on the other side with a heart full of thankfulness.

Reading your books has given me a new sense of hope.

Another reader wrote that, letting me know she’d been so disillusioned by life, she’d all but given up that anything good would ever happen to her. But the books she read renewed her dreams and belief in positive things coming her way.

The notes I receive from readers leave me humbled and grateful, but they also remind me that the stories we write are influential. They heal. They encourage. They inspire.

The challenge we face is in writing fiction that doesn’t paint a rosy hue over life’s difficulties. Characters have to face real hardship for their victories to feel earned. As writers, we must allow characters to wrestle with realistic conflicts. Maybe they’ve been diagnosed with an unexpected illness. Or they are struggling financially. Perhaps there’s a fractured relationship that picks at their heart like a scab that won’t heal. Give your characters trying situations and problems to overcome, but thread that needle with hope.

When it emerges from the embers of a soul-deep struggle, hope can be profoundly powerful.

Think in practical, everyday terms for adding hope to your story, one small layer at a time. It can be something as simple as a neighbor bringing over a meal, a friend cracking a joke at what seems like an inappropriate moment but is actually the perfect time, or a warm smile. It’s hard to feel hopeless when someone offers a genuine smile. These little glimmers of kindness reflect a root truth: Even in the darkest moments, light and goodness exist. By weaving in little threads of light, it establishes hope as something resilient. Something to be treasured.

Readers are smart, so don’t try to fool them into thinking all is well when a character is treated too gently. They know when a story rings false. Finding the balance of authenticity with optimism is vital. A romance novel that ignores all hardship doesn’t feel honest, but if the characters spend the entire book down in the weeds, wallowing in despair, it won’t leave readers wanting more.

A well-balanced story acknowledges pain, but doesn’t linger in it endlessly. Characters need to stumble, reveal their flaws, and suffer a setback or two, but that provides an opportunity to reveal their inner strength and external support. Vulnerability creates a wonderful foundation on which to build resilience. As readers journey with the characters through authentic, realistic struggles, the hard-earned joys feel like a victory, and the story becomes much more meaningful and memorable.

Every day we are bombarded with news of worldwide plagues, pestilence, and problems along with personal griefs that can ripple into towering waves. Against such a harsh backdrop, hopeful fiction does more than just entertain. It provides a safe place for readers to experience a gamut of emotions, process a variety of thoughts, and envision a better tomorrow.

A story rooted in hope provides readers with the opportunity to believe in healing, in mending. It offers what we all long for—exploring the possibility and power of enduring love. Not every story needs to have a picture-perfect happily-ever-after ending, but end the story with a hint of potential and a sliver of light shimmering in the future. Even if the character didn’t achieve their dream or fell short of their goal, when they’ve experienced an authentic journey woven with hope, the reader will still celebrate what they’ve discovered along the way.

Use hope as an opportunity to strengthen the bond between writer and reader. When someone finds solace or joy or unexpected emotion in a story, that connection carries into their life. That’s when a reader recommends the book to friends, looks for the author’s other works, and stands a little taller with hope hemming their heart.

A few simple guides can help imbue your book with a balance of authenticity with optimism that will make your characters unforgettable:

1. Create a foundation of hope in truth. Allow your characters to face real challenges, but weave in gestures of kindness, tenacity, and love to illuminate the path forward.
2. Add vulnerability. Don’t be afraid to give your characters moments of weakness or anguish. Resilience born of struggle with shine all the brighter.
3. Craft possibility. Even if not every conflict is resolved, wrap up the ending with a sense of moving forward through healing, forgiveness, or newfound strength.
4. Remember the reader. Figure out what gift you want to leave with them: encouragement, laughter, reassurance that love still exists. Begin with that intention in mind, and go write your best story.

When life is hard and the darkness looms around us, writing hopeful fiction is not an indulgence—it’s an act of generosity and kindness. To craft stories rich with courage and tenderness is to reassure readers they are not alone. It reminds them that even in the hardest experiences, life is woven with golden threads of hope.

I’m incredibly grateful for the readers who sought comfort within the pages of my novels. Their notes and letters remind me that every hopeful scene, every resilient character, every earned happiness matters.

Fiction can’t erase or cure the world’s struggles, but it can encourage us to face them—with hearts full of love, faith, and hope.

Check out Shanna Hatfield’s The Bridge here:

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(10 Secrets for Using Secrets in Your Fiction.)

These questions aren’t something I force into my stories—they’re just there, waiting. In The Baby Left Behind, a mother is forced to confront the choices that led her to abandon her child. In The Day She Vanished, a woman must face the consequences of a single, irreversible decision. In She Was Never Yours To Take, my upcoming release, a family grapples with a long-buried secret that comes to the surface, rippling outwards and affecting everyone it touches.

Each of these books has different characters, settings, and stakes. But beneath all of them lies the same emotional terrain: guilt, identity, protection, and the often murky moral decisions women must make. These recurring ideas used to make me wonder if I was limiting myself when it came to my writing. Now, I realize they’re not a creative crutch—they’re a well I keep returning to for deeper water.

The Value of Thematic Obsession

There’s a misconception among writers that we must always chase “new” ideas—new genres, new voices, new narrative devices. But I’ve found there’s a quiet, powerful truth in thematic repetition: It’s not about repeating yourself, it’s about deepening your understanding.

In literature, this practice is not only common, it’s often celebrated. Celeste Ng writes fiction that wrestles with familial pressure, secrets, and how cultural identity shapes relationships. Whether it’s Everything I Never Told You or Little Fires Everywhere, you’ll find echoes of the same concerns: Who gets to define a “good” parent, and what happens when children slip out of their parents’ grasp?

Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series explores themes of identity, trauma, and unreliable memory in case after case. Each book has new detectives and plots, but the thematic undercurrent stays remarkably consistent: How the past infects the present, and how truth is often obscured by emotion.

Even someone like Ann Patchett (idol!), known for literary fiction, returns again and again to the idea of found family, forgiveness, and the fallout of decisions made in youth. No one accuses her of being repetitive—they praise her for exploring familiar ideas with fresh insight.

The truth is, readers often seek out authors because of the questions they return to, not in spite of them. They want to see how your current self wrestles with the same themes your younger self did and whether your answers have changed.

My Questions, My Compass

In my case, the recurring themes are closely tied to motherhood, responsibility, and moral ambiguity. I’m fascinated by women who make questionable choices for what they believe are good reasons. I want to understand what motivates them, what haunts them, and how the weight of a single decision can reverberate through generations.

I write about mothers who break the rules, women who protect their children at great personal cost, and the friends or communities who become collateral damage in that effort. I don’t always know what the “right” choice is—but I know it’s never easy, and that’s where the story lives.

Rather than avoid these familiar threads, I’ve come to embrace them. They’re not just themes, they’re the heart of my author identity. And by returning to them, I’m not just writing another version of the same story. I’m pushing myself to ask the same question in a new way, with new nuance, new stakes, and new emotional depth.

Practical Tips for Writers: How to Use Thematic Obsession to Deepen Your Work

If you’re a writer who’s noticed the same topics cropping up in your stories—or if you’re unsure what your core themes even are—here are some practical ways to lean in and use that to your advantage:

1. Track Your Obsessions

Look at your last few projects (whether complete or in draft form) and write down the big ideas or emotional questions each one explores. Patterns will likely emerge. Are your stories always about betrayal? Redemption? The fear of failure? Make note of recurring themes, and ask yourself: Why am I drawn to this? Often, your own life experiences or values are driving those obsessions.

2. Flip the Lens

Take a theme you’ve written before (e.g. guilt) and approach it from the perspective of a different character type. If you wrote about a mother experiencing guilt, what happens when it’s a teenage son, or a neighbor, or a police chief who carries it? This allows you to dig deeper into the theme without telling the same story twice.

3. Explore the Theme Across Time

If your work tends to explore how the past influences the present (like mine does), consider dual timelines or nonlinear structure. This technique lets you revisit a theme from different ages, mindsets, and life stages, offering richer insights and more emotional resonance.

4. Make It Personal…but Universal

Ask yourself: What emotional truths do I want my readers to feel in their gut? Then write toward those truths. When you mine your own fears, regrets, or longings and translate them into fiction, readers will connect, even if they’ve never been in your character’s shoes.

5. Don’t Apologize for Returning to the Well

The idea that every book must reinvent the wheel is a myth. In fact, most writers build a career on exploring a central emotional landscape. The key is not to avoid your obsessions, but to refine them, sharpen them, and ask new questions each time you write.

Embrace the Question, Not Just the Answer

Some questions can’t be answered in one book. Or even five. That’s the beauty of writing across a lifetime: We evolve, and our stories evolve with us. What felt like a solid conclusion in one novel may unravel in the next. What you once viewed with certainty might now feel more fragile. Readers are willing to walk with you through that journey as long as you keep walking forward.

In my case, the questions that haunt my fiction are deeply tied to motherhood, guilt, and secrecy, but yours might be totally different. You might write repeatedly about love lost and found, about freedom and confinement, about justice or grief or ambition. Whatever it is, lean into it.

Thematic obsession isn’t a limitation. It’s a sign that your writing is connected to something real, something rooted. Don’t run from it. Write toward it.

Check out Jen Craven’s She Was Never Yours to Take here:

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