A fun and eminently useful literary treasure map.
University of Colorado, Boulder, lecturer Stohlman offers tutelage on creating, revising, and collecting the shortest of short stories in this craft book.
This book begins by defining the genre, differentiating “flash”—stories under 1,000 words in length—from prose poetry and emphasizing the strength of brevity: “sometimes the more you know about something, the less you like it.” Stohlman shares important tips from the outset, urging readers to focus on brief portions of larger narratives—to “ ‘drop’ us into that little slice of story.” From there, she describes how to imply events, write strong dialogue, and work with word constraints and prompts (and around clichés). Importantly, she spends a lot of time debunking myths about flash, including false notions that shorter stories are easier to write than long ones and that when you submit a story for publication, an editor wants you to fail. It’s not about pleasing an editor, she writes: “It’s about making the story happy.” Toward the book’s end, the author describes how the literary landscape is shifting more toward flash and then closes with a promising list of 100 prompts. Stohlman relates her work in short, vignettelike chapters, mirroring her content through form and crisply driving her points home (“Discover what you don’t need to say”). In a book full of excellent tips, the section on collecting flash fiction into book form is particularly beneficial; she advocates relishing the organization process and embracing “accidents” in one’s work, because if one knows too much about what one is writing, she says, “it gets boring.” As she argues, “flash fiction has an almost desperate need to tell a story before it’s too late.” Overall, this is a fast-paced and memorable work.
A fun and eminently useful literary treasure map. (appendix, acknowledgements, author bio)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-912095-79-7
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Ad Hoc Fiction
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.
Want to get ahead in business? Consult a dictionary.
By Wharton School professor Berger’s account, much of the art of persuasion lies in the art of choosing the right word. Want to jump ahead of others waiting in line to use a photocopy machine, even if they’re grizzled New Yorkers? Throw a because into the equation (“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?”), and you’re likely to get your way. Want someone to do your copying for you? Then change your verbs to nouns: not “Can you help me?” but “Can you be a helper?” As Berger notes, there’s a subtle psychological shift at play when a person becomes not a mere instrument in helping but instead acquires an identity as a helper. It’s the little things, one supposes, and the author offers some interesting strategies that eager readers will want to try out. Instead of alienating a listener with the omniscient should, as in “You should do this,” try could instead: “Well, you could…” induces all concerned “to recognize that there might be other possibilities.” Berger’s counsel that one should use abstractions contradicts his admonition to use concrete language, and it doesn’t help matters to say that each is appropriate to a particular situation, while grammarians will wince at his suggestion that a nerve-calming exercise to “try talking to yourself in the third person (‘You can do it!’)” in fact invokes the second person. Still, there are plenty of useful insights, particularly for students of advertising and public speaking. It’s intriguing to note that appeals to God are less effective in securing a loan than a simple affirmative such as “I pay all bills…on time”), and it’s helpful to keep in mind that “the right words used at the right time can have immense power.”
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780063204935
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper Business
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
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