MEANDER, SPIRAL, EXPLODE

As Jane Alison writes in the introduction to her insightful and appealing book about the craft of writing: For centuries theres be en one path through fiction were most likely to travel one were actually told to followand thats the dramatic arc: a situation arises, grows tense, reaches a peak, subsides . . . But something that swells and tautens until climax, then collapses? Bit masculos exual, no? So many other patterns run through nature, tracing other deep motions in life. Why not draw on them, too?W. G. Sebalds Emigrants was the f...[Read more]