By Aaron Gansky @ADGansky I noticed something interesting when I worked as an editor for The Citron Review, the literary journal I founded in 2009. Here’s a quick glimpse of notes I often made to the other editors: Story 1: Sure! But it needs a new title. Story 2: Yes, but it…

By Aaron Gansky @ADGansky We’ve all made mistakes, and in the same way, our characters will, too. How we handle these mistakes, however, will dramatically impact our readers.  It’s important to remember two things about characters making bad choices. The first is that everyone makes mistakes, and these mistakes can…

By Aaron Gansky @ADGansky Each day, I begin my Creative Writing classes with a prompt. It seems, regardless of the prompt, someone doesn’t like it. I’ll often garner a few complaints about how the prompt is “stupid” or “lame” or “too hard.” To which, I say, “Too bad. Do it…

By Aaron Gansky @ADGansky During my undergrad studies, a student brought in a poem he’d written about he and his father cooking traditional Korean food. The poor kid was terrified. Our professor lacked tact and could be pretty harsh at times. With worried hands, he confessed his fear to us:…

By Aaron Gansky @ADGansky Much to my father’s chagrin, I studied poetry in college. Yes, I’m that guy. What’s worse, I studied it at the post-grad level as well. Pops likes to remind me that poetry is what people write when they can’t write novels. I like to say that novels are…

By Aaron Gansky @ADGansky Study writing long enough, and you’ll hear someone talk about complex characters and the importance of believable villains, the significance of sympathetic slime-balls. Anyone can craft a one-dimensional bad-guy bent on world domination, but it takes a certain sense of subtlety to create a character we…