Faculty News
“Two People and a Thing”
Writing Seminars faculty member Alice Mattison offers a lesson on writing climactic moments in Signature magazine.
Two people at the climactic moment instead of one was important, but not quite enough. What worked, I discovered, was two people and a thing: a gesture, an object, or an action—not an action that would be the main event, but an action that could precipitate the main event: the intense, definitive talk … Let your characters’ bodies show the reader how the characters feel. Let them gesture, handle objects, and move in a way that’s revelatory.