Insightful. The other creative writing program advice Mr Trevor overlooks is for the characters to have agency. The main characters in Teresa’s Wedding are done to. Still, as you helpfully note, the story works in-spite of these sins.
Hi Peter, thanks for reading. Yes, in my view, the "characters should have agency" thing is possibly good advice for novels, less so for short fiction, which usually operates best as little torture boxes. My personal canon of the greatest short story writers mostly includes writer I would characterize as low-agency, among them O'Connor, Yates, Malamud, Cheever, and Trevor, with Alice Munro being something of an exception...
Insightful. The other creative writing program advice Mr Trevor overlooks is for the characters to have agency. The main characters in Teresa’s Wedding are done to. Still, as you helpfully note, the story works in-spite of these sins.
Hi Peter, thanks for reading. Yes, in my view, the "characters should have agency" thing is possibly good advice for novels, less so for short fiction, which usually operates best as little torture boxes. My personal canon of the greatest short story writers mostly includes writer I would characterize as low-agency, among them O'Connor, Yates, Malamud, Cheever, and Trevor, with Alice Munro being something of an exception...