It is better, however, for his own reputation that the story-teller should risk a few actions for libel on account of these unfortunate coincidences than that he should adopt the melancholy device of using blanks or asterisks.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Reviewers try to square the antics of a writer's life with the antics in the fiction. Even satirical verbal play is too often read and admired as autobiographical expression. And thanks to the democratic exposures of the web, it's easier than ever to document private experiences and divulge the most intimate secrets.
A lot of crime writing suffers from treading water. I feel an obligation to move the character on and not repeat myself. I try to fit him into a different period and a different agenda. That way, you learn slightly more about his personal history in the tradition of the unreliable narrator. It makes it more challenging to write.
As a rule, anyone who can tell a good story can write one, so there really need be no mistake about his qualification; such a man will be careful not to be wearisome, and to keep his point, or his catastrophe, well in hand.
With poets, the choice of words is invariably more telling than the story line; that's why the best of them dread the thought of their biographies being written.
There's no worse crime in journalism these days than simply deciding something's a story because Drudge links to it.
One of the fun things about unreliable narrators is they can be funny. You can admire things about them and laugh with them.
I think every first-person narrator in a novel should be compromised. I prefer that word to 'unreliable.'
Writing stories is the habit of lying put to good use.
Writers have to be observant. Every nuance, every inflection in a voice, the quality of air, even - they all get mixed up in this soup of the story developing in our minds.
A writer is supposed to have anonymity.