Jane Delury
Jane Delury lives in Baltimore, Maryland, where she teaches an undergraduate writing course at the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in StoryQuarterly, Sou’Wester, and the Portland Review.
Realism
About your opening: editors often judge a story by the first paragraph, and yours has no hook. Take the description of the father: his soap-encrusted wedding band, the blue tennis shoes he wears with suit pants and tropical shirts, the fading hair that crests above his forehead — these are all fine, specific details, but they come too soon and contribute little or nothing to the narrative. Always keep in mind that writing fiction is about choices, painful choices.
July 2001Has something we published moved you? Fired you up? Did we miss the mark? We’d love to hear about it.
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