#writing-voice-and-authenticity

#writing-voice-and-authenticity

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"We're talking about political leaders who were moved by an enormous sense of responsibility and fear for the world."

A vision lay before him: Fleet Street blanketed with snow, silent, empty, pure white, and, at the end of it, the huge and majestic form of Saint Paul's Cathedral. It was a spellbinding moment: the great thoroughfare temporarily devoid of carts and carriages, the cathedral looming blurrily out of the still-falling snowflakes a real-life snow globe.

While Howard's case is full of nuance, Ogilvie initially only sees him as an overweight patient who might be better served by the medical facilities at the zoo. It's a breathtakingly callous statement, especially when made within earshot of the patient, yet to many larger-bodied people, it's a very real concern.

Hachette remains committed to protecting original creative expression and storytelling. The company requires all submissions to be original to the authors and that the authors disclose whether AI is used during the writing process.

I feel that in a short period of time I've become very counter-cultural without meaning to, because I have a kind of like 'kill it with fire' attitude towards [AI]. I didn't consent to this, you know? And I guess, you know, we don't get to consent to the cultural changes that impact us; but I don't appreciate how it's all happened in what feels like about two years.

To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul. The concept I stick to - my core principle - is simple: I write in plain English, and only when I actually have something to say.

Yiyun Li reads her story 'Calm Sea and Hard Faring,' from the March 9, 2026, issue of the magazine. Li is the author of eight books of fiction, including the novels 'Must I Go' and 'The Book of Goose,' and the story collection 'Wednesday's Child,' which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2024.

When the people who are after me get here, they'll arrest me and put me on trial, or they'll disappear me to some black site. Or they won't bother with any of that and they'll just kill me. All of these seem like plausible outcomes, but in the novel's prologue, the narrator seems much more confident of her success: I am a fucking genius, a gorgeous fucking genius, and the only thing left to do is sit down and write.

Sophia Stewart poses a choice that many biographers struggle with: "what to do with the boring bits."

A writer is a kind of magician. Their job is to create living, three-dimensional people out of the ordinary stuff of ink and paper. This is no easy task, because readers can't literally hear, touch, or observe a character. Everything that defines a human being in real life-the physical space they occupy, or how they smell, feel, and sound-is stripped away, replaced by description. But authors have one major, mystical advantage: They can show you what's happening inside of someone's brain.

We've all been there. Someone starts telling a story, and within seconds, your mind starts wandering. Maybe you pull out your phone, suddenly remember an urgent email, or find yourself mentally reorganizing your weekend plans. The storyteller doesn't notice. They keep going, completely unaware that they've lost their audience. After interviewing over 200 people for various articles, I've noticed patterns in how people communicate their experiences. Some captivate you from the first word, while others lose you before they've even gotten to the point.

Trope, POV, backstory, character arc. In the 30 years since I was a student of that benign, pipe-smoking, elbow-patched man of letters Malcolm Bradbury, the private language of creative writing workshops has taken over the world. What writers used to say to small circles of students in an attempt to help them improve their storytelling technique has become a familiar way, often parodic and self-knowing, of interpreting the grand and not-sogrand narratives of our time.