You’ve got one tool to add a sense of conflict or drama to your writing. Make scenes. That’s it. That’s the tool. You’re going to get conflict in your fiction, nonfiction, or poetry by putting two — forces, people, feelings, desires, longings, losses, figures — in a confined space with opposing, incompatible needs.

I've been teaching at the Attic nearly thirty years now and in MFA programs longer than that. All this time, whenever I reconnect with my own teachers…