Writers Are Not Their Stories — Jonathan Blum
Film Courage: Do you always know where the story is going when you begin a short story?
Author and Instructor Jonathan Blum: No not at all. I really don’t know. I have a stronger sense and then in some cases I begin stories at the end which I think a lot of people do. There’s something interesting about that. Stories have to be stories, they have to have a beginning, middle and end but not necessarily in that order. Starting with the ending has certain structural opportunities that are attractive but in some cases I may have heard a story and there’s something about that story that drew me to it that I may sort of borrow something of the arc of that story or I may take elements of that story or the first stage of that story.
I’m never trying to sort of replicate something that happened in the world onto the page but…
