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Making Connections, Charlie Sweet, Hal Blythe

Hal Blythe

Last summer as instructors at a creative-writing conference, we had an experience that made us better writers. While critiquing a promising piece of fiction, we became frustrated because we couldn't put our finger on why the story didn't quite work. The tale, which centered around a young soldier's baptismal firefight in Vietnam, at first seemed solid. The main character was believable, the setting was described in gritty realism, and the plot had a beginning, middle, and end. But although the story was technically correct, it didn't really capture our interest. We found we couldn't get involved with the writer's grunt …