Semester of Graduation
Spring 2026
Degree Name
Master of Arts in Professional Writing
Department
English
Committee Chair/First Advisor
Andrew Plattner
Second Advisor
Mary McMyne
Abstract
Writers absorb lessons from a variety of sources, sometimes without even meaning to. My project, “Don’t Frankenstein Your Stories (and Other Oh-so-practical Advice for Novelists),” explores ways that novelists can deliberately take lessons from other occupations and a variety of activities and apply those lessons to the design and writing of novels. Lessons include to not ignore known cracks and other problems when you see them (lessons from engineers and structural failures), to weave background and foreground elements often and in a variety of ways to connect all parts of a novel—connecting backstory, the story world, and character histories to current setting and current story events—into a tight and unified whole (lessons from weavers and tapestries), and to pursue excellence deliberately rather than depend on luck or initial skills (lessons from the basketball court). This work serves to inform novelists that they may already know many lessons for writing novels and then shows them where to draw those lessons from activities they may already be familiar with. The point is to spur novelists to use what they already know and to not struggle through unfamiliar writing terminology but instead tap into familiar concepts and best practices from a variety of fields.