Nabokov on the difference between narrative and plot

Nabokov, it will come as no surprise, had the most illuminating remarks about narrative. Paraphrasing E.M. Forster, he wrote that "the term 'narrative' is often confused with the term 'plot,' but they're not the same thing. If I tell you that the king died, and then the queen died, that's not plot, that's narrative. But, if I tell you that the king died, and then the queen died of grief, that's plot."

Robert Vare, the Nieman Foundation

Murder In The Math Department

story by Paul Ciotti

Perennial students don't usually murder their professors. They just sort of bleed them dry.

Writing Resource List From the Poynter Institute

A list of books and articles on non-fiction writing complied by Poynter's Chip Scanlan.

In Cold Blood

This book was Truman Capote's greatest achievement, catapulting him from a minor writer to a full fledged society star. He claimed (along with his old childhood friend and fellow author, Harper Lee, to have done 400 interviews over many years researching this book). Unfortunately, as a long time fiction writer, he apparently used not only fictional techniques to write the book, he occasionally engaged in actual fiction as well (most memorably creating an closing scene for the book that participants say never happened). Despite such faults, this is a classic that is going strong in high school classrooms across America.