Three Things We Loved This Week: 4/24/25

Once Upon a Nightmare, witty dialogue, and writing believable twists

Whenever a call for submissions goes up, there’s always that little admonishment: “Be sure to read some back issues to get a sense of what we publish.” So what do you do when there are no back issues to read?

To help give a sense of our sensibilities (and just to share stuff we love), we’re publishing quick weekly roundups. If you like what we post, we’ll probably like what you write. So send us your stuff, okay?

Los Angeles Times Festival of Books Presents: Once Upon a Nightmare

Most of the year, and particularly during April and May, I like living in the Midwest. But at certain times—say, during the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books—I RUE THE DAY I WAS STRANDED IN THIS GODFORSAKEN FLATLAND

Anyhoo, if you’re heading to the Festival this weekend, be sure to hit up this panel. Sara Gran! Steph Cha! Barbara DeMarco-Barrett! Tod Goldberg! Ananda Lima!

More details here.

Apologies and credit to Sara Gran, for I have stolen her graphic

Raconteur Press: On Witty Dialogue Choices for Writing Noir and Hardboiled Characters

I’ve banged this drum before, and now I’ll bang it again: Dialogue is one of the toughest things to do well in crime fiction. Maybe that’s why I enjoyed this piece, published by Raconteur Press, which highlights the way the way dialogue can act as both gas and brake for story tension:

Consider the witty banter between Nick and Nora Charles from the Thin Man series of detective films. This sharp-tongued couple of sophisticated detectives give each other guff by the bushel, but they make a fine team, and the audience gets to laugh with them. Notice how their light-hearted banter breaks the tension of the who-done-it story which nearly always involves something more sinister in nature. Rather than sitting for a tense 80 minutes waiting to find out the identity of the killer, the audience is reassured by the way Nick and Nora never let even the most grave situation dampen their playful approach to one another. The audience can breathe for a moment as they consider that if the people who are neck-deep in the drama are this flip about the occasion, well, the audience is free to relax a little, too.

Anthony Horowitz on Writing Murder Mystery Twists

I’m a sucker for these kind of quick-hit craft breakdowns, so maybe I’m biased, but I really enjoyed this. Horowitz does a nice job here of illustrating the kind of step-by-step thinking that can help you build to a twist that feels surprising and completely inevitable.

(And, in one of life’s weird little synchronicities, after I drafted this post I discovered Nick Kolakowski had posted this great piece about adding twists to your stories.)