Noted Author Gives Students Insight Into Writing

Author David Michael Kaplan visited Westminster School Oct. 19 to give a reading of a suspenseful new short story he wrote and to talk with students in English classes about his writing. Many of Kaplan’s short stories are part of the English curriculum, so students had a firsthand chance to talk with an author they have studied in class.

Before starting his reading in the Werner Centennial Center, Kaplan told the students how lucky they are to have such intellectually stimulating teachers and the teachers how lucky they are to have such intellectually stimulating students. He then read “The Dead Boy,” a recently published story with an intriguing plot about two children trying to view the body of a drowned boy.

Kaplan explained how he came up with the seed idea for the story, how he “teased” it out and why he ended the story the way he did. “I am always interested in stories that seem about one thing and take a tack somewhere else,” he said. “This story provided the opportunity to take that tack.” He also answered questions from the audience about how he writes and why there are a lot of female protagonists in his stories.

In his meetings with various English classes later in the day, he talked with students about particular stories of his that they had read, what inspires him to write, and the importance of plot structures and resolutions. In one class, he explained the difference between interior and exterior tension and how they feed off of one another in a story. “In order to feel that a character is real, we need to see interior conflict,” he emphasized. He also told the students he started writing short stories in second grade, including a daily serial he read to his classmates.

Kaplan is the author of “Comfort,” “Skating in the Dark” and “Revision: A Creative Approach to Writing and Rewriting Fiction.” His stories have appeared in The Atlantic, Playboy, Redbook, Mirabella, TriQuarterly and Doubletake, among others, and have been anthologized in “The Best American Short Stories,” “The O. Henry Prize Stories” and others. He is the 1999 winner of the Nelson Algren Short Story Award and teaches fiction writing at Loyola University in Chicago. He earned his bachelors degree at Yale University and his M.F.A. at the University of Iowa.