This annual deep-dive dissects two stylistically divergent novels at the paragraph level, revealing how early narrative decisions reverberate throughout entire books. This year we’ll look at Stephen Graham Jones’s I Was a Teenage Slasher and Ling Ma’s Severance.
You know that moment when a gut-churning reveal sends you riffling backwards through a novel to confirm that, yes, the author planted that bomb on page 5?
We’ll examine how Jones’s horror sensibilities and Ma’s apocalyptic vision employ similar techniques to plant invisible seeds that bloom into sinister vegetation hundreds of pages later.
Through close reading of opening chapters, we’ll uncover how seemingly minor choices in syntax, paragraph structure, and word selection establish character, build worlds, and create expectations that pay off in dramatically different yet equally effective ways.
For writers serious about understanding how beginnings contain endings and how craft decisions echo across narratives.
