Raymond Carver, Menace

Posted on February 1, 2007

Raymond Carver, from "On Writing"

I like it when there is some feeling of threat or menace in stories. I think a little menace is fine to have in a story. There has to be tension, a sense that something is imminent, that certain things are in relentless motion, or else, there simply won't be a story. What creates tension in a piece of fiction is partly the way the concrete words are linked together to make up the visible action of the story. But it's also the things that are implied, the landscape just under the smooth (but sometimes broken and unsettled) surface of things.