Unlocking the Secrets of Masterful Storytelling: A Deep Dive into ‘The Lab’ by Davison and LaPlante
Reviewed by Leslie Lindsay
I am obsessed. I can’t stop thinking about my great-grandmother, a woman I never knew. She was old and demented when I was born. Maybe I have a memory of being at her deathbed? Maybe I insinuated myself into a photograph? Maybe I only think I knew her from stories?
That’s exactly where Matthew Clark Davison and Alice LaPlante, novelists and creative writing instructors, want me — where they want all writers. The Lab: Experiements in Writing Across Genre (W.W. Norton, July 2025) is their solution to the traditionally taught formulaic-style of writing. You know them as “The Hero’s Journey,” or ABCDE (action, backstory, conflict, development, end), or something about saving the cat. I get it. Formulas are tidy. A + B.
