Award-winning writers reveal some of their creative secrets

Panelist explains how to write a story backwards at the 2026 Word Festival

Ben Shattuck and Kelly Link answer questions on short story writing during the 2026 Word Festival. Moderator Laura Miller is at left. Photo by Ellen Booraem.

Oct. 27, 2026

By Steele Hays

BLUE HILL – Ben Shattuck and Kelly Link, described by their interviewer as “two of the best short story writers in the country,” shared their insights, challenges and advice about writing short stories Oct. 23 on the second night of the 2026 Word Festival in Blue Hill. 

There is no single rule about what makes a good short story or how to write one, they agreed during their discussion session at the Bay School’s Emlen Hall. The format is flexible.

“My only mandate is that it has to be fun – at least for some readers,” Link said. 

Shattuck spoke about the importance of sometimes hidden messages within short stories.

“The hardest part is finding the story under the story,” Shattuck said, meaning that the best short stories have layers and complexity, and that the story told on the surface is not the whole story. 

After having written and published dozens of short stories, Link said she worries she may be “repeating the same pattern” in her writing, so she works hard to find fresh and unique ways to approach her work. She almost always “starts with the ending” in conceiving a short story’s structure. In one case, she wrote the closing sentence then wrote a preceding sentence and then another preceding sentence until she had 250 words. Then she started writing from the beginning. 

Shattuck said it once took him 13 years to complete a short story. He often tries to find inspiration for his writing in a single visual image or object: “A Bible, a wax cylinder, a child’s shoe,” he said. That image can then help him drive the story forward. 

A strong intriguing opening is often key, Link said, such as metaphorically asking, “Who wants to hear a ghost story?” 

“No one says ‘no’ to that,” she said. “That’s the feeling I want – to have an invitation like that to readers.” 

Laura Miller, one of the festival’s organizers, served as moderator for the discussion session. She quoted Edgar Allan Poe, who said the point of a short story (in Poe’s words – “a tale”) was to “work a single effect on the reader.” She asked Shattuck and Link to respond. 

“Tonal quality” is key to a successful short story, Link said, and should be a focal point for any writer.

Miller noted that both Shattuck and Link have interesting side careers in addition to their writing. 

Shattuck owns and runs Davolls General Store in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. Built in 1792, it remains the oldest continually operating general store in the United States. Link won a MacArthur “Genius” Award in 2018, and used a portion of the $625,000 award to purchase an independent book store in East Hampton, Massachusetts, called Book Moon, which she and her husband still operate.  

Shattuck’s latest short story collection, The History of Sound, features 12 stories set in Maine and other New England locations, and was the basis for a 2025 feature film with the same title. The book won the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. 

Kelly Link’s short story collection, Get in Trouble, was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Literature, and her first novel, The Book of Love, won the 2025 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. The Pulitzer Committee praised Link as “a writer with a fertile and often fabulist imagination [who] explores inner lies and odd corners of reality.”