A Conversation with Author Ron MacLean: Madness, Then Method

Breakwater Review’s 2025 Fiction Contest Judge

by Julie Petrini

Great short stories, says Ron MacLean, require both tremendous risk and tremendous focus, in that order. In early drafts, as he explores an idea or question of interest to him, Ron makes a conscious decision to turn off any editing or marketplace considerations, to dismiss any question of “is this too weird?” Instead he lets the story spill over the edges, believing that spillover is often where the best bits come from. “The only way to know if you’ve gone far enough,” he says, “is by going too far.”  Later, in the re-drafting process, he’ll identify the parts that stand out -- “the stars that shine the brightest” -- and assess whether there is a pattern that comes close to telling a story. When he switches into revision mode, he’ll focus on the journey and interrogate whether and how those “shiny parts” further it.

Ron’s approach has yielded two novels and two short story collections, with one more of each at the finish line. His fiction, while not necessarily experimental in form, is certainly a product of an offbeat fancy and a roundabout perspective on the tethers that hold us together or keep us apart. A strange poignancy characterizes stories like “Forks of Buffalo,” which explores the narrator’s evolving relationship with his father, whose quirky-come-unbalanced obsession with the history of dinner forks makes him a potential subject of ridicule in his family and community. In “What Remains,” a prosecutor discouraged by her failure to convict perpetrators of the Housing Crash of 2007 finds roundabout guidance in the failures and promises of history through home-invading encounters with two long-dead political crusaders. In so much of his fiction, Ron finds the beats and beads of humanity through unlikely parallels and in the corners of improbability. He attributes his aesthetic to a comment shared by a classmate in his Doctor of Arts program at the University of Albany, SUNY, who told him that his workshop stories were “kind of boring,” and that she “sensed another Ron that was dying to burst out.” As painful as it was to hear, Ron remembers, it was a brave and generous observation, and it served as encouragement to unleash his imagination in both topic and form.

Ron channels the lessons he’s learned in several decades of writing into teaching at Grub Street in Boston. He developed a two-semester incubator course on short fiction, focused on turning initial drafts into publishable stories. Ron teaches a method of revision that first involves identification of the moments in the draft that feel most alive – - a sort of “heat map analysis.” Then, his students complete a framework analysis that begins with a journey statement and is supported by key moments in the story. He next encourages his students to double-down on, even overwrite, the key moments in the next draft, both to ensure they stand up to emphasis and to explore their expression in ways less overt, more refined. The last stage is the paring back: to “get closer to the expression of a thing without naming the thing.” It’s a deliberate process that has worked for him and now over a hundred incubator alumni over the years.

Ron teaches a method of revision that first involves identification of the moments in the draft that feel most alive – - a sort of “heat map analysis.”

Another critical piece to Ron’s approach to the craft of fiction writing is his judicious use of readers, his community of writers who regularly comment on one another’s work. In keeping with his Risk/Focus balance, he has identified certain readers for certain stages. “I’ve recently resolved not to share any more early drafts with one of my readers – he was always asking ‘what the hell is this?’ So now I save him for the end, when he really helps me focus on the journey statement.” But he also has what he calls his “inter-galactic” readers, who will help him spot those brightly burning bits in initial drafts. He adds that being able to define what you’re looking for from your readers allows them to read and comment efficiently and helps preserve relationships over time, so that you don’t lean too heavily, too often on the same people.

Nobody would call Ron’s fiction formulaic, but there’s something comforting about his success in applying and teaching concepts that suggest there is a repeatable method to aid in the creation of a story that uniquely shifts our understanding of the world, nurtures our empathy or just identifies a previously unrecognized moment of shared humanity. 

Click Below to Find More of Ron's Work:

www.ronmaclean.net

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Julie Petrini (she/her) is currently working on her MFA in Fiction at UMass Boston. Her short stories and essays have appeared in CALYX, Motherwell, Pinestraw Magazine, Raleigh's The News & Observer, and The Chronicle of the Horse. Julie's story "Colliding" was shortlisted for the Master's Review 2024 Reprint Prize.