Let’s be honest — story, plot, and premise sound like words that mean the same thing. Most of us, even as writers or film ...

In July 2016, a group of American scientists from the University of Vermont made headlines when they published some preliminary research about novels in English; an algorithm about their emotional ...

Lawler and Morell discuss the similarities between recruiting spies and developing literary plots, as well as why a keen sense of empathy is necessary in each endeavor.

At the bookstore where I used to work, we shelved fiction in four separate categories. Crime novels shared a wall with speculative fiction; romance had a set of freestanding shelves. The rest of the ...

It's shaping up to be a grand time for readers this summer. Jean Hanff Korelitz has a new thriller involving a great plot. It is so good it is simply called “The Plot.” And she does a grand job of ...

In the opening pages of Laura Lippman’s “Sunburn,” an irresistibly noirish world opens. Polly is a newly sunburned redhead, perched on a bar stool in a Delaware town “where strangers seldom stop on a ...