Gotham Writers Blog

Second star to the right and straight on till morning.

Those are the directions from London to the Neverland, the path followed by Peter Pan as he flies through the night sky with Wendy, John, and Michael.

I recently read the original novel, Peter and Wendy by J.M. Barrie, for the first time with my daughter, which is surprising because the Peter Pan story has always been important to me. From the day I saw a stage version when I was six, I knew I’d never grow up beyond chasing a creative life.

Peter runs off to the Neverland when he’s a baby (never mind how) because he overhears his parents discussing his future, which quite turns him off. And Peter has a marvelous time in the Neverland, never growing up, living underground with the Lost Boys, watching the mermaids at sport, and fighting the pirates, led by the fearsome Captain Hook.

However, Peter does think about his parents. One night he flew home, expecting the window to be open for him, but it was closed and he saw another boy sleeping in his bed. Peter realized that his parents no longer wanted him, and he bears this pain as he adventures through the Neverland.

Peter is playing through the pain. It’s something most of us do. Carrying on the best we can despite an ended relationship or a personal disappointment or the death of a loved one. We’ve all got something. Often we’re playing through the pain in a positive way, and sometimes we’re running from a pain that will never stop chasing us, much like the crocodile is always following Captain Hook, hoping to chomp on his other hand.

Consider what pain your characters are playing through. Even if it’s never revealed, it’ll make them more dimensional and relatable. You can do this for major characters, but also for the minor parts.

The pain comes back to Peter in the final chapter. One night he flies into Wendy’s house, hoping she’ll come play with him, but she no longer can because she’s now a married woman with a daughter of her own. Enraged…

He took a step toward the sleeping child with his dagger upraised. Of course he did not strike. He sat down on the floor instead and sobbed; And Wendy did not know how to comfort him, though she could have done it so easily once.

But then Wendy allows Peter to take her daughter, Jane, to the Neverland for a while, and years, later Jane allows Peter to take her own daughter.

It’s not the worst fate for our characters—or ourselves—to parry the pain with something we love.

Alex Steele,

President

Overheard At Gotham

March 19, 2025

Stories Everywhere Contest—What Makes A Good Entry?

Our Stories Everywhere Contest (once called the #GWStoriesEverywhere Contest) began on X , then known as a buzzy social media site called Twitter and moved to our website in 2024. A hashtag is no longer required, but the challenge has remained the same: submit a story no longer than 25 words that relates in some way to the monthly theme. We then select one lucky winner to receive a free Gotham class of their choice.

So how can you write a stunning story of your own? Here are some tips:

We want a story: a moment of change with a beginning and an end. The entry should relate to the theme, but it’s best if you do this in a surprising way. If the theme is “Ice cream” an entry about your favorite flavor probably won’t be a winner but could you write about how cold and red your hands got the first time your dad brought out the ice cream maker?
Try not to use the exact words of the theme in your entry. A story that begins with the words “Ice cream is my favorite because…” will be passed over. Dig a little deeper.
Your entry can be fiction or nonfiction. Mine your life for details—even better if you can make the minutiae of your day moving or interesting—or come up with something completely fantastical.
A sense of irony or a glimmer of humor is always welcome. We seem to receive a lot of entries in the murder mystery genre. We like to laugh too!
Practice! Try your hand at a few different themes and don’t get discouraged if you don’t win on your first try. It can take some time to get the hang of this—it’s quite the challenge to write a story in only 25 words. Reading over our winning entries (you can find them all here) will help, too. (And if you really take a shine to this micro-storytelling, you might just be a flash writer. You can find Gotham’s flash-only literary magazine here and you can learn more about our flash class here.)
No social media account necessary. You no longer need to “spend” any of your allotted words on the hashtag either—we only want to see your story.
Triple check your work. Entries with grammar or spelling errors aren’t eligible to win.

Ready to enter? Find the rules and submit here. And if you really take a shine to this micro-storytelling, you might just be a flash writer. You can find Gotham’s flash-only literary magazine here and you can learn more about our flash class here.

Letters From Kelly

March 18, 2025March 17, 2025

Managing Expectations

A thing I like to say to my students, maybe too often, is expectations ruin everything.

That’s the good news.

Also, the bad news.

It’s good news when we are trying to build adversity—or in memoir, when we’re puzzling out why everything went wrong—because expectations are a great place to look.

I interviewed a marriage therapist once who said that unspoken expectations were the chief cause of strife among her married patients. They carried beliefs into their marriages—sometimes subconsciously, sometimes acutely aware of them—about how they’d celebrate Thanksgiving, or who’d be responsible for cooking dinner. But they never talked about them. When their new spouse failed to live up to those expectations? Disaster.

So when things are going off the rails for your characters, and you’re not sure why, look to their expectations. Are the characters even aware of them? In my memoir classes, students often discover that they’d held unarticulated hopes and beliefs. That they were secret from everyone, including themselves, created anguish and chaos, often for everyone involved.

But there are other expectations working on us when we write — those we anticipate our readers will hold. Those can sometimes be helpful, when they’re things like, “Don’t bore your reader.” Or, “Readers expect the beginning of the story to grab their attention.”

More often, though, what we think our readers expect from us, or what they actually do expect, can be unhelpful, to say the least.

Author Brit Bennett said of her debut novel, The Mothers, that, after it came out, readers seemed to think her characters would adhere more to stereotypes.

“It’s a book about Black characters, but I think there’s a way in which people are reacting to the characters — and their not conforming to what is expected — which has been very telling of what people think or expect about Black narratives,” Bennett told Electric Literature. “Black people are as diverse as any group of people, which should go without saying! But it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that that’s shocking or surprising to people in a way that I just didn’t think it was.”

You want to resist falling into that trap, unless of course, you’re going to use it to surprise the reader. [Spoiler ahead!] Think of the ending of the movie Frozen, when it seemed like the movie’s happy ending would be the same as most other Disney princess movie happy endings, with Anna marrying her paramour, Kristoff. Instead, the ending of the movie reveals that the love of Anna’s life is her sister, Elsa, and vice versa.

For writers, I think the most insidious way expectations ruin everything is when we set them for our own stories, creating in our minds the idea of how a story will resonate, or read, or succeed.

I wrote about that expectation recently, so I won’t repeat myself, except to quote, again, Gotham teacher Teresa Wong:

“To exist, [your story] has to be a little bit flawed,” Teresa said. “But then at least it can be shared, right?”