Clay Stafford talks with Don Bruns on “Editing, Momentum, and Keeping the Reader Hooked”

Don Bruns interviewed by Clay Stafford

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As both a bestselling novelist and an anthology editor, Don Bruns reads fiction from two vantage points: creator and gatekeeper. Through decades of writing, mentoring, and editing crime fiction, from his Caribbean series to multiple themed anthologies, he has developed a keen instinct for narrative momentum, character presence, and the invisible contract between writer and reader. Don and I spoke about common manuscript blind spots, sustaining tension, and the delicate balance between story and atmosphere. “Don, we’ve been friends for about twenty years now. Let’s talk about you as both an author and an editor. What are some common blind spots you see in manuscripts that writers often overlook?”

“One is formula. It’s easy, even for experienced writers, to fall into repeating yourself. I catch myself sometimes thinking, I wrote this scene two books ago. You have to challenge yourself to find a fresh take every time. Another blind spot is rushing character. Even in short stories, writers sometimes skip the small touches that make a person feel real. You don’t have room for a full backstory, but you still need personality, tension, and emotional credibility. Whether you’re seasoned or new, the same rules apply: keep tension alive, keep dialogue working, keep the story moving. The moment it bogs down, you have to find a way to re-energize it.”

“You’ve edited multiple anthologies. When you begin reading submissions, how quickly can you tell whether a story is working?”

“Very quickly. In judging situations, like when we were selecting stories for Blood in the Bayou, you read the first page or two, and you know. You don’t need to read fifty pages to sense whether the story is alive or not. Engagement shows up immediately. That actually makes the editor’s job easier than people think. If something isn’t pulling you in early, it’s rarely fixable later. Strong storytelling announces itself right away.”

“If you’re in a scene that’s dragging, what do you do to perk it up?”

“Pull a gun. I’ve heard that since I was a kid: if a scene drags in a movie or book, have someone pull a gun. It sounds simplistic, but there’s truth in it. Something has to happen. Confrontation, surprise, interruption, anything that changes the energy. Lee Child once said the hardest thing in a book is having a character walk from the door to the car. If nothing happens, it’s dead space. But if he walks past a cup of coffee he poured that morning, tastes it, realizes it’s cold, and tosses it in the sink, that doesn’t move the plot, but it reveals character and keeps the moment alive. Good writers study those transitions carefully.”

“That idea of keeping every moment alive is so important.”

“You can’t let the reader drift. The moment attention drops, they put the book down and pick up another one from the pile.”

“When you’re editing stories, what structural missteps do you see most often?”

“Loss of momentum, especially in scene transitions. I once read a manuscript in which a man is pushed from a sixteenth-story window, hits an awning, and rolls to the sidewalk, an incredibly vivid, gripping scene. Then the next line was essentially, across town, Joe was having coffee. All the energy vanished. That shift yanked me out of the story. Writers forget that you can change scenes, but you must carry emotional continuity with you. If you drop tension, the reader’s investment collapses.”

“Like losing viewers during a commercial break.”

“Exactly. If there’s no cliffhanger, they don’t come back. Fiction works the same way. You have to maintain interest every second.”

“You’re known for making settings feel almost like a character, especially in your Caribbean and New Orleans books. How do you balance atmosphere with forward motion?”

“Setting is color and flavor, and to me that’s almost as important as plot, but it can’t stall the story. I want readers to feel they’re there: smell the salt air, taste the margarita, see the beach. If they’ve been there, they recognize it; if not, it’s a cheap trip. I grew up loving that kind of writing. Authors like James Lee Burke or Don Winslow create such rich environments that you want to reread passages just for the texture, but you never leave the story. That’s the goal: an atmosphere that deepens immersion without slowing momentum.”

“When you’re editing work by major authors, how do you balance preserving their vision with sharpening it for readers?”

“Carefully. I stay away from content with writers at that level. If Andrew Child gives me a Jack Reacher story, I’m not going to tell him how to write Reacher. Same with someone like Heather Graham. These authors understand their worlds and characters deeply. But even with pros, if something feels off, you can flag it respectfully. I once reached out to a very well-known author about a story that needed work. They were gracious and fixed it immediately. Editing at that level is about clarity and alignment, not rewriting someone else’s voice. When we edited anthology stories selected by judges, we were also very careful not to change the content. If a story made the final cut, it deserved to stand as chosen. Editing in that context is about clarity and presentation, not rewriting someone else’s work. Respecting the author’s voice and the judge’s decision is part of the responsibility.”

“Earlier, you mentioned rewriting and reading with fresh eyes. How do you step back and see your own work as a reader?”

“I read it twice in my head: once as the writer who knows everything, and once as the reader who knows nothing. That’s the difference. The writer knows what’s coming; the reader doesn’t. So, I reread and think, ‘They won’t understand this yet; I need one more line.’ Sometimes it’s just a few words to bring them up to speed. You have to keep the reader aligned with your knowledge without overwhelming them. My wife Linda, who was an English teacher for thirty-five years, has edited every one of my books. She reads differently than I do, as a reader first, not as the person who wrote the story, and that perspective is invaluable. Every manuscript has its own issues, its own rhythm, its own pacing needs. You learn quickly that no two stories require exactly the same editorial solution.”

“Many writers struggle with that separation.”

“It comes down to remembering that you always know more than the reader. If you forget that, gaps appear. My instinct in revision is constant: I know this, but they don’t. Then I adjust.”

“You’ve mentored writers for years. Do you believe writing can be taught?”

“A friend of mine wrote a bestselling novel about a boy trapped in civil war Africa. He later said, ‘You can’t teach writing; you can teach structure and English, but not the spark.’” I’m not sure I agree completely. You can absolutely teach craft: tension, pacing, dialogue, construction. But there has to be something internal driving it. If it isn’t in the writer’s heart, technique won’t create it. For years, people asked me to mentor or teach, and I resisted. I honestly felt I didn’t know enough to tell anyone else how to write. Eventually, my wife said, ‘You’ve been paid for a lot of books; you do know what you’re doing.’ That was a turning point. I realized experience itself has value, even if you’re still learning. Every working writer develops instincts worth sharing.”

“That internal drive seems tied to reader engagement.”

“Exactly. The reader senses whether you care about the story. That’s what keeps pages turning, not technique alone, but urgency.”

“Going back to revision, many writers can’t reread their work objectively. You seem to do that naturally.”

“For me, it’s simply awareness: I know I’m ahead of the reader. So, I check constantly: are they where I am? If not, I add clarity, context, or texture. Sometimes just one line keeps them connected. That’s really the core of rewriting: bringing the reader up to speed with what the writer already knows.”

“It sounds like everything you’re describing—tension, character detail, scene continuity, reader alignment—comes back to momentum.”

“It does. Storytelling is motion. You can have beautiful prose and rich atmosphere, but if the reader’s interest stalls, nothing else matters. Every paragraph has to carry forward energy: plot, character, mood, something. If not, fix it.”

“And that awareness guides both your writing and your editing.”

“Yes. Whether I’m writing or reading someone else’s work, I’m always asking: Am I still engaged? If the answer is ‘no,’ the writer has lost me, and probably other readers too. That’s the test that matters.”

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Clay Stafford is a bestselling writer, filmmaker, and founder of the Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference, Killer Nashville Magazine, and Killer Nashville University. https://claystafford.com/

Don Bruns is a USA Today bestselling author and musician whose career spans comedy clubs, crime scenes, and Caribbean sunsets. He’s written three acclaimed mystery series, including the Caribbean, Stuff, and Quentin Archer novels, all praised for their wit, rhythm, and heart. Once a touring guitarist, he still writes with a musician’s ear. https://donbrunsbooks.com/

Clay Stafford talks with Callan Wink “On Succeeding as a Part-Time Writer”

Callan Wink interviewed by Clay Stafford

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In spring, summer, and fall, Callan Wink can be found guiding flyfish anglers in Montana. In the winter, he surfs in Costa Rica. Callan’s new book, Beartooth, is out, and I wanted to talk to him about his success as a part-time writer. I caught up with Callan in Costa Rica (he’s already made the migration) after a morning of surfing and before a walk on the beach. “Callan, let’s talk about the writing and editing process, specifically about Beartooth. I heard it’s had a circuitous route. Can you tell us about your process and the trajectory of this particular book?”

“I've probably had the premise in my head for a long time, over ten years, and I wrote it as a short story when I was writing more short stories. It was an okay short story, but it was thin. I felt like there was more, so I never tried publishing it. Then I wrote this long, 400-page, boring novel. It had a great first fifty-sixty pages, I thought. It was one of my first attempts at writing a novel. It didn't go well, so I put it away for a long time and wrote my other two books in the meantime—another novel and that collection of short stories. Then, I came back to it a couple of years ago. I wanted to write a collection of novellas. I still thought the first fifty-sixty pages were really good, so I just went back to this one and brutally cut out everything boring, which was a lot of it.”

“Which is a good move.”

“It was pretty good. It was eighty-ninety pages, and I had a couple of other novellas. My agent and I tried to sell that as a collection of three novellas, and we had interest, but the publishers, in the end, said a collection of novellas is a hard sell, but they were all like, ‘We like this one, Beartooth. Can you make it longer?’ I'm like, shit. It was longer at one point. But anyway, then I went back. I also rewrote and developed other things. I do think it made it better. It's still a short novel, but I feel like the stage it's at now is the best of all those iterations. If I learned anything from this one, it was if you have a good premise, don't give up on it, which I'm prone to do. I like to keep moving on to other things, and if something doesn't work out quickly and easily, I'm like, it's not meant to be. But good premises are a little harder to come by, I'm realizing as I get older. If you have a good one, it behooves you to keep working on it.”

“I find your writing life fascinating. For those struggling with family and work, how do you balance writing with your other responsibilities as a part-time writer?”

“I have a lot of respect for people who are producing when they have families and full-time jobs and things like that. I’m a single person. My summer, spring, and fall job is very physically and emotionally taxing at times. It's long days, and I'm tired and don't write. But I do feel like when you have constraints on time, it does make you a little more likely to buckle down when you do have time. I don't work at it all year, but when I do, I try to be disciplined and get my 1,000 words in every day in the winter and at least feel like I'm generating some stuff. I don't know if it's the best way, quite honestly. I feel like working on it all year is probably better for writing novels. But I do feel like it's probably going to mean that I'm going to be producing shorter novels because it's a little easier to get one in the bag in a few months or a rough, rough draft, as opposed to some epic, sprawling thing where you’ve got to be in it for years every day.”

“What strategies do you use to stay motivated and maintain that momentum during writing on your schedule?”

“That's a good question. I don't love the process of writing that much, quite honestly. Sometimes it's fun. You feel like you're getting somewhere, and things are flowing. I still really enjoy that feeling, but those times are overshadowed by vast periods of What am I doing? None of this is going well. But it's just always what I've done. It's like a compulsion. It's not something I will probably stop doing anytime soon. I was doing it without thinking that this was what I would do for my job. It was always like, I'm a fishing guide and write stuff. I used to write poetry. It wasn't very good, but I did that at a young age, and I guess I've always been writing, so I feel weird not to be at least thinking about it. Even if I'm not writing every day, I usually think about it most days. So yeah, for whatever reason, it's this compulsion I have. I don't necessarily feel like I need to be motivated too much other than to start feeling guilty if I haven't been working on something. It’s ingrained at this point. I don't see it changing anytime soon. Setting a small goal in terms of productivity is a good thing. I've always tried to do one thousand words daily, and I don't hit it every day, but I can most days. Sometimes it takes me a couple of hours, and sometimes it's like most of the day. But if I can get that, I can go about the rest of my day. I can go to the bar, surfing, or whatever.”

“Do you outline? Or do you sit down and start writing?”

“I do feel like maybe the outline for novels is a good way to do it. When I've tried to do it in the past, it feels like when you're doing the outline, you're like, Okay, this is great. I'm setting up this framework, and this is all gonna go a lot easier. But then it always seems to lack some organic characteristics that when I write happens. I don't outline much, but honestly, it might be easier if I did. It hasn't worked for me at this point. I usually try to write and have a point I want to get to in the next maybe ten pages. And I get to that point. And then, I think about what I want to do in the next ten pages. So, there is not a lot of outlining going on.”

“When you were writing Beartooth, were there any unusual challenges or anything you found challenging in developing the characters? And how did you overcome those?”

“I guess the challenge is the relationship between the two brothers, which evolved over time in the rewriting. It was all challenging, to tell you the truth. Several early readers said we want this mother character to be more developed. From the beginning, I had a pretty good idea about the two brothers and how I wanted them to be and act in the story. I knew she would be this absent figure, but when she returned, trying to create her more as a fully fleshed-out character was one of the more challenging things in the book for me. I can write a thirty-something-year-old man pretty well. Writing a sixty-year-old woman is a little bit more of a stretch. It's something I had to lean into a little bit more.”

“What part of the novel writing process is the most enjoyable?”

“There are fun moments, and finishing that first draft is sort of fun. You feel like you've done something. This is only my second novel, but weirdly, it’s like every one gets more challenging because you know how much work you have ahead. My first one, I had no idea. I thought I was pretty much there when I finished that first draft. No, not even close. There's so much work. Knowing how much work is coming up and going into it can be a little oppressive. Now, I think a lot of my challenge is to not think about that and try to recapture the going forward with it that I did in my first novel, where I didn't have any expectations. Weirdly, trying to write more like I did when I was first starting is something I have to try to do more now.”

“Do you think education sometimes messes with your mind? You know, you love writing, and then you go to school, and sometimes there are rules and things that start coming in your head.”

“For sure. The writing education I've had was significant in that I had rooms full of readers who had to read my stuff and give me feedback, so getting feedback as a writer is, I think, super crucial and challenging to do, often when you're outside of a writing program, for a lot of writers, unless you have this group of readers that you feel like are invested in your work and things like that. That can be a rare thing. When you have that, you feel like you are getting the feedback you need. But when you're on your own, you're just kind of on your own. I've taught writing a couple of times, and I enjoyed it for the most part. But I noticed that when I was trying to write, sometimes things I said in class to my students would come into my head. It was weird. I didn't like it, quite honestly, because there were things I was telling my students, and I was trying to apply them to my writing, which was weirdly counterproductive.”

“Putting yourself in a box.”

“A little bit. I was judging what I was writing based on something I was trying to tell my students in class that day, which wasn't helpful. I'm always impressed by people who are good writing teachers and also produce a lot of stuff. I don't have that ability.”

“Sometimes two different hats.”

“A little bit. I’ve got a lot of respect for writing teachers who are also good writers and working a lot because it's taxing.”

“For a novel with no deadline, no due date, how do you know when you're in that phase where it's like, ‘Okay, the draft is great. I need to start editing to get it ready to submit.’ At what point do you know you're at that point? Other than ‘I'm sick of it, and I'm ready.’”

“Yeah, well, there's that.”

“No, don't! Don't go to that one.”

“Generally, if I'm at the point where I'm just dinking around with commas and stuff, I'm like, ‘All right, it's time to get some other eyes on it.’ Once I'm either at the very sentence-level stuff or where I can't seem to access it anymore in a way that makes any substantial changes, then I at least need to put it away for a long time or send it to somebody.”

“If you're sending it to somebody, how do you handle the feedback from your beta readers or critique partners?”

“At least for me, I'm lucky, and I don't have a large pool of people I send stuff to. My agent, luckily, is great at reading stuff. I don't just send him whatever first draft junk I wrote. I try to respect his time because he's a busy guy. But, if I've been working on something and I think there's some merit, he'll give me good notes–just like a letter, and usually, it's pretty insightful. And then I try to go back into it with that. I think one thing that I've realized in doing this now is that there's a lot of benefit for me in putting something away for a significant amount of time because then you go back to it with fresh eyes. There are things that you can't see when you're so immersed in it. Putting something away is big for me.”

“But that disheartening feeling, too, when you come back two years later and go, ‘This was so good. I can't wait to read it,’ and then you're like, ‘This is so bad. I can’t believe I wrote it.’”

“I'm like eroded. I have probably three fully different novel drafts that I will never publish. They may have been things I needed to write to get out of my system for other things to come in, but if I were to look at the number of pages I've written on a scale compared to the ones I've published, that would be sad. I don't like to think about that.”

“How do you determine which parts of your novel need the most significant revision? You were talking about how the mom needed to be expanded. What clues do you have about that without third-party influence?”

“One thing I've noticed in my stuff is sometimes I get caught up in how to get from point A to Point B. I know I want to get to Point B at some point, and then there are all these steps. I get hung up in there. It gets boring while I'm just trying to get the characters from here to there, and that's something that can be hard to see if you haven't put it away for a while. But for whatever reason, coming back after a significant amount of time away from it, I'm more able to see the gaps or areas where you can cut and get to the more interesting stuff. Knowing when to end a scene and move on to something interesting is something that comes in editing. I've become more aware of it now; it is just moving along.”

“So, how do you solve that? Is it pretty much good, boring, and good stuff, and then we just put some transition or something in there and remove the boring? How does that work?”

“I think what I've noticed in my first drafts is maybe I don't give the reader enough credit or something because I'm still trying to figure it out in my own head where I need it to be very clear and sort of step by step to from point A to point B. Going back in, I'm like, ‘Oh, a reader is going to infer. We don't need all of that. We can get right into the next thing.’ I realized it early in short story writing, which is very scene-dependent. The gaps in between add to the effect of the story. Knowing when to transition is a big part of writing a short story, at least how I've done it, which translates into a novel. I try not to look at the sort of blank spots as much as a negative thing. I mean, you still need to have continuity and for readers to be able to follow along, but having blank spots in various areas when you're advancing is not the end of the world, and often is better, quite honestly.”

“You referenced inference. That's sometimes good because it invites the reader to think and contemplate where you're going, what just happened, or what did happen.”

“Definitely. A reader's imagination can do much better writing than I can. So, allowing the reader to use their imagination is crucial.”

“What advice would you give aspiring novelists about building a sustainable career while working at it part-time?”

“That's a good one, you know.”

“You're doing what you want to do, right?”

“Totally. I love it.”

“Your summertime gig, and you do not want to give that up?”

“I'm very fortunate. I'm not making a ton of money, but my lifestyle is a ten on a scale of one to ten. I have a good program, and I guess everyone's different. I think some people like going the academic route. For me, just having another job that is not writing is crucial. Many writers I've admired have taught as their job, but many also had other careers. Many writers have had just some job that was completely different than writing. And for me, that's important, and I would recommend that. And maybe not even go to school to write, to tell you the truth. Read a lot, and then study biology or something. It's kind of what I probably should have done.”

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Clay Stafford is a bestselling writer, filmmaker, and founder of Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference. Subscribe to his newsletter at https://claystafford.com/

Callan Wink has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Arts and Stanford University, where he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow. His stories and essays have been published in the New Yorker, Granta, Playboy, Men’s Journal, and The Best American Short Stories. He is the author of a novel, August, and a collection of short stories, Dog Run Moon. He lives in Livingston, Montana, where he is a fly-fishing guide on the Yellowstone River. https://www.spiegelandgrau.com/beartooth