Matt Briggs, a Hugo House writer-in-residence since fall 2003, was born in Seattle and raised in the Snoqualmie Valley. He is the author of the story collections The Remains of River Names (Black Heron) and Misplaced Alice (StringTown Press) and the forthcoming collection, The Moss Gatherers (StringTown Press). A novel, Shoot the Buffalo, will be released by Clear Cut Press in early 2005. His prose has appeared in the anthologies Reading Seattle (U. of Washington Press) and Split: Stories From a Generation Raised on Divorce (McGraw/ Hill). He has a special interest in short stories, and likes the work of Melissa Pritchard, Adrianne Harun, Jim Shepard, George Saunders, Gary Lutz, Russell Edson, Stacey Levine, John Olson, Jim Heyden, William Kittredge, Samuel Beckett, Stephen Dixon, Janet Frame and sometimes Denis Johnson.

A story has a formal coherence. Writing can be beautiful but not be a well formed story. The basic elements are who is the story about and what happened, which derives from what they wanted. The conflict in a story is generated by what or who is preventing the character from getting what they want. Once these basic elements have been established, there are only so many options or actions available as the character moves toward the goal.

Matt had the group chose a story they were working on and outline these basic elements. Additional questions to ask and answer are: What is the necessity driving the character? Why do they want to achieve their goal? How will they be bettered by reaching the goal, or worsened by not achieving it?

Although these are basic story elements, many stories suffer because these have not been thought through and answered in the writing