Matthew Clark Davison is the author of the novel Doubting Thomas and founder of The Lab, a generative writing workshop. Alice LaPlante is the author of the craft books The Making of a Story and Write Yourself Out of a Corner and the New York Times bestselling novel Turn of Mind, as well as three other critically acclaimed works of fiction.

As colleagues and coauthors, we bonded over a shared observation made after fifty-plus combined years of teaching in the creative writing classroom: that the most engaged, most dedicated students of writing rarely start with (or even think of) structure but begin a piece of writing with feeling. Specifically, feeling that is unresolved.  

The passionate students over the years rarely struggled because they lacked ideas; they struggled when their material felt too large, too chaotic, too contradictory to hold. We wanted to offer a way in. The first section of our book The Lab: Experiments in Writing Across Genre attempts to offer strategies not just for choosing subject matter but for trusting it. 

Writing What’s Not Fair 

The idea of dedicating a chapter to love was sparked, in part, by a moment when Matthew was hired to run a 12-week writing workshop at an LGBTQIA+ youth center. Like some of the youth there, he’d been a Queer runaway. Though he’d taken a similar class once himself, he’d taught only college majors. Unsure how to begin with participants who had never written and might not even have the desire to write, he asked Robert Glück, a gay colleague who was parenting a young person, for advice. Bob said, “Tell them to write what’s not fair.” 

That shifted everything, giving the students permission not to justify or explain. They could just start with what felt unresolved. We realized obsession, the engine of much art, isn’t always pleasant. It can be longing, grief, contradiction, or rage—even hate. Love in some form permeates all these negative emotions, making them naturally complex and thus worthy material. 

Bob’s advice worked, at first. One student wrote about their mother’s homophobia, pouring out their rage. By week four, they felt stuck. “It sounds like ‘poor me,’” they said. “I don’t want to be the victim, or make my mom the villain. I love her. I just hate that she can’t love me too.” 

That realization helped the student find a way forward. After exploring what exactly they loved about their mother, the student tried writing a letter from the mother’s imagined point of view. Draft after draft, they worked to feel—and express—compassion for a mother who had rejected them. 

But they were having trouble getting it right. 

“It’s not there yet,” the student said. “She’s really funny in real life. This character isn’t. And you can’t have funny, lovable homophobes.” 

Another student replied, “You can’t? That’s three-quarters of the population where I’m from.” 

By the final reading, a well-attended public open mic that took place at a nearby community health center, the piece felt “almost right”—and earned the student a standing ovation. One reason it succeeded: its complexity. It hadn’t softened the student’s pain but had complicated it. Someone could be both damaging and lovable. A home could be unlivable yet missed. So the students learned that obsession, although essential, was not the only thing to strive for. Rendering the emotionally complicated aspects of a situation or relationship they were obsessing about was also critical.  

Writing “what’s not fair” was only the beginning. What made the work interesting—what made it art—was the student’s willingness to stay inside the paradox and write from both the wound and the bond. 

Storytelling with Complexity  

At a recent writing retreat based on The Lab, we tried another approach to this same paradox. 

(Aside: Have you ever looked up the meaning of “complex”? According to the Oxford English Dictionary: “consisting of many different and connected parts”; and “a group or system of different things that are linked in a close or complicated way.”) 

Our description of complexity specifically for writers: a piece that pulls you in two (or more) opposite emotional directions that are nevertheless connected. 

We went around the table and asked each participant to tell a (brief) anecdote about a positive experience that had stuck in their mind. The positivity could come from anything: perception of beauty, joy, kindness, happiness, forgiveness, connection—no limits were placed on the topic. The only caveat: No negative emotion or thought could seep in.  

What did we get? A lot of pretty sentimental stories about the birth of a child, memories of beloved pets, glorious sunsets. Absolutely sincere, and spoken from the heart, but yes, rather familiar (a word we prefer to “cliched”).  

Next step in the exercise: Write down the same incident, but flip the emotion. Write only the negative aspects of the experience. No lying or making things up! Be absolutely honest about what was not great.  

The results were better (why are we humans so much better at writing about bad things?—an eternal mystery), but they were still familiar and the sorts of things you’d expect.  

You can guess the next step: Write a piece in which both positive and negative aspects are integrated seamlessly and emotionally connected. 

The results from our retreat participants? Spectacular. 

Using The Lab with Your Students 

The Lab is designed for modular use: instructors can assign entire chapters or select individual experiments to meet the needs of their classroom. The chapter “Love and Other Paradoxes” scaffolds students from familiar emotional terrain into layered writing through a sequence of generative prompts. The student who transformed a flat narrative of rejection into a letter from their mother’s imagined point of view did so by following this very structure—starting with “what’s not fair,” then pivoting. Instructors can guide students through the same progression, using prompts that begin with outrage or longing then push into contradiction and risk. Likewise, the retreat participants who reshaped sentimental memories into emotionally textured scenes did so by following steps like those in each of the chapter’s “Write Now” sequences.  

Because each chapter includes both craft conversation and layered exercises, The Lab works across levels—from high school honors and creative writing electives to MFA workshops and postgrad craft intensives. Every exercise is designed to support both the beginning writer and the writer who has already published several books. In live versions of The Lab, we often teach to both simultaneously. A more experienced writer may evoke specificity right away; a beginner might need to move through abstraction first. Students who’re assigned the book can start a project with their instructor in class (or writing community) and then choose from remaining exercises and excerpts to deepen their work at home. Either way, the structure of each chapter allows writers to revisit what they’ve generated, interrogate their artistic choices, and push the material further—so that their deepest intentions on the page have a greater chance of reaching the imagination of a smart and trusted reader.  

Final Thoughts 

We’ve both taught versions of these exercises in all kinds of settings: together and separately, with writers and nonwriters, from ages nine to ninety. Whether the students are fifth graders in after-school programs or retirees at community centers, the method always works and the complex stories flow. 

That’s because when students stay with that paradox—complexity—when they write from both the rage and the attachment, both the betrayal and the longing, the work takes on deeper dimensions. The sentences feel riskier. Less rehearsed. More specific. And not just writing about a feeling, but writing down the concrete details that make it come alive with all its confusion and contradictions intact. 

This is what we mean by artistic heat. Not volume, not intensity, not trauma. But pressure. A sense that the writer is trying to hold what they don’t fully understand. In those moments, form tends to follow—not in a formulaic way, but through necessity. A fractured paragraph structure. A long, unraveling sentence. A sudden switch in voice. Once students are working from a deep emotional question, they begin to make stylistic choices that match the material. 

And that’s where teaching gets exciting. Not when we intone definitions of genre, demonstrate techniques, or give examples of how voice can vary—but when we help students locate the charge in their own material, and give them permission to follow it wherever it leads. 

Test the Hypotheses Yourself 

If you’re interested in bringing The Lab into your classrooms this semester, request a copy here.

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