Glimmer Train's Interview w/ George Saunders

"...I don't get plot. I don't understand it. I don't like it."

"If I'm going to do you, I have to think in your diction, with your precise experience, and...your neuroses and repetitive thought-stream."

Two great, clear insights here: plot and theme need to follow, or emerge from, character or voice (pp. 22-23); and he talks about free indirect voice, that he calls "third-person ventriloquism", in such an understandable way that he pretty much obviates that whole James Wood book (p. 21). Saunders is fun and exciting on the mysteries of writing.
http://www.glimmertrain.com

http://www.amazon.com/How-Fiction-Works-James-Wood/dp/0312428472

http://www.npr.org/2013/01/20/169507764/george-saunders-on-absurdism-and-ventriloquism-in-tenth-of-december