In April 2015, B.K. Stevens debuted the blog series “The First Two Pages,” hosting craft essays by short story writers and novelists analyzing the openings of their own work. The series continued until just after her death in August 2017, and the full archive of those essays can be found at Bonnie’s website. In November 2017, the blog series relocated to my website, and the archive of this second stage of the series can be found here.
Avram Lavinsky makes his Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine debut with “The Bank Heist Before Armageddon”—which just arrived in my own mailbox last week, and I was so tremendously excited to see it in print. Avram gave me the opportunity to see a couple of early drafts of the story, and not only was I enthralled by the characters and plot but I was also impressed by Avram’s ambitious structuring and restructuring of the various timelines in order to get the story into perfect shape. (He makes explicit in the essay below something I only slowly picked up on—his numbering of his revisions. I actually talked about this to the students in my “Writing Suspense” course, both as a good system for keeping track of things but also to underscore how much revision is an important part of the process.)
I mentioned AHMM debut above, but Avram is no newcomer to the world of short fiction. He’s had more than 20 stories published or forthcoming, and one of his stories, “Playing God,” was selected for 2023 edition of Best American Mystery Stories of the Year—with the American Library Association’s Booklist spotlighting it as “a particular standout.” Last year, Avram also received the Al Blanchard Award for best New England crime story.
You can find more about Avram at his website: https://avramlavinsky.com/. In the meantime, enjoy a sample of his storytelling—and a glimpse at his craftsmanship—below.
Please use the arrows and controls at the bottom of the embedded PDF to navigate through the essay. You can also download the essay to read off-line.
Lavinsky-First-Two-Pages-Armageddon-v2.5
