In an excerpt from her recent book, Things I Have Withheld, writer Kei Miller discusses some of the stories that her family never told – about ancestors, illness, and murders – and wonders how families are bound together by the words we don’t say.
Do your fictional families have such stories? These stories don’t have to be about secrets; they could simply withhold topics a family does not discuss. They might contain open secrets that no one wants to acknowledge. When you write, consider how the things we don’t say to each other help craft our connections and what might happen if those unspoken words are uttered.
