Shoutout Q&A with Andrew Plimpton
Author of “Breadcrumbs” in Hayden’s Ferry Review
Welcome back to our new Friday feature: Shoutout Q&A.
Check out our archives for access to great short stories published across the last half-year-plus, including this posting from May: an appreciation of Andrew Plimpton’s spellbinding “Breadcrumbs” in Hayden’s Ferry Review.
Andrew lives in Western Massachusetts. His fiction has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Dalhousie Review, Heavy Feather Review, and The Write Launch. His plays have been performed at The Tank in New York City. He has reviewed films for the website Film Forward since 2018. He is currently working on a collection of stories and a full-length play.
You’ve noted that “Breadcrumbs” was a story that spent years in a drawer before you started submitting it for publication. How many times did you revise it, and how many rejections (which, as you know, are badges of honor) did you collect before it was accepted?
I think I did four or five drafts of “Breadcrumbs” the first time around. When I unearthed it in the spring of 2025, I think I also did four or five drafts, but with different sorts of revisions: much more tightening of the language, almost no full-blown reimagining. It was kind of a surreal experience - I remembered writing almost every sentence from that first draft, even though it had been close to twelve years since I’d worked on it.
Regarding rejections, “Breadcrumbs” received a whopping 62 before the 63rd magazine (Hayden’s Ferry Review), graciously accepted it.
In your interview with Hayden’s Ferry Review, you said this:
“while writing ‘Breadcrumbs,’ I had the impulse to restrict the reader’s knowledge to the events themselves, with only some exposition and noexplanation. Focusing on image and action while steering clear of dialogue…”
That’s the impulse of a playwright, which you are! How else would you say your prose writing has been affected by your work for the stage?
You could say that it’s the impulse of a playwright, except for one major difference: dialogue. My story has almost no dialogue. Oddly enough -- and, to be clear, this is not to discount your analysis of the piece, which I found fascinating -- “Breadcrumbs” is not a story that was consciously influenced by the stage. If anything, the story has always felt more cinematic to me.
And the plays I’ve written are actually pretty different! For instance, someone who read the play I’m working on now said to me (in so many words): “The funny thing about this play is that there’s no subtext whatsoever.” If that play ever sees the light of day, you will meet a main character who essentially says whatever he’s thinking.
Theater has probably affected the way I write fiction in the two following ways:
1. A short story is best read in one sitting (though of course I regularly fail to do that); plays are often experienced in one sitting (or two or three in rapid succession) as well. So, I often think of myself as trying to maintain a single span of consciousness in my fiction.
2. No matter how involved the makers of theater are in what is happening onstage, it is impossible not to be aware of the audience - they’re right there! Consequently, successful makers are always purposeful as to how the direct the audience’s attention. I think I’ve carried some of that over, too.
In the past, you’ve made reference to working on a series of interconnected stories that will involve the same characters and setting. Is that still in the works, or have you moved on to other projects?
It is still in the works! I often have multiple irons in the fire. There is the story cycle, which shares characters and setting, and moves back and forth across time. “Breadcrumbs” is a part of that cycle. Then, there is also a collection of unrelated stories that I’m working on. And then there’s also the play, which is three acts and loosely inspired by a story from The Brothers Grimm.
And...I should probably hold off there. But I do find that having a few projects to rotate between is, for me, the best antidote to getting stuck.
Many of the writers that follow Shoutout are prose / fiction writers. Some are screenwriters. I don’t know that any are playwrights. What can you tell us about the rigors of playwriting? Do you rely on existing relationships to get plays staged? Do you write with particular actors in mind? Do you write them with a quill pen and inkwell next to a candelabra? Shed some light on the process, please.
In many ways, playwriting is still an open-ended question for me. It’s something I’ve picked up and put down. For a period of time I thought I was completely done. I often think I’m better at writing fiction, but I’m also a genuine devourer of different forms, and I try to honor that impulse without analyzing it.
Regarding how one gets plays produced - your guess is as good as mine! The last one I put up was part of a festival where the theater covered a few days of rehearsal space and I crowdsourced the rest. The play I’ve been writing for a while now is too elaborate to get away with crowdsourcing. Not to be defeatist, but I’m already thinking of back-up plans in the event that it can’t get produced. Could it be a graphic novel? A radio play? But we’re not there yet.
Considering the rigors of playwriting, plot, character, and structure (or plotlessness!) are all things you can learn more or less from other forms. Time, however, as it is experienced by an audience who is right there in the room, is unique to theater. Many of the playwrights who allow for silence (i.e. Annie Baker, Samuel Beckett, Caryl Churchill) make this especially clear, but all great writers for the stage (Maria Irene Fornes, Edward Albee, Noel Coward, etc. etc.), have a keen sense this kind of time, and are adept at manipulating it.
Can you Shoutout an author you think the world needs to read, and / or a book you find indispensable?
The great, undervalued novelist John Crowley left this world a few weeks ago. His work has been a touchstone for me since I first discovered it. He was one of the best at combining the real and the fantastical, at creating poignant and clear-eyed portraits of people, and at developing narratives multi-layered enough to rival Nabokov (one of his acknowledged masters). Little Big and Ka are two wonderful novels to start with.
And (I know you only asked for one), I do wish more people read the stories of Jean Stafford, whose tremendous range, cascading sentences, surreally vivid imagery, and sophisticated depictions of childhood, loneliness, and so much else have brought her work as close to my heart as Crowley’s. And...I could go on.
Anything we should be on the lookout for from you in the near future (another short story, a novel, a new play, a laundry list, an angry diatribe scrawled on the back of an envelope)?
Right now a novella has the lion’s share of my attention. Novellas are (I’m told), very hard to place, so it might take a while for it to be available. I’m still in the thick of it with the majority of my projects rather than close to completion. I hope to have a new story out there as soon as I can. But these things can’t be hurried.
Cup or cone? And as an immediate follow up, soft serve or gelato?
I favor cones when I’m out and about these days, cups at home. It’s been a long time since I’ve had really good gelato, and for that reason I’m going to choose it. The memory of that gelato is tantalizing.
Thanks for your time and insight, Andrew!
~*~
For more on Andrew Plimpton, drop by his website. Other published stories of his include “Sophia” in The Write Launch, and “Come Out” in Heavy Feather Review.
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