Chuck Palahniuk

Chuck Palahniuk relates the tools he learned from his years in Tom Spanbauer’s minimalist writing workshop.

The narrator, a young, single man plagued by insomnia, meets a charismatic nihilist named Tyler. One night, after returning home to find his apartment destroyed via a gas explosion, the narrator reaches out to Tyler for a place to crash. Tyler agrees under one condition. “I want you to hit me as hard as you can,” he says.