Richard ScorzaFiction for the Third Act
Welcome
I write short stories about the human condition—about the reasons we act, the stories we tell ourselves, and the choices we make in the immediacy of the moment.
My work is interested in what moves us to choose—actions driven by wants, fears, and desires we barely acknowledge, and prejudices hidden even from ourselves.
These stories unfold in ordinary places: bars and kitchens, bedrooms, over coffee or beers, lying awake at night. In recent years, they have increasingly centered on people growing older—not as a theme, but as marker in life—one that sharpens clarity and strips away pretense. Aging exposes what we would rather overlook: our hypocrisies, our quiet selfishness, and the ways we misjudge others as our own ending comes into view.
I don’t write to offer answers or comfort. I write to apply pressure—to look beneath explanation, habit, and justification, and to ask harder questions about motive, responsibility, and connection.
I’m glad you’re here.
About Richard Scorza
Bio
Richard Scorza began writing fiction at sixty-six. He writes now with the urgency that comes from knowing time matters.
His beta readers call him a natural storyteller. His editors call him a work in progress. Both are right. He writes every day, reads every day, and revises until sentences give up what they’re hiding.
He briefly joined an MFA program—valuable for what it revealed about the work ahead—but its pace soon felt glacial. He moved on alone. After sixty-six, time runs faster.
His shelves are lined with Baldwin, Oates, Joyce, Whitehead, and Strout—mentors he never met, but who keep him company. They remind him of what might have been had he started earlier, and of what still could be, if he keeps going.
Why does he write? Because he can’t not. As Miles Davis once said of music: “It’s in my head. I can’t get it out.”
Thank you for taking the time
Personal Blog
Short essays and reflections on motive, aging, desire, and consequence—written without sentimentality or comfort.