I’ve reflected before on the power of surprise in novels. But I’d like to share a few thoughts now about a certain kind of surprise—perhaps the most heart-wrenching kind, because it’s so relatable. That is, the “good” character who turns out to be bad, or the “bad” one who finally shows himself to be good(ish). The Good Are Bad It’s true, of course, that no human being is fully good or bad, and our fictional personages should reflect that. But … Read More »

You don’t have to have read too many books to realize that breadth of vocabulary is a great attribute for a writer. It goes back to Flaubert’s idea of the mot juste—using just the right word. The mot juste We tend to think of adjectives here because they’re descriptors. To describe the house precisely, we need the right adjectives, correct? A cozy little house. An impressive house. A dirty, sagging house. But adjectives are only one of many parts of … Read More »

One usually approaches this topic as “filling scenes with emotion” although, if you think about it, it’s people who experience emotion. If your characters are feeling it, then they’ll embue the whole scene with it. And, because of the wonderful faculty of compassion, readers will start to twang with the same emotional resonance. Where do you stand? The exact way we, the authors, will go about this depends on what point of view we’ve chosen. Is it omniscient third person? … Read More »

I just read a charming book, and I’d like to be able to write one. But what exactly is charm? The word comes (from Latin by way of Middle French) from carmen, an incantation, and even today it can mean an enchantment, a magic spell. Yet we often also use it in a different, more secular sense to mean —I  quote the Oxford Dictionary here — “the power or quality of delighting, attracting, or fascinating others.” Although, with all due … Read More »

This is one of those questions that readers and writers have very different opinions about. Those who teach writing are pretty united in saying that it’s a bad idea to start a book with a dream. “But it seems so clever,” you say. “There’s that zingy moment when the character wakes up and the reader realizes that none of what she’s learned so far really happened.” Set Up for a Let Down Well, yes. But there’s also a certain element … Read More »

One of the things I love best as a reader is those books that create such a colorful sense of place that the setting becomes another character—so much so that a change in scene would change the feel of the book altogether. What would Inspector Brunetti be without Venice, right? Its geography shapes the action; its history shapes the people. Anyone who has ever visted that amazing city of water can immediately picture the ambulance taking off down the canal … Read More »