Before you think I’m starting the New Year with a toast to the soldiers of many an ancient war, let’s reflect for a minute on our antecedents. Grammatical antecedents, that is. You know: the identifying name or noun to which a pronoun refers. John petted his dog. Whose dog? John’s, but fortunately you don’t have to say John petted John’s dog, because the proximity and word order tells you that his is a reference to John. Simple and straightforward. No … Read More »

Nobody likes to peer through a glass darkly—it’s too hard to see. Why not just look directly at the scene rather than at its reflection, which is pale and distorted? (Unless you’re looking at an eclipse, of course.) Filter Not It’s just as hard to get the full impact of an emotional scene in a novel if the author dims everything through a series of filter words. You know what I mean: felt, seemed, heard, saw, and their kin. Needless … Read More »

In reading novels as in attending parties, nobody wants to sit next to a bore. It’s easy to say what constitutes a social bore: she hogs the conversation, talks about herself, burrows into a one narrow topic that doesn’t interest you. What marks out a boring book? I had a recent opportunity to think about this when a friend asked me to read his manuscript and give him some feedback. The overarching problem that jumped out at me seemed worth … Read More »

Ouch! This isn’t the reflection of a sadomasochist! Pain occurs (or should occur) a lot in novels, and it gives the author a lot of fresh ways to show something about their characters. I say “should occur” because it’s far less prevalent in hard-driving thrillers (for example) than it should be. If you jump off bridges and throw yourself out of moving cars, my guess is you’re going to get a few ouchy booboos. If the book makes any pretense … Read More »

A really good book is like plywood—many layers of story glued together to produce an end product that’s stronger than any one layer alone. You have a main plot (say, retrieving the magic stone that protects the kingdom), one or more sub-plots (the heroine’s coming of age and her sidekick’s overcoming his sense of inferiority to a brother who died a hero), and then a thematic layer (resisting the temptation to do evil for a good cause). It’s about that … Read More »

Time is always tricky in structuring a novel, even one with a single line of action. Maybe your two sleuths split up to investigate two leads at once. In what order do you present their interviews? Because at some point you’ll need to bring them back together, and it should be in the smoothest possible way. But even more challenging is the ordering of a book with multiple timelines—two characters’ independent stories, for example, that braid together until they unite … Read More »