The writer’s group to which I belong recently instituted a new practice, which doesn’t replace but enhances our reading of our works in progress. At every meeting, one of us provides the group with a prompt—an image, a few words—and we all create some short work inspired by it to submit for critique at the next meeting. The variety of “takes” on the prompt is always stunning. Some are serious, some are lighthearted. This person may submit a poem, another … Read More »

We all want our novels to be so full of sensual detail that the reader can imagine everything in technicolor. Is there such a thing as too much description? Clearly, every reader’s expectations — and every author’s style — is different, so “too much” is a range, not a point. Nobody has to warn us against purple prose. But is that really too much description, or is it bad description? A typical purple problem is to use an extreme amount … Read More »

Some while back, one of my blogging colleagues wrote that even before writers are lovers of words, they must be lovers of sentences. Without disagreeing at all, I would like to explore a little more the sense in which we must also be lovers of words, logophiles—it’s a step of detail in our writing that can’t be bypassed. Chances are you’re already a logophile. I sure am. As a kid, while the rest of the family watched “Have Gun, Will … Read More »

A blogging colleague recently looked at some ways in which the setting of a novel could become so dynamic as to be a real character. I would like to expand upon that idea, because just as you want every character to be deep and three-dimensional, so it would be a shame to waste the opportunities setting gives you to deepen the whole story. The Gormenghast Syndrome In Mervyn Peake’s off-beat trilogy, the eponymous castle of Gormenghast might be said to … Read More »

As we all know, point of view (POV) is the personage from whose perspective we readers perceive the action of the novel. Back in the nineteenth century, authors tended to go for the “omniscient narrator” — a disembodied, god-like voice that took no personal part in the action, that could see what was in the heart of everyone, could see what the villains were up to behind the protagonist’s back, and could see what everybody looked like. Could see, in … Read More »

I’ve been reading a novel (nameless here forevermore) that I’m pretty sure is meant to be an allegory. The characters are flat, they commit highly improbable actions, and the only backstory we get on them is in the form of interminable stories-within-stories that don’t illuminate anything about their personality. Reviews have called this author a genius, so I guess I’m wrong. But I don’t enjoy it at all. I have to make myself keep reading because the book was a … Read More »