I have frequently come across a hybrid beast in the historical fiction woods that calls itself a biographical novel. That is, it is essentially the story of a real person’s life, but it has been, to one extent or another, fictionalized. Permit me—not as a history professional but as a reader — to scream aloud in pain. So what’s the problem? Is it historicity? My problem is not the reality-vs-fiction line. Very few authors openly deform a person’s known life. … Read More »

If you write humor you’ll eventually be asked by some well-meaning clod, “Don’t you ever write anything serious?” Ouch. Maybe Jean-Clod is not well-meaning at all. His implication, that humor writing isn’t serious writing, is downright insulting. Writing well in any genre or style demands work. Actors get it. “Dying is easy, comedy is hard,” they tell you, an adage that applies as well to writing. Some people are naturally funny, but even they work at the craft of funny … Read More »

When writing a novel leaning heavily on suspense, nothing is more important than structure. At the most basic level for a reader, tension is developed by the desire to learn something new about a main character or the plot. Good structure can aid the author in releasing details gradually to leave readers satisfied by the end of a story. Think of structure like cropping a photograph. While on vacation you snap a massive landscape shot, but when publishing it on … Read More »

More than once, I’ve read a book that I considered pretty good, but the villain was so cartoonish and two dimensional that it ruined it for me. Disclaimer: books are only as good as their characters for this reader. Nothing, but nothing, can make up for shallow characters. And a cardboard villain is a deal-breaker. The principle is always that fictional characters, no matter how quirky or exceptional, should be true to life. You should be able to recognize them … Read More »

You and I are not the same. Maybe our skin color doesn’t match. Maybe you are male, while I am female. Perhaps it is our political philosophy that differs, or our level of physical ability. Maybe our sexual orientations run along separate paths. None of this makes one of us better, or worse, than the other. In fact, our differences give us variety, individuality, uniqueness. Our differences make the world better. As writers it is vital that we not only … Read More »

If you’ve ever been blown away by the work of Gillian Flynn, Ian McEwan or Kazuo Ishiguro, then you’re familiar with the unreliable narrator. This is an elusive technique many writers emulate, but it’s not as easy as they make it seem. A narrator’s unreliability can stem from insanity, addiction, perversion, greed, or plain ignorance, and more often than not a combination of each. Take Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This book continues to be highly controversial (for … Read More »