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 »

Like most writers and avid readers, I’ve got bookshelves straining under the weight of my happiness. Being a hunter-gatherer, I hunt and gather books. I rarely get rid of them. Under great duress I might loan one out, but I’ll require bank account information and a chip implanted in the borrower’s skull. I will track you down. But let’s zero in on those books about the act of writing. I’ve got thirty-something. Books on the art and craft. Style manuals. … Read More »

We all know that it’s better to show your protagonist’s (or any other personage’s) character than to tell the reader about it. That way, we’re “watching the movie,” not having someone review it for us. The main way to do this, of course, is to build the character’s personality into his or her actions. If they’re shy, show them hesitating to speak out. If they’re super-emotional, show them weeping at something touching. But because any one character is imbedded in … Read More »

What’s in a name? In fiction, the names of characters form the reader’s first introduction to what kind of person they are. Dickensian names like Pecksniff and Chuzzlewit are out of fashion now, but we can still suggest much about a character by what name we choose to give to him or her. Billy has a boyish feel about it, Billy-Bob is a country boy, Bill is grown up, and William seems more formal. Betty Lou Sue is a whimsical … Read More »

Many are the joys, and many the horrors, of slang and jargon in writing. Knowing when and how to apply them can elevate or doom the work. The two are kissing cousins but are not the same. Slang (such as “kissing cousins”) is informal language used more in everyday speech than in formal writing and is  associated with particular groups. Jargon refers to the technical terminology of a given profession or activity. Both can be your friends. Most likely, they’ll … Read More »

The dictionary defines pathetic fallacy as the attribution of human feelings and responses to inanimate things or animals, especially in art and literature.  It’s not so much a fallacy or falsehood as it is a figure of speech — otherwise all fiction could be called a lie (!), and we know fiction is often the bearer of deep truths. Nor is it a pitiable trait in literature: pathetic means here dealing with emotions, and as a reader, I say the … Read More »