A while back, I read an article suggesting that readers come to a book through four doors: plot, character, setting, and language. Any door can be more or less open, and different readers will prefer different routes. A book that appeals to a lot of readers probably has several door opened more widely. Plot and character For me, plot and character are easy doors to stroll through. Plot is what pulls me along from page to page. I want to…
Recent readsNovember/December Adult fiction The GhostwriterAlessandra TorreThe central character in this book is a writer who’s been given three months to live and decides to hire a ghost writer to help her tell the story of some mysterious event over which she’s agonizing. She doesn’t want the book published until after she dies, so there’s nice word play on “ghost writer.” The characterization was strong. The central character is unlikeable but we come to understand her, and I, at least,…
I’m currently writing a sequel to The Wind Reader, the book coming out from Inspired Quill in September, so I’ve been thinking about sequels and wondering what makes a good one. Specifically, two questions arise, one having to do with the outer arc of plot and other with the inner arc of character development. The outer arc in a sequel First, how much recounting of a previous book’s plot does the writer need to do? My first instinct is to say that…