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Tag: plot

What Keeps Me Reading

What Keeps Me Reading

I toss aside unfinished maybe a quarter of the books I start. Today I was analyzing what keeps me reading. I’ve blogged about what one critic calls the four doors into a book (language, character, plot, and setting). My variation on the ways that draw me in would be theme, character, plot, and setting. Theme I like a book that’s about something, and for me that seems to mean a thematic element. Not a moral, i.e. not advice about how to live,…

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Four Doors into a Book

Four Doors into a Book

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…

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Plot vs. Chronology: What’s the Difference?

Plot vs. Chronology: What’s the Difference?

The calendar is ending! We are all doomed! My middle-grade fantasy, Finders Keepers, turns partly on the struggle to avert a disaster that will occur when the calendar changes to the year 4000. As the story approaches New Year’s Eve, 3999, a plague kills more and more people, earthquakes swallow buildings, and floods threaten to drown the city. All will be lost unless the book’s 12-year-old hero, Cade, is willing to risk his own well-being to save everyone else. I got…

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