I recently rewatched “The Sting” with Robert Redford and Paul Newman. Enjoyable for a lot of reasons! But one thing that impressed me was how well the movie used settings. You may or may not remember that early in the movie Redford had to flee to Chicago, where he was looking for Newman, whom he’d never met. So, try to think of how you’d stage that. I’d probably have Redford knocking on a door in some seedy neighborhood or something….
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,…
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…