I’ve been doing a bit of reading lately while attempting to ignore my last looming final.  Given that the final is in quantificational logic and involves proofs so long they really shouldn’t be allowed out without a license, I think my occasional dodge into a closet is understandable…but I digress.

I’m not going to review the books individually.  Firstly, because that would keep me from logic even longer (and therein risk breaking my heart), but also because I’m more interested in general notes, rather than specifics for each book.

General notes such as:

 ***Warning!  This is going to be really boring!***

 

If you’re going to tell a story inside a story, don’t touch on something unpleasant or distasteful to the reader (like a child being sexually molested, or a woman being tortured) just before you also switch from one story to the other.  The double distancing of unpleasant reading coupled with story disconnect could mean the reader walks away and never comes back.

If you’re going to write a sequel, or ‘story after’, outline it in such a way that the story can get rolling without the reader constantly hearing people fill in backstory.  A sequel needs to be a story in its own right, with a compelling read keeping the reader hooked from the beginning.

Unless you plan a dystopian novel of doom and gloom (and maybe even if you do), don’t cut you character out of all hope.  If you’ve set the story up so that nothing good can possibly happen to this character or in this story without the story feeling false, it’s difficult to see why the reader should care enough to keep reading.  You, the author, may know that a clever contortion will soon set things to rights, but if the reader can’t see even a glimmer through the tornado clouds you’ve got looming, and worse, if you’ve developed the kind of character that would spit in the face of any sunshine that comes his way, it’s hard for the reader to see how the ending can be anything but bitter.

Vary the pitch and fervor of your story.  Even a mad raving massacrer has to catch his breath sometimes.  I love action packed stories as much as the next guy, but give the reader a sense of progress and a chance to wind back up for the next big punch by varying the tempo a bit.

Start strong, with a grabber begining, but make sure the ending is a knock out too.  I know this is commonly said, but one or two of the novels I’ve read recently (esp. those which had a sequel coming) seemed to fizzle at the end instead of go out with a bang.  I’m sure it’s difficult to wrap up a to-be-continued story, but if you want the reader to pick up the second book, give them something for their trouble before closing out the first.

 

Okay, that’s it.  Think of them as my working notes, or my lecture to myself.  Then again, maybe the whole thing was just an excuse for a post. 😉