Alberta Romance Writers' Association

Do you ever notice that now that you’re a writer, it’s almost impossible to read a book for sheer enjoyment? You find yourself taking the book apart, trying to understand why the author made the choices she made.

Many how-to books recommend that we do just that. Read a book to learn from the writer. But what exactly are we supposed to be looking for? Those same how-to books aren’t always so clear about what it is we are supposed to be learning. So I thought I’d put together a list of some things to look for when trying to learn from other writers.

Grab a book, any book. It can be a favorite or one you haven’t read yet. It can even be a book you didn’t like. You can learn as much from what you shouldn’t do as from what you should. Go and read it, then come back.

• We’ll start with the biggest, the plot, not to be confused with story. Story is a sequence of events. According to EM Forster “the king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The kind died and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. It is the causal structure that connects events. In other words, story is “what happens”, plot is “why”.

  Now re-read that book. Do decisions have consequences? Does one thing lead to another, or are the scenes just a bunch of happenings strung together with no clear progression? Can you ask why and find an answer of some sort? If you like charts, make one. See if the scenes lead from one to the next. If a gun goes off, the author better show us where the bullet ends up. Things don’t happen in a vacuum, a plot least of all.

• Character is next. More than anything, I think a novel that stays with us the longest is a novel that has deeply developed characters. Characters so real that we look for them in a crowd.

  Back to your book. Again, if you like, make a chart or a list. Are the characters three-dimensional? They should be more than cardboard cutouts representing people. Men and women are amalgams of many emotions, many ideas and beliefs. A character in a book should be as well. Evil people are rarely only evil, for example. They might love animals, or have a soft spot for children. And Pollyanna not withstanding, even happy people sometimes get discouraged.

  Does the protagonist act in character? If she has been established as an in-charge kind of gal, she shouldn’t be wringing her hands and wailing helplessly at the first sign of trouble. Any action that she takes should be supported by the foundation the writer laid at the beginning. Which doesn’t rule out surprise moves by a character, but the reader should be able to go back and say “of course, I should have seen it coming.”

  What about his motivation? Is it strong enough? Do you believe it? Is it just a contrivance to move along the story?

  A few other notes on characters. Are their names appropriate for the time period? A medieval maiden shouldn’t be named Laticia. At the same time, did the author use the character’s name to tell us something about that character? In Tender Is the Night, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dr. Richard Diver starts out on top of the world, respected in his profession. By the end, he has sunk to rock bottom. His name has added dimension to his character.

  Does the character use appropriate language? If he is a coalminer, he’s not going to sound like a Harvard lawyer, unless you lay a foundation of education at the beginning.

• Scenes make up the action of the novel. So take any scene at random and take it apart. Does it start as far into the action as possible? The protagonist comes home from work, pours himself a drink, and sits down to read the newspaper before his wife comes in and says she has something important to tell him. We don’t need a blow by blow description of him taking off his coat, opening the newspaper, perhaps a few headlines. No, get him in that chair and get the wife talking. We need action.

  Does each scene start with a clearly defined goal? And does the scene end with either a “yes but” or a “no and furthermore”? Those are the only two resolutions that will move the plot forward.

• What is the sentence length like? Sentences should be varied in length and tone. Continuous long, convoluted sentences will confuse the reader and make him skip along or even put the book down. Think of sentences as music. Their tone should vary to make a song, not a dirge. If there is a lot of action in the scene, are the sentences shorter to echo the speed at which things are happening? Do they make us read faster and faster, hurrying along with the character?

• What about setting? Is there a sense of place? Not necessarily a full blown description of a room every time someone enters, but does the author give some indication that things are happening in a real place, not a blank room? Is there some indication that the setting is part of the action of the novel? The heroine breaking up with her boyfriend in a cemetery makes a different novel than her doing it in the Laundromat.

• Dialogue. Some authors do it effortlessly. Some plod along and have you going back again and again to try and figure out who said what. Dialogue is more than a report of conversation. All those unimportant things you say in real life, all that small talk, has no place in fiction. Does the author get to the meat of the conversation immediately? Do the words themselves give indication of how the character feels, or is the author resorting to people saying things angrily, or sullenly, or hurriedly, or happily to get his point across? Good dialogue only needs the tag “he said”. The emotion should be in the words. Really great dialogue leaves as much unsaid as said. Actions don’t suit the words and the reader gets the message that there is more to this conversation than she first thought.

• The most basic elements of a plot is beginning, middle, and end. Does the book have all three? Does the beginning draw you in immediately? In the middle, do the stakes escalate? And is the end satisfactory? It doesn’t have to be tied up with a ribbon, but there should a resolution of some sort, a goal achieved.