I finally finished the book I started twelve days ago. Usually it doesn’t take me that long, no matter how long the book is. In fact, I read the entire Twilight series in the week between Christmas and New Years about three years ago. What can I say? It was a bad time and I needed to escape.
It’s not that I didn’t need some escape time with this book. I did. But it was hard to make myself want to read when I felt like I needed a shower every time I picked it up. For anyone who didn’t read my rant…I mean blog…about people who abuse library books, I’ll just say the pages were so grungy it makes me cringe to think about it.
But that’s not what I’m wondering about. Nope. I’m wondering what I, as a writer, might be able to do to reprogram my brain in order to write stories like this one. On one hand, there were some pretty far fetched scenarios. On an another, the planning and plotting clearly came from a more creative mind than mine.
This author managed to take one tiny, insignificant, everyday thing…mentioned a couple of times early on in the book, and just once more (that I recall) somewhere near the middle…and turn it into something absolutely essential in reaching the climax at the end. And not only did he use it, he used it to make you think you knew what was going to happen because of it…but you would have been wrong. Or, in this instance, me. I was wrong. Thought I’d figured it out but, alas, I hadn’t.
I’d really like to be able to write like that. Not in a clone-kind of way. Just the plotting ability. The skill to draw out the suspense, to fool readers….and to keep their interest in the same way this book kept mine.
And you know what? I think I’m going to make my next project the guinea pig to see if I can do it. Granted the genre is entirely different, but the same principles should apply. At least I hope so.
But in order to do that, I suppose I’ll have to study this author, and others like him. See if I can figure out how they do what they do. And so I guess I’m heading on over to Amazon to see which one I’d like to tackle next. Then pick it apart, piece by piece, take notes and see if I can learn anything.
Hmm. Kind of takes the enjoyment out of reading. But a girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do…
