There are a lot of different ways to measure the success of a novel. Sales, certainly. Lasting cultural impact counts. Influence on future writers is another great metric. A slightly more subtle but no less important aspect is an assessment of the barriers the book breaks through; the changes it causes in its genre. Sometimes the […]
Warning: if you like to be surprised, stop reading right now. Get a glass of water or look at Buzzfeed or start working on your memoir. But if you’re curious about these books and their kick-to-the-stomach endings, then by all means, read on. (Because I’m not completely cruel, I’ve whited out the spoilers—just highlight the empty space […]
Experimenting with the “voice” telling a story is a fundamental tool of the fiction-writing trade. Narrators come in a wide variety of styles, from first-person intimate, to unreliably distanced, to godlike in knowledge and perception. The way a story is told is just as important—sometimes more so—than the story itself. Still, most narrators are more or less conventional. They […]
