Drawn to the light, as all ghosts are, he would stand for hours in a thin finger of sunshine, letting it pierce his heart like a spear of burning gold, shuffling sideways an inch at a time as the earth turned; until the clouds gathered or night fell and he froze into a state of patient expectation.
Category: Books
Failing to reach orbit: David Copperfield
Jack Reacher or David Copperfield—everything can go pear-shaped halfway through the book...
Waiting for the angel
So here I am, sitting at the computer with no very clear idea of what to do next. Maybe if I just keep typing, God will send down an angel...
Spare parts
Rewriting is like emergency surgery: you lay the mangled body out and prod it, limb by limb, trying to decide what can be salvaged and what needs to be amputated...
Another teenage wizard!
I’m a slow, messy writer. Ideas get jammed into the narrative, then hacked bloodily out. But Mortal does at least deal with the most important question left hanging over by the previous books: how, at the tender age of five, Frank came to kill his father…
The plot folds: Wilkie Collins’ No Name
Wilkie Collins’ No Name kicks off with a plot fold so elegant, so beautifully crafted, that it induces an almost electric jolt of pleasure
Silas Marner: a short novel
Most novels are much longer than they need to be. George Eliot's Silas Marner, although unsatisfactory in the end, is a rare exception...
The ship was lost, the crew perished: Charlotte Brontë’s Villette
No other novel in English ends with a punch like Charlotte Brontë's sublime last novel
He’s not a naughty boy, he’s the Messiah!
So here's the trope I'd like to eliminate from Young Adullt fiction: messianic main characters. Fuck 'em.
Avast there, ye swabs!
The whole point about the bad guy is that he thinks he's the good guy. For a great villain, go back to Treasure Island and Long John Silver...