What I'm Reading

Book discussions with a focus on the writer's craft

Writers' Toolbox

Elements of craft discussed in this blog.

Writing about a sibling relationship (3)
Fictionalizing an historic figure (2)
Using the structures a character creates as a window into the character (2)
Preparing for an unexpected turn (2)
Defining character through dialogue (2)
Witholding information to create a magnetic character (2)
Retelling the Oedipus Myth in a gender-fluid and time-fluid story (1)
Staging a surprise ending (1)
Using backstory to enhance the reader's empathy for a character (1)
Avoiding sensationalism in a novel about the abuse of boundaries (1)
Giving the reader more information than the protagonist has (1)
Maintaining two narrative timelines (1)
Making a character come alive through visual details (1)
Rising action leading to a climactic scene (1)
Preparing for the extraordinary by evoking the mundane (1)
Using a flat character to add momentum to a narrative (1)
How extended dialogue can prepare for a moment of decision (1)
Reinventing a well-known character (1)
A story within a story (1)
Developing character through visual transformation (1)
Understanding the effects of using white space and the present tense (1)
Creating an unmoving presence at the center of a novel (1)
A novel with contradictory parts (1)
Advance Preparation (1)
Using objects to create time markers in a fluid timeline (1)
Changing the point of view to add emphasis (1)
Setting a performance within a novel: what it can achieve (1)
Hiding the narrative design (1)
Creating a guide character (1)
The long approach: Opening a novel with a sweeping introductory vision (1)
Creating a shadowed life: the slow trickle of an unsettled past (1)
Using an object to reveal and distinguish a character (1)
Setting up a reversal (1)
Using a first person voice to drive the narrative (1)
Withholding the novel's intention (1)
Using a small space to build tension between two characters (1)
Planting a seed of disorder within each character to grow into a believable chaos (1)
Sustaining a core mystery (1)
Using mystery to define the limits of a character's experience (1)
Using an image to show what the character is feeling (1)
The Ticking Clock: Using the calendar to escalate tension (1)
Building a novel around a single theme (1)
Achieving transparency in scene and dialogue to reveal emotional turmoil (1)
Balancing a novel's emotional terrain through character (1)
Using plot to create false assumptions about what will happen. (1)
Connecting different characters through the unifying element of shared disorder (1)
Developing a strong narrator presence through tone (1)
Creating mystery in the first chapter (1)

The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck

Aug 13, 2025

There are many things one could praise in this impressive and powerful collection: how the stories describe the many shapes love can take in our lives as well as the pressures it exerts, how the stories…

Valiant Gentleman by Sabina Murray

Oct 12, 2021

After finishing All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, I turned to Sabina Murray's Valiant Gentlemen, another novel about lives impacted by World War Two written in the third…

Megan Staffel

Megan Staffel

What I'm Reading

Writers' Toolbox

The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck

Valiant Gentleman by Sabina Murray

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