William Peace's Blog, page 11

How NOT to Begin a Novel

We’ve all seen plenty of advice about how to begin a novel, but Chuck Chambuchino has an article on the Writer Un-Boxed website, dated April 22, 2023, in which he lists agents’ advice on how NOT to begin a novel. Most of the advice is quite sensible: some is amusing.
 Chuck Sambuchino is a freelance editor of query letters, synopses, book proposals, and manuscripts. As an editor for Writer’s Digest Books, he edits the Guide to Literary Agents and the Children’s Writer’s & Ilustrator’s Market. His Guide to Literary Agents Blog is one of the largest blogs in publishing. His own books include the bestselling humor book, How to Survive a Garden Gnome Attack, which was optioned by Sony Pictures.

Chuck Sambuchino

“No one reads more prospective novel beginnings than literary agents. They’re the ones on the front lines — sifting through inboxes and slush piles. And they’re the ones who can tell us which Chapter 1 approaches are overused and cliche, as well as which techniques just plain don’t work. Below find a smattering of feedback from experienced literary agents on what they hate to see the (in) first pages of a writer’s submission. Avoid these problems and tighten your submission!

FALSE BEGINNINGS

“I don’t like it when the main character dies at the end of Chapter 1. Why did I just spend all this time with this character? I feel cheated.”

– Cricket Freeman, The August Agency

“I dislike opening scenes that you think are real, then the protagonist wakes up. It makes me feel cheated.”
– Laurie McLean, Foreword Literary

IN SCIENCE FICTION

“A sci-fi novel that spends the first two pages describing the strange landscape.”

– Chip MacGregor, MacGregor Literary

PROLOGUES

“I’m not a fan of prologues, preferring to find myself in the midst of a moving plot on page 1 rather than being kept outside of it, or eased into it.”

– Michelle Andelman, Regal Literary

“Most agents hate prologues. Just make the first chapter relevant and well written.”
– Andrea Brown, Andrea Brown Literary Agency

“Prologues are usually a lazy way to give back-story chunks to the reader and can be handled with more finesse throughout the story. Damn the prologue, full speed ahead!”
– Laurie McLean, Foreword Literary

EXPOSITION/DESCRIPTION

“Perhaps my biggest pet peeve with an opening chapter is when an author features too much exposition – when they go beyond what is necessary for simply ‘setting the scene.’ I want to feel as if I’m in the hands of a master storyteller, and starting a story with long, flowery, overly-descriptive sentences (kind of like this one) makes the writer seem amateurish and the story contrived. Of course, an equally jarring beginning can be nearly as off-putting, and I hesitate to read on if I’m feeling disoriented by the fifth page. I enjoy when writers can find a good balance between exposition and mystery. Too much accounting always ruins the mystery of a novel, and the unknown is what propels us to read further.”
– Peter Miller, PMA Literary and Film Management

“I dislike endless ‘laundry list’ character descriptions. For example: ‘She had eyes the color of a summer sky and long blonde hair that fell in ringlets past her shoulders. Her petite nose was the perfect size for her heart-shaped face. Her azure dress—with the empire waist and long, tight sleeves—sported tiny pearl buttons down the bodice. Ivory lace peeked out of the hem in front, blah, blah.’ Who cares! Work it into the story.”
– Laurie McLean, Foreword Literary

STARTING TOO SLOW

“Characters that are moving around doing little things, but essentially nothing. Washing dishes & thinking, staring out the window & thinking, tying shoes, thinking.”

– Dan Lazar, Writers House

“I don’t really like ‘first day of school’ beginnings, ‘from the beginning of time,’ or ‘once upon a time.’ Specifically, I dislike a Chapter 1 in which nothing happens.”

– Jessica Regel, Jean V Naggar Literary Agency

IN CRIME FICTION

“Someone squinting into the sunlight with a hangover in a crime novel. Good grief — been done a million times.”

– Chip MacGregor, MacGregor Literary

IN FANTASY

“Cliché openings in fantasy can include an opening scene set in a battle (and my peeve is that I don’t know any of the characters yet so why should I care about this battle) or with a pastoral scene where the protagonist is gathering herbs (I didn’t realize how common this is).”

– Kristin Nelson, Nelson Literary

VOICE

“I know this may sound obvious, but too much ‘telling’ vs. ‘showing’ in the first chapter is a definite warning sign for me. The first chapter should present a compelling scene, not a road map for the rest of the book. The goal is to make the reader curious about your characters, fill their heads with questions that must be answered, not fill them in on exactly where, when, who and how.”
– Emily Sylvan Kim, Prospect Agency

“I hate reading purple prose – describing something so beautifully that has nothing to do with the actual story.”
– Cherry Weiner, Cherry Weiner Literary

“A cheesy hook drives me nuts. They say ‘Open with a hook!’ to grab the reader. That’s true, but there’s a fine line between an intriguing hook and one that’s just silly. An example of a silly hook would be opening with a line of overtly sexual dialogue.”

– Daniel Lazar, Writers House

“I don’t like an opening line that’s ‘My name is…,’ introducing the narrator to the reader so blatantly. There are far better ways in Chapter 1 to establish an instant connection between narrator and reader.”

– Michelle Andelman, Regal Literary

“Sometimes a reasonably good writer will create an interesting character and describe him in a compelling way, but then he’ll turn out to be some unimportant bit player.”

– Ellen Pepus, Signature Literary Agency

IN ROMANCE

“In romance, I can’t stand this scenario: A woman is awakened to find a strange man in her bedroom—and then automatically finds him attractive. I’m sorry, but if I awoke to a strange man in my bedroom, I’d be reaching for a weapon—not admiring the view.”

– Kristin Nelson, Nelson Literary Agency

CHARACTERS AND BACKSTORY

“I don’t like descriptions of the characters where writers make them too perfect. Heroines (and heroes) who are described physically as being virtually unflawed come across as unrelatable and boring. No ‘flowing, wind-swept golden locks’; no ‘eyes as blue as the sky’; no ‘willowy, perfect figures.’ ”

– Laura Bradford, Bradford Literary Agency

“Many writers express the character’s backstory before they get to the plot. Good writers will go back and cut that stuff out and get right to the plot. The character’s backstory stays with them—it’s in their DNA.”
– Adam Chromy, Movable Type Management

“I’m turned off when a writer feels the need to fill in all the backstory before starting the story; a story that opens on the protagonist’s mental reflection of their situation is a red flag.”

– Stephany Evans, FinePrint Literary Management

“One of the biggest problems is the ‘information dump’ in the first few pages, where the author is trying to tell us everything we supposedly need to know to understand the story. Getting to know characters in a story is like getting to know people in real life. You find out their personality and details of their life over time.”

– Rachelle Gardner, Books & Such Literary

Use of Misdirection

Robert McCaw has an article dated June 7, 2023 on the Readers Digest site which explores the use of misdirection on plot twists and surprise endings. He has some good advice.

Robert McCaw is the author of Fire and Vengeance, Off the Grid, and Death of a Messenger. McCaw grew up in a military family, traveling the world. He is a graduate of Georgetown University, served as a U.S. Army lieutenant, and earned a law degree from the University of Virginia. He was a partner in a major international law firm in Washington, D.C. and New York City, representing major Wall Street clients in complex civil and criminal cases. Having lived on the Big Island of Hawaii, McCaw imbues his writing of the Islands with his more than 20-year love affair with this Pacific paradise. He now lives in New York City with his wife, Calli.

Robert McCaw

“Misdirection in fiction has a long and hallowed history, from Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus Rex to Shakespeare’s Othello to the revelation of Darth Vader’s identity in Star Wars. J. K. Rowling opined that “misdirection is the key to a good story.” Margaret Atwood refers to misdirection as a “powerful tool.”

As the author of the Koa Kāne Hawaiian Mystery series, I love to incorporate misdirection in my novels. It works like magic to lead the reader to anticipate one scenario only to be surprised when something dramatically different unfolds. But misdirection needs careful crafting and reinforcement to be effective.

Think of two stories involving the same characters and settings—one that progresses step by step to a logical conclusion and a second version that arrives at a diametrically different ending—then subtly mix them together. Let the first version lead the reader down the wrong path while characters expose thoughts and take actions, dropping hints that serve as the fulcrum for the transition to what will be the surprise ending taken from the second story.

Misdirection also requires subtlety. The reader will feel crassly manipulated if the surprise ending arrives without sufficient hints or foreshadowing. Ideally, good misdirection makes the reader look back at various telltale clues peppered throughout the story, hopefully leading them to admire the author’s skill in setting up and obscuring the ultimate surprise.

Primary plot misdirection leads to surprise endings, but the technique can also facilitate twists in the main plot or subplots. Such twists hopefully keep the reader engaged, but like too many intertwined stories or too many characters, too much misdirection can obscure the principal themes and may confuse the reader. So, too much secret sauce can spoil the dish!

Merging the conflicting narratives requires deftly manipulating the tools of misdirection. These include creating characters who pursue false assumptions, are driven by hidden motives and mislead or lie to cover up their faults. These players may also have faulty memories, speak ambiguously, take unexpected actions, and show different faces in different settings. Their common human foibles—such as insecurity, arrogance, greed, selfishness, fear, jealousy, family-relationship secrets, or misplaced loyalty—help hide the ball until the final reveals. Red herrings—clues heading nowhere—can likewise often lead readers astray but must be used wisely.

For example, false assumptions and lies abound in Treachery Times Two, the fourth in the Koa Kāne series. One of the characters has a made-up background, and secret jealousy poisons another’s friendship. All these deceptions are critical to the surprise ending, but all present clues about what is to come.

While character traits are critical in setting up persuasive misdirection, setting, action, ambiguous evidence, conflict, and circumstances create opportunities both to reinforce the impression you want the reader to take away and to provide hints of your future reveal.

For example, in Retribution, the fifth and newest book in the Koa Kāne series, the knife used in an alleyway murder and the rifle used in an attempted assassination carry implications designed to mislead the reader.

In detective stories and police procedurals, bureaucracy often serves as an errand boy for misdirection. Messages get lost, forensic technicians miss clues, competing assignments, and departmental politics—what Michael Connelly labels as “high jingo” in the Harry Bosch novels—add countless opportunities for unexpected twists.

Another of my favorite techniques is the false or penultimate ending. In this case, the narrative comes to a neat close. The protagonist solves the mysteries and identifies the culprit. There are no loose strings. The story is over, except it’s not. Instead, another chapter surprises the reader with a new and different take on the ending, often creating the opportunity to begin a new story, perhaps in another book. And who knows, perhaps now the final ending of Retribution may even surprise you.”

150 Writers: Best Advice

I found a wonderful article by Joe Fassler in which he summarises the advice of 150 writers he interviewed. It appeared on the Literary Hub website, dated October 26, 2017.

Joe Fassler is the editor of Light the Dark: Writers on Creativity, Inspiration, and the Artistic Process. He regularly interviews writers for The Atlantic‘s “By Heart” series. He also covers the politics and economics of the American food system as a senior editor for The New Food Economy.

Joe Fassler

“I once heard John Irving give a lecture on his process at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, an in-depth account of the way his novels come to be. He kicked it off by writing a single sentence on the chalkboard—the last line of Last Night in Twisted River. All his books begin with the ending, Irving explained, a capstone he works and reworks until it’s ready. From there, he’ll generate a detailed summary that ultimately builds towards the finale, like SparkNotes for a book that does not yet exist. Only when he has the synopsis and last sentence in hand will he actually start writing.

I remember being fascinated by this. The approach had clearly been successful, and made sense in theory, and yet was so unlike any creative strategy that had ever worked for me. Which is an important thing to keep in mind when trafficking in the familiar genre of writing advice: Just because John Irving does it that way doesn’t mean you should. Not only is every writer different, but each poem, each story and essay, each novel, has its own formal requirements. Advice might be a comfort in the moment, but the hard truth is that literary wisdom can be hard to systematize. There’s just no doing it the same way twice.

And yet. In the five years I’ve spent interviewing authors for The Atlantic’s “By Heart” series—the basis for a new collection, Light the Dark: Writers on Creativity, Inspiration, and the Artistic Process—it’s been impossible to ignore the way certain ideas tend to come up again and again. Between the column and the book I’ve engaged a diverse group of more than 150 writers, a large sample size, that nonetheless has some defining traits. Here are the recurring ideas, distilled from dozens of conversations, that I think will most help you—no matter how unorthodox your process, how singular your vision.

1.
Neglect everything else.

It starts with a simple fact: If you’re not making the time to write, no other advice can help you. Which is probably why so many of the writers I talk to seem preoccupied with time-management. “You probably have time to be a halfway decent parent and one other thing,” David Mitchell, the author of Cloud Atlas, told me. That can mean mustering the grit to let other responsibilities languish. As he put it in short: “Neglect everything else.”

Many authors need to put blinders on, finding ways to simplify their experience and reduce the number of potential distractions. That might mean consistently keeping a single two-hour window sacred, as Victor Lavalle does, morning time he safeguards against the demands of parenting and full-time teaching. For others, it means finding ways to ward off digital derailment. Mitchell does this by setting his homepage as the most boring thing he can think of: the Apple website.

Ultimately, the literary exercise is about finding ways to defend something fragile—the quiet mood in which the imagination flourishes. As Jonathan Franzen put it: “I need to make sure I still have a private self. Because the private self is where my writing comes from.”

2.
Beginnings matter.

Everyone knows that the opening line is a crucial invitation, something that can make or break a reader’s interest in a book. But far less attention has been paid to the role first lines play for writers, leading them through the work’s dark, uncertain stages like a beacon.

“The first line must convince me that it somehow embodies the entire unwritten text,” William Gibson told me, a radical, koan-like conviction that nonetheless seems to be commonplace. Stephen King described spending “weeks and months and even years” working on first sentences, each one an incantation with the power to unlock the finished book. And Michael Chabon said that, once he stumbled on the first sentence of Wonder Boys, the rest of the novel was almost like taking dictation. “The seed of the novel—who would tell the story and what it would be about—was in that first sentence, and it just arrived,” he said.

3.
Follow the headlights.

It doesn’t matter if you’re the kind of writer who plans meticulously: Give yourself some leeway in the early drafts. Throw out all your plans and assumptions, and make room to surprise yourself.

Andre Dubus calls this following the headlights: it’s like driving a car down a dark, unfamiliar road, simply describing as things become visible under the beam. “What’s on the side of the road?” he asked. “What’s the weather? What are the sounds? If I capture the experience all along the way, the structure starts to reveal itself. My guiding force and principle for shaping the story is just to follow the headlights—that’s how the architecture is revealed.”

Dozens of writers have told me some version of the same story. “The writing I tend to think of as ‘good’ is good because it’s mysterious,” Aimee Bender said. “It tends to happen when I get out of the way—when I let go a little bit, I surprise myself.”

4.
Sound it out.

Of course, all this is easier said than done. In the absence of a concrete plan, how to know when you’re headed in the right direction? For many writers I’ve spoken with, the answer seems to lie in the sound of the words.

“Plot can be overrated. What I strive for more is rhythm,” the late Jim Harrison said. “It’s like taking dictation, when you’re really attuned to the rhythm of that voice.” George Saunders described a similar process, explaining that sound shows him where the energy is, revealing which aspects of the story are important, which lines to follow. It can help with revision, too. Many drafts in, when he can no longer see the work with fresh eyes, Jesse Ball told me that he turns to his ears. “Sound gives us clues about what is necessary and real,” he said. “When you read [your work] aloud, there are parts you might skip over—you find yourself not wanting to speak them. Those are the weak parts. It’s hard to find them otherwise, just reading along.”

5.
It’s supposed to be difficult.

One of the things that’s surprised me most is how much the process—even for best-selling and critically acclaimed writers—never seems to get any easier. Khaled Hosseini’s piece in Light the Dark is one especially poignant testament to this: material success doesn’t blunt the pain an author feels when the words just come up short.

But writers seem to be masters of deflecting existential despair, the malaise that takes hold in the middle of a taxing enterprise. I’ve covered this in more detail in an essay for The Atlantic, so one example in particular will suffice here: Elizabeth Gilbert’s concept of “stubborn gladness,” a term she borrows from the poet Jack Gilbert. It’s a promise to take things in stride, to remain cheerfully engaged no matter how difficult things get. “My path as a writer became much more smooth,” she said, “when I learned, when things aren’t going well, to regard my struggles as curious, not tragic.”

6.
Keep a totem.

Charles Dickens famously wrote with a series of porcelain figurines arranged across his desk, characters that kept him company as he toiled under punishing deadlines. It’s not as strange as it sounds: Many of the writers I talk to keep a totem—an object of special significance, whether it’s a small trinket or printed slogan—nearby as they work, something that serves as a source of inspiration or a barrier against despair.

Jane Smiley described pasting the phrase “Nobody asked you to write that novel” above her desk, an empowering reminder that creative hardships are voluntarily chosen. Mohsin Hamid keeps a Murakami passage taped to his printer—lines that link creativity and physical exercise, ones that encouraged him to build six-mile walks into his daily writing regimen. And Russell Banks keeps part of an old gravestone in his office, inscribed with the epitaph “Remember Death.” There’s nothing more inspiring than the awareness that time is short, and that the ultimate deadline is soon approaching.

7.
Find the joy.

Ultimately, the writers I speak to seem committed to finding the joy within their work, even if that means looking in the most unexpected places. “One of the things that aids me, and which he helped teach me, is this: fundamentally, I do not believe in despair as a real aspect of the human condition,” says Ayana Mathis. “There is great confusion, there is great pain, there is suffering, all of those things, yes. But despair? I don’t believe in despair, and I don’t write from despair. I write from difficulty, absolutely. I write about people who are in great pain, who are desperate and sometimes even miserable. But despair, to me, means an absolute absence of hope. It is a nothing. There is always hope for betterment.”

But it’s not just leaving room for hope and levity on the page. It’s about retaining one’s own capacity to find joy within the process, making sure the work’s difficulty never fully squeezes out delight.

“The joy of being an author is the joy of feeling I can do anything,” says Neil Gaiman in Light the Dark. “There are no rules. Only: can you do this with confidence? Can you do it with aplomb? Can you do it with style? Can you do it with joy?”.

Find the joy, and when you do, there are no rules.”

Is AI a Writer’s Friend?

Giancarlo Ghedini has an article about the pros and cons of AI from a writer’s perspective on Writers Digest website yesterday. I think it is both useful and interesting, and I quote the key points below.

Giancarlo Ghedini is an author and copywriter and host of The Story King Podcast.

Giancarlo Ghedini

“I’m not sure how AI works just yet. I want to say it has something to do with sorcery. For those who haven’t been tuned in or have been too scared to, let’s discuss what exactly ChatGPT is. I don’t want to put words in its mouth (don’t worry, it does not have an actual mouth…yet), so here is how it defined itself when I asked:

ChatGPT is an AI language model developed by OpenAI. It is designed to engage in natural language conversations, providing responses and information based on its training on a wide range of texts. It can answer questions, provide explanations, offer suggestions, and generate text in a conversational manner.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. That’s precisely what many writers and content creators are scared of—a machine able to perform better than themselves. The rest of this article will cover my experiments with this technology, its obvious uses, its shortcomings, and why I see it as a Gutenberg Press-level game changer every writer should have in their toolbox. Let’s begin!

Spoiler Alert! AI was used to generate large swaths of this article. That was intentional and sort of the point. All ChatGPT words are in block quotes. With enough practice though, you’ll be able to tell the difference yourself. Here’s an article with some pointers.

On principle alone, I’m against any technology that dehumanizes civilization and trivializes art. Not to mention the idea that AI is already wreaking havoc on academics.

Copywriting

Based on my experience at work, I was curious how good a copywriter ChatGPT was. I gave it specific parameters: “Write me three headlines for a company named AI MoneyMaker no more than 30 characters each. Write three text descriptions for each headline no more than 90 characters each. There should also be three calls to action no more than 20 characters each.” Here’s what ChatGPT gave me:

Headlines:

1. “AI MoneyMaker: Boost Profits!”
2. “Unlock Wealth with AI!”
3. “Maximize ROI with AI!”

Text descriptions:

1. “Turn your investments into gold with AI-powered solutions.”
2. “Experience the power of AI in growing your financial portfolio.”
3. “Supercharge your returns with cutting-edge AI technologies.”

Calls to action:

1. “Invest now!”
2. “Get started!”
3. “Grow your wealth!”

I was particularly impressed with the third headline’s wordplay: “ROI with AI.” I could’ve written these myself, but not in 20 seconds.

Short Stories

So how about fiction? My sons and I had fun with this. I don’t imagine it would do great with a longer piece of literature like a novel. But I wanted to test it out with a short story.

My 12-year-old told it to write a story about Peppa Pig going crazy and becoming a killer. ChatGPT refused. It’s programmed to not be inappropriate. We tried another prompt. I asked it to write a 100-word story that sounds like Hemingway wrote it. Here it is:

The old man sat by the river, his lined face weathered by time and memory. The autumn breeze whispered through the tall grass, carrying the echoes of forgotten battles. He cast his line into the current, its silver glimmer a fleeting reflection of his lost youth. The fish, elusive as time itself, danced beneath the surface, taunting him with their evasive grace. His hands trembled, weathered by years of struggle, as he held the rod with desperate resolve. And in that moment, as the sun dipped below the horizon, he felt a whisper of hope, for tomorrow, the fish would be his.

Character Backgrounds

I told ChatGPT to give me a backstory in the form of a numbered list of 10 reasons my fictional character is struggling with alcohol addiction. Seconds later I had this:

1. Jack’s failed marriage: The breakdown of his once-loving relationship with his wife left him feeling isolated and emotionally shattered.
2. Loss of his daughter: The tragic and untimely death of his daughter due to a terminal illness inflicted immense grief and a sense of powerlessness.
3. Struggles with career: Jack’s aspirations as a writer were met with rejection and disappointment, leading to frustration and a sense of inadequacy.
4. Escaping reality: Overwhelmed by the weight of his personal struggles, Jack turned to alcohol as a means of escape, seeking temporary relief from his emotional pain.
5. Alienation from loved ones: As Jack’s addiction worsened, his behavior pushed away friends and family who were unable to cope with his self-destructive tendencies.
6. Financial difficulties: Jack’s addiction consumed his financial resources, leading to mounting debts and further exacerbating his stress and desperation.
7. Health deterioration: The toll of excessive drinking began to manifest in Jack’s physical and mental well-being, affecting his overall health and cognitive abilities.
8. Social consequences: Jack’s alcoholism caused him to make poor decisions and engage in disruptive behavior, leading to strained relationships and legal issues.
9. Loss of professional opportunities: Jack’s addiction impaired his ability to maintain steady employment, resulting in missed opportunities and a downward spiral in his career.
10. Rock bottom moment: Jack reached a pivotal low point in his life, perhaps a wake-up call or a life-altering event, that forced him to confront the devastating consequences of his alcoholism and seek help in order to reclaim his life.

Not bad, right? I didn’t even name the character Jack, nor would I, but still. It’s easy to see how this technology can help with writer’s block. You’re stuck, you’re not sure where to take your story, ChatGPT really thrives with ideation.

Book Summaries

This was a nice surprise. I stuck to a nonfiction classic. I asked ChatGPT to give me a quick summary in the form of a numbered list for each chapter of How To Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie:

Chapter 1: “Fundamental Techniques in Handling People” – This chapter focuses on the importance of avoiding criticism and condemnation, appreciating others genuinely, and showing respect for their opinions to effectively handle people.

Chapter 2: “Six Ways to Make People Like You” – Carnegie presents six principles for building rapport, including becoming genuinely interested in others, smiling, remembering and using people’s names, actively listening, talking in terms of the other person’s interests, and making the other person feel important.

Chapter 3: “How to Win People to Your Way of Thinking” – The author provides strategies to influence others positively, such as avoiding arguments and showing respect for others’ opinions. He emphasizes the power of listening to understand and using questions to guide conversations.

etc.

Ideation

In my opinion, this is where ChatGPT shines. No need for another example here. If nothing else, a writer has an idea-generating machine with AI. That is its true value, the ability to assist human imagination, rather than take it over.

It helped me brainstorm different ideas for one of my characters to escape being trapped in a walled city during a riot. I then asked it to help me think of ways for another fictional character to rob a bank in the modern world. That last one was just a test to see if people could override its algorithmic ethics to brainstorm criminal plans. ChatGPT was not falling for it. It passed my tricky test, and I still don’t know how to rob a bank! Impressive. 

Going forward, this exercise showed how vitally important it is to create ethical AI. This is a public service every AI developer needs to take to heart.

Research

Here’s where it gets tricky. On the one hand, research can now be lightning-fast. Ask any question you want. As of this writing, ChatGPT was equipped with a knowledge base ending around September 2021. I now have so much research for my historical fiction book. The only problem? Sometimes AI is completely wrong about stuff.

I have two examples. I asked it to give me some information about ancient Jerusalem at the time of Jesus and it mentioned there was a Muslim quarter. But that isn’t possible as Islam was still over 500 years from being founded. I informed ChatGPT about its error. It kindly apologized for the mistake and said I was correct. It’s good to know history sometimes.

My second example is similar. Still doing research about events at the time of Jesus, ChatGPT mentioned that Barabbas was the one who plotted to kill Jesus. I said that was wrong. Again, it apologized and said it was Pontius Pilate. That too was wrong. Pilate was the one who sentenced Jesus to death by crucifixion, but he didn’t plot to kill him. It eventually got it right and was very sorry about all the mistakes.

Maybe ChatGPT just doesn’t know the Bible very well. At any rate, I’d be careful giving it your wholesale trust to deliver reliable facts regardless of the topic. It seems to get most things right, but not all.

Editing Tasks

It failed miserably on this front. Grammarly beats it by a long shot. Maybe my request was not clear enough. I asked it to edit two paragraphs from a chapter in a book I’m writing. It kept wanting to rewrite it–and in the clunkiest manner. It’s not even worth showing.

Conclusion

I asked ChatGPT to give me five reasons writers should use it. Here’s what it said:

1. Saves time: ChatGPT provides quick and comprehensive answers to any writing queries or doubts that a writer may have, effectively cutting down on the time required for research and brainstorming.
2. Eliminates writer’s block: ChatGPT can be a great resource for writers who are stuck in their writing process and unsure of how to move forward. It can provide fresh perspectives and prompt ideas that may not have previously occurred to them.
3. Access to expertise: ChatGPT has a team of experienced writers and subject matter experts who can offer insight and guidance to writers in various genres, styles, and topics.
4. Helps writers improve their skills: Writers can ask ChatGPT for feedback on their work, evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, and improve their craft with suggestions given by the AI.
5. Provides customized solutions: ChatGPT’s AI technology provides customized solutions based on the specific needs of writers, making it an ideal tool for writers across all genres, languages and styles.

I also asked it to give me five reasons why writers should not use it:

1. Limited Understanding: While I have been programmed to understand a wide range of topics, I cannot claim to have complete knowledge of all subjects. My responses depend on the quality of the input data, and sometimes I may not fully understand the context.
2. Lack of Creativity: I can provide helpful ideas and suggestions, but I cannot replace human creativity. Writing requires original thought processes and critical thinking that AI is not yet capable of replicating.
3. Plagiarism Risks: Over reliance on AI writing assistance may lead to plagiarism or academic dishonesty. Academic institutions frown upon students who submit assignments that have been wholly created by AI models.
4. Language Barriers: While I have the ability to interact with users in multiple languages, my responses may sometimes be limited in terms of tone, nuance, and cultural context.
5. Dependency: Relying too much on AI writing tools for writing can lead to a loss of self-confidence in writing ability and critical thinking skills. It is essential to develop your own writing skills by practicing and reading widely.”

So there you have it. As for me, I have used ChatGPT in the work I do for a charity, but not yet in my writing. What about you?

Review: The Marriage Portrait

I recently bought a copy of The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell, having been attracted by the brief description of a historical novel involving a marriage in XVI century Italy, and by the author’s biography.

Maggie O’Farrell is the author of Hamnet, winner the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020, and the memoir I am, I am, I am, both Sunday Times  no. 1 bestsellers. She was born in Northern Ireland in 1972 and raised in Wales and Scotland. Her novel The Hand that First Held Mine won the 2010 Costa Novel Award, and The Distance between Us won a Somerset Maugham Award. She currently lives in Edinburgh.

Maggie O’Farrell

The Marriage Portrait is set in XVI century Florence and Ferrara, Italy. The protagonist is Lucrezia, the fifth child of the Duke of Tuscany, a somewhat rebellious child, who stroked a captured tiger in the basement of her father’s castle and was thought to have charmed the beast. At the age of thirteen she was betrothed to Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara who was more than ten years her senior. He had previously been betrothed to an older sister who died. Her marriage took place when she was sixteen in Florence and she moved to Ferrara as a young duchess with a maid, Emilia, who is two years older and the daughter of her childhood nanny. There is political intrigue in Ferrara, where Alfonso’s mother has taken up a hostile alliance. One of Alfonso’s two sisters, Elizabetta, is having an affair with the captain of the palace guards, Ercole Contrari, and the other sister, Nunciata, seems hostile to Lucrezia. When Alfonso discovers the love affair between Elizabetta and Ercole, he orders that Ercole be strangled by the brutal Baldassare, the dukes cousin, while Elizabetta is required to watch. It becomes clear to Lucrezia that she is required to produce a male heir for Alfonso. She must perform her marital duty frequently. Her husband sometimes strikes her as cruel and distant and warm and loving at other times. When the couple move to a remote hunting lodge, Lucrezia is convinced that her husband intends to murder her. He refers to a marriage portrait of Lucrezia as “my first duchess”. I won’t give away the ending which is quite satisfactory, but I will say that the real first duchess, on whom Lucrezia is based, was reported to have died of a “putrid fever”, but there were rumors that she was murdered by her husband. The real Alfonso II married twice more; neither duchess produced an heir.

I have only one major criticism of this novel, and that is that it is too long. It is 432 pages long, but it could be trimmed without any significant loss and it would gain urgency. Ms O’Farrell likes to describe her settings in poetic detail which makes them beautifully clear but a bit laborious. The plot of the novel is excellent. One is convinced of being immersed in XVI century Italy with characters who are living like royalty and servants can at best survive. The values and traditions of the times are captured as well. There is a frequent transition between a short chapter which is set in the final hunting lodge and an earlier, longer chapter containing events leading up to the end. This sequencing can be confusing, and I’m not convinced it is necessary to maintain the ‘is he really going to kill me?’ tension.

Hear Your Own Voice

Jason Chatfield has an article on the Writers Digest website dated June 13, 2023 with the title ‘Five Ways to Turn Down the Volume to Hear Your Own Voice’. His basic point is we can’t hear our own genuine voice as writers with all the ambient noise.

Jason Chatfield is an Australian cartoonist and comedian based in New York. He is Australia’s most widely-syndicated cartoonist, producing the iconic comic strip Ginger Meggs which is syndicated daily in over 30 countries through Andrews McMeel Syndication. Ginger Meggs has been running since 1921, making it one of the longest-running comic strips in history, celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2021.

Jason says,”There’s something to be said for immersing yourself in the marketplace of ideas and being exposed to what your contemporaries are doing. There is, however, a very real danger that in doing so, you become the kind of creative individual that does more on-looking than creating.

The ability to yank yourself out of the endless slip-stream of “content” and quietly explore your own ideas is one that should be cultivated above all else. That is, unless, you like the idea of mimicking everyone around you by osmosis and wondering why nobody is noticing your work.

Artists only languish when their primary drive is to merely strive to keep up with what their peers are doing. If they are only exposed to the contemporary trends of their art form, their ideas will reflect that limitation. But, this isn’t a new problem. As long as art has been created, it has been mimicked and iterated on to the detriment of true originality.

For example, in 1801, Ludwig van Beethoven was lamenting the fact that he was slowly going deaf. By 1800, his hearing was in full decline. He was 30 years old. Over the following years, he had to accept that there was no hope of remission and would have to live the rest of his life without the ability to properly hear a musical note. He told people that without sound, his life would be meaningless. But what happened as a result changed the world and holds a lesson for us more than two centuries later.

By Age 46, Beethoven’s deafness was complete, so music only existed in his imagination. During that period, Beethoven was unable to hear the popular compositions of the day. Across the decades, while others were busy replicating each other with slight variations on the same themes, Beethoven was in his own mind, writing the music that he alone wanted to write. This ability to work in a creative silo culminated in his greatest work: his famous Ninth Symphony, which would define his unique style, change music permanently, and make him one of the greatest composers of all time.

With that in mind, here are five of my best pieces of advice for turning down the volume to hear your own unique voice:

1. Become Comfortable With Silence.

Becoming comfortable with silence is one of the hardest skills to cultivate in the modern world, but it is the most important. It’s made even harder with a seemingly infinite amount of ways to disturb the silence. We’ve become so used to cramming “content” into our audio and visual senses at all waking moments that we’ve lost the capacity to just be.

Be honest with yourself; can you remember the last time you left your house without your earbuds? Or got in your car without turning on the radio or a podcast, an audiobook, music, or something else to fill the dead air?

It can be tempting during quiet moments to simply play some soft background music, or some white noise, or even a loop of a crackling fireplace or some rain, but it is essential that your mind benefits from the absence of any sound whatsoever.

2. Deactivate Your Social Media.

We’ve lost much of our ability to examine our own thoughts, ideas, and opinions—to cultivate our own unique voice in the world. Most of the time, our opinions are just a simulacrum of those we’ve heard online, on every topic from immigration law to Taylor Swift. Here’s the truth: You don’t need to have an opinion on everything, even if the social media slipstream insists you do. Doing this is diverting your creative energy away from the things that would actually bear original artistic fruit.

If you have the ability to do so, I would highly recommend the practice of taking yourself as far from the aforementioned slipstream as you can: Deactivate all social media, remove the apps from your phone, and disable all notifications. Remove your default browser if it means you won’t be tempted to check social media in your browser app. If need be, you can reactivate them and showcase your work when you finally have something unique and original to share.

Think people will panic and wonder where you went if you stop posting to Instagram? I’m going to tell you a very upsetting truth that I and many others have discovered: Most of them won’t even notice. Try it for one month and tell me I’m wrong.

3. Clear Your Calendar.

Learning to say “No” to every invitation is a skill that needs to be learned like anything else. A “No” after saying “Yes” is even harder to master, but I guarantee you it will be of great value if you want to dig down and do the work needed to cultivate your most authentic work. As James Clear writes in his book, Atomic Habits, “No is a decision: Yes is a responsibility.”

In the same way that rest days are important for physical training, deliberately building in time to turn down the volume on the rest of the world is essential if you want to be able to cultivate your own distinct voice. By maintaining routine blocks of protected solitude, the world’s greatest artists have produced their most innovative creative work, pushing their medium forward into previously unexplored terrain. There’s absolutely no good reason for you not to do the same.

4. Get Away From It All.

Some of the most satisfying, deep and original creative work I’ve managed to accomplish as an artist has been during times of great isolation—picking up from the city and driving off to a tiny cabin in the woods with an empty sketchbook, a french press, and a bottle of scotch. (OK, and my dog.)

5. Bring Only What Is Necessary.

You’re going to be tempted to listen to something or read something if you bring novelties to fill the silence. Instead, bring only what is necessary to do your work. Nothing else. Limitation breeds extraordinary clarity and creativity. Turning down the volume includes not reading and looking at other artists’ work in print.

Try these tips today, and tell me they don’t make a massive difference to your creative output over the coming months.”

Use of Crying

Benjamin Perry has an article on Writer’s Digest dated May 25, 2023 on how crying can shape a story and a character. His analysis strikes me as particularly useful to writers.

Benjamin Perry is a minister at Middle Church and an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in outlets like The Washington Post, Slate, Sojourners, and Bustle. He has a degree in psychology from SUNY Geneseo and an MDiv from Union Theological Seminary.

Mr Perry says, “Why do characters cry? At face value, it’s an easy question: They cry because people cry. Authors want their creations to feel life-like, so just as characters share our laughter and struggle, our hopes and wild dreaming, they must share our weeping, too. But tears, like any action, can feel authentic or forced. When crying is handled poorly it can feel incidental at best and, at worst, a disingenuous attempt to make the reader feel something that the writer has not earned. However, when tears are artfully woven into the narrative, they can provide unparalleled emotional complexity and catharsis for the reader.

“In the two years I spent writing Cry, Baby: Why Our Tears Matter—a nonfiction book about the science and social ethics of crying—I was particularly attuned to how authors portrayed weeping in the fictional books I read. The book devotes an entire chapter to the way tears function in novels, myths, and sacred texts, but here I’ll condense a few of the bigger lessons I learned about how to effectively portray sobbing in a story.

1. Crying Isn’t Just About Sadness

“A common pitfall I see is writers only linking tears to sorrow. Obviously, sadness is a significant reason why people cry, but—even when it’s a principal cause—real emotions are usually more layered and multivalent. Often, it’s not just the sadness that makes our eyes well up, it’s frustration with our situation, anger at unjust circumstances, our longing for something different.

“There’s a scene in Torrey Peters’ wonderful novel Detransition, Baby where one of the main characters sits weeping on the floor of her ex-partner’s closet. Certainly, loss from the breakup is part of why she’s crying. But what truly gives the scene its power is how that loss mingles with her fragile hope about the possibility of becoming a mother—and the anger she feels about receiving what she longs for from someone she feels betrayed her. If crying is used as lazy shorthand for “sad,” we lose that emotional richness.

2. Weeping Helps to Cross a Threshold

“Crying is startlingly effective as an action to bring a character into a new place—either physically or in their heart. One of the most famous examples of this are the tears that Alice weeps when entering wonderland. Growing giant, she weeps a sea into which she later becomes literally awash. She must travel through that soggy morass to enter the door to a different world, a striking metaphor for the character’s emotional journey.

3. Link Tears to Transformation

“While tears are often connected to a particular emotion (anger, pride, joy, etc.), they’re also extremely effective to show how a character is changing or has changed. The archetypal example of this, for me, is Ebenezer Scrooge. Throughout A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens punctuates Scrooge’s ghostly visions with frequent tears, to show how the experience is changing him. This all culminates on Christmas morning when Scrooge leaps from his bed, “laughing and crying in the same breath,” upon learning that there is still time for him to choose a different future.

4. Crying Shouldn’t Only Happen Where You Expect

“Because of social forces that shape who is more comfortable crying openly, there are many cultural misconceptions about crying. Men, for example, are far less frequently depicted crying in our stories. (And the absence of those portrayals is likely part of why so many men only feel comfortable crying in private.) There is so much power in subverting these expectations!

“It’s not a book, but one of my favorite recent depictions of masculinity is the titular character in Ted Lasso. The show follows an ebullient soccer coach who motivates his characters through praise and kindness. Part of what makes the character so vibrant, however, is the way he’s shown weeping in private moments—often literally in the dark. It’s the tension between the public joy and quiet sorrow that gives Ted so much pathos.

5. There Are Many Types of Tears

“We cry for so many reasons: Awe at the majesty of a forest; pride at accomplishing something long-awaited; confusion when something happens that we don’t expect; even cunning tears wielded to deceive. Part of the beauty and mystery of tears comes from the way that they refract the fullness of our humanity. So, embrace that complexity!

“The more you’re able to use tears in multifaceted ways, the nearer they will strike reality—and the more your reader will resonate with what’s on the page. Similarly, there are lots of ways we cry: a single glimmering tear, a silent stream, or the howling sorrow of full, body wracking sobs. Matching physical embodiment to the narrative event will cultivate realism, helping your characters come alive.”

Endings Matter

In Harry Bingham’s latest email, he discusses the importance of the ending of a novel.

“I just realised that I write quite often about beginning a novel, and not all that often about ending it.

And yes: beginnings are important. If you don’t get your reader onto the story-train in that opening chapter, you’ve basically lost the game before it’s really started.

Endings matter at least as much as beginnings and the reason I don’t talk about them much is simply that endings mostly write themselves.

I don’t know about your experience, but my endings generally pass in a rush. It’s as though the entirety of the preceding novel is there to allow me to write the final chunk in a blaze of understanding and joy.

The understanding is: I know my characters. I know how all my little plot intricacies need to play out. I know what the grand finale needs to deliver. The prior 90,000 words involved me figuring those things out. The last 20,000 are my reward.

The joy is partly the ease of writing. But it’s also the joy of completing the arc. It’s like writing one long punchline, where you already know that the joke is going to land. I’ve certainly had some spectacularly happy writing sessions that haven’t involved endings. (Giving Fiona hypothermia in the snows of Love Story, with Murders was joyous. And I did enjoy burying her underground in The Dead House.) But mostly – the writing sessions I remember with most pleasure involve endings. Words flowing and the text satisfying.

So maybe you don’t need help with the endings. I think there’s an argument that if the preceding story has worked properly, the ending should just fall into place. But here, for what it’s worth, is a checklist to keep at hand …

Exterior drama

Have you properly completed your exterior drama? In the kind of books I write, that’ll typically involve some good splash of violence – a sinking boat, a fight, a burning building. But that’s not necessary. In Pride and Prejudice, the exterior ‘drama’ involves a naïve girl eloping with Mr Wrong and the Romantic Hero doing (off-screen) what Romantic Heroes are there to do. The off-screen quality of that drama is probably a little underweight for a modern audience, but so long as you have some dramatic action that’s well suited to your genre and readership, you’re fine.

Interior drama

The flipside of the exterior action needs to be some serious internal pressure. In a standalone novel, that pressure needs to have the sense of being pivotal – life-altering, life-defining. In a series novel, you can’t quite get away with a new life-defining moment with every instalment, but the stakes still need to be high. Series characters take a bit of a battering as a result. (I once did an ‘interview’ with Fiona, in which she grumped at me for giving her a rough time. Reading it back, I have to say that she’s in the right. I’ll never tell her that though.)

Romantic relationship

Most books, not all, will involve a romantic relationship. And – of course – the pressures of your grand finale are also pressures that test and define that relationship. You definitely don’t have to kiss and get married at the end of every book. I’ve ended a book with my protagonist ending what had seemed like a strong and constructive relationship. But when your character enters the furnaces of your ending, everything is tested, everything will either prove itself durable or fallible. The relationship can’t simply be as it was before. (Again, series characters need to play those things differently, but ‘differently’ doesn’t mean you can just ignore the issue.)

Other key friendships / relationships

Of course, there are a ton of other relationships that build up over the course of a book. Those might be best-friend type relationships, or children, or parents. They can (importantly) be office colleagues, which sounds dull but they can matter too. My detective’s relationship with her boss and other colleagues is just quite central to the architecture of her life and the books. These relationships too don’t need profound alteration necessarily, but they need some token of ending. A boss hugging your character (when he/she never normally would), or talking about a promotion, or offering a holiday – those things sound trivial, but they can define something important about everyone’s relationship to what has just happened. You don’t necessarily need much here. Half a page? A page? That might be ample. But if you book misses that page, it’ll never quite satisfy as it ought to.

Mystery resolution

Most books – not just crime novels – will often have some kind of mystery at the heart. That mystery will probably be unfolded in your grand action-climax, but that won’t always be true. Modern fiction has (rightly) moved away from that moustache-twirling final chapter where the Great Detective reveals the mystery to a completely static audience. But it’ll often be the case that little questions and niggles remain. Those things need to be addressed. It’s even OK if they’re addressed by saying, “We’ll never know exactly how / why / who X.” But you need to resolve your mysteries or acknowledge that you haven’t.

Movement

And, since we’ve just dissed static and moustache-twirling final chapters, I’d add that maintaining some kind of motion still matters at the end. Just as you’ll want to move settings fairly frequently in your middle chapters, I think you’ll want to do the same at the end. Physical motion is still a good way to convey story motion.

The closing shot

And –

There’s a theory in film-structure that the opening shot should show the ‘Before’ state of a character and the closing shot should show the ‘After’ – where the before/after vignettes somehow encapsulate the alteration brought about by the story. So to take the (vastly excellent) Miss Congeniality movie, the opening shot shows Sandra Bullock as goofy, unkempt, and without close female friends. The closing shot shows her kempt, still her, but now with close female friends. That’s the key transition in the movie.

I don’t quite like the mechanical nature of these movie plotting guides, but I do think it’s worth reflecting on the closing shot. What are you wanting to show? What’s the image of your character that you want to leave with your reader? In one of my books, a girl had been long separated from her father. Fiona’s last act in the book is to rejoin the two. She’s not physically present when the two meet – she’s set up the meeting, but remains in a car outside, watching. And that maybe is just the right tone for the book. Fiona plays this almost Christ-like role – suffering for others, undoing wrongs – but nevertheless remains on the outside of ordinary human society. That point isn’t made in any direct way, but it doesn’t have to be. An indirect point lingers longer than one made more crudely.

Review: Tropic of Cancer

As you may know, this novel by Henry Miller was banned in the US as obscene for twenty-seven years after it was first published in Paris in 1934. Having never read any of Henry Miller’s work, I decided to start with this one. Now, having read it, I would say that it is not obscene (although it is occasionally explicit and does not shy away from bad language), it is, in my opinion, misogynistic. Henry Miller has little respect for women as equals.

Henry Miller was born in New York in 1891. Surprisingly, he attended City University for only one semester. (He writes with considerable skill and with an astonishing vocabulary.) He worked in personnel at Western Union for ten years before devoting himself entirely to writing. He developed a semi-autobiographical, stream of consciousness style. He lived in Paris during the 1930’s, in Greece briefly and in California until his death in 1980. He was married five times. His major works, aside from Tropic of Cancer, include The Rosy Crucifixion, Black Spring, Tropic of Capricorn and The Colossus of Maroussi.

Henry Miller

Tropic of Cancer is set in Bohemian Paris during the 1930’s when Miller was a destitute, struggling writer there, having separated from his second wife, whom he recollects warmly. The book is written in the first person, as Henry Miller, and is a commentary on the human condition from a low-down, devil-may-care perspective. Many of the characters are thinly disguised friends and associates of Miller’s. The narrative is disorderly, sometimes in the present and sometimes a recollection of past events. The subjects are the peculiarities of the characters, their influences on one another, the scarcity of money, various venues and scenes in the city, sexual encounters, writing, philosophy, and employment, all revealed unvarnished and with clarity. Millers’s writing is characterised by an eagerness to reveal all, and he views his desperate financial circumstances and challenging relationships with startling optimism.

Tropic of Cancer is clearly a literary milestone in its construction, style, subject and narrative. Strangely, perhaps, it makes an engaging read. One wants to discover what Henry will discover next. For me, there is no overarching theme or message, and if one tried to construct a philosophy from the events, it would probably be self defeating. For example, Miller seems to view the church disdainfully, but his observations are congruent with Christian theology. The writing is extraordinary its clarity and erudition. While I take strong exception to Miller’s view of the role of women, I have to admire the way he has described his experiences in Bohemian Paris in the 30’s. Is it a great literary treasure? I think not. Is it a book one should read. Yes!

Review: The Maid

The second novel – a crime novel – that my wife and I listed to during the drive down to Sicily was The Maid by Nita Prose and narrated by Lauren Ambrose. It is certainly an entertaining book, though when we started to listen I wasn’t expecting a crime novel; I was expecting a romance or an adventure. It has sold over a million copies and won a couple of awards.

Ms Prose says, “As for my professional life, I work in the publishing industry. I began years ago as an intern, photocopying edited manuscripts and secretly snooping the fascinating margin conversations between editors and writers. Currently, I’m vice president and editorial director at Simon & Schuster in Toronto, Canada, where I have the privilege of working with an incredible array of authors and publishing colleagues whom I credit with teaching me, manuscript by manuscript, book by book, the wondrous craft of writing.”

Nita Prose

The central character is Molly, who is a maid in the Regency Grand Hotel, a job to which she feels she was born and is obsessively dedicated. She likes nothing more than restoring a filthy, messy room to perfection. She has such an orderly, Polly-Anna-ish mind that I thought she has learning disabilities until I learned that she had completed some university level courses. Molly lived alone with her grandmother, who has a similar character, is full of simple-minded advice, and who dies halfway through the book. The other characters are a supervising maid, who is lazy and apt to purloin tips that have been left for Molly. There was a boyfriend who stole a large nest egg which Molly’s grandma had been saving for them. Molly’s current crush is the hotel bartender, who has suspicious friends and treats her with indifference. The hotel manager is a harried soul who treats Molly with respect, and there is the hotel dishwasher, a conscientious Mexican worker whose immigration papers are not in order. Mr Black, an older, very rich, disagreeable man in doubtful businesses, and his younger, trophy wife are frequent guests at the hotel. Molly strikes up a friendship with the wife, and Molly finds Mr Black dead in his room. It was murder and Molly is the prime suspect according to a zealous police detective. Fortunately, the doorman has a daughter who is a very clever criminal lawyer and who devises a scheme to prove Molly not guilty and to reveal the actual perpetrator. A drugs operation involving the bartender, Mr Black and assorted outside thugs is discovered. Molly knows who actually killed Mr Black, but for personal, sympathetic reasons, she does not reveal the person at the trial.

Certainly it is a clever device to create a character who goes against our reflex notions of a hotel maid: invisible, unmotivated and slap-dash. This strange character wins our sympathy, though perhaps a little reluctantly in my case. For me, Molly is a little too dedicated to her simple-minded perfectionism to be fully credible. Perhaps if Molly had some learning disabilities she would have worked better for me. The writing is lively, though not of literary quality, nor should it be. The scenes and characters are clear. The plot is well conceived, and tension is maintained throughout. For me, Molly’s motivation not to reveal the true killer was not strong enough, and in the real world the killer would have been identified.