The Craft: What New Writers Should Read

[This is part of a continuing series on writing fiction.]

Every writer starts as a reader. You read something good, then something great and one day you think to yourself, “Maybe I can do this?”

For me the gateway, that first great work, was The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky. I was in high school, sophomore year and I got hold of the junior/senior reading list. The list had Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and the Possessed on the list, but it was The Brothers Karamazov that really grabbed...