Carl Hiaasen and John Green

I finished reading a New York Times bestseller: great premise, terrible writing. The kind of writing that makes me angry because, with revision, it would be serviceable. I can forgive a paint-by-numbers plot if the author spends time on the craft of writing. The next two books I picked up were by Carl Hiaasen and John Green. They were a cool glass of water when I was parched. Both writers have a buoyant style. They know how to keep their characters aloft with refreshing immediacy. Hiaasen’s Basket Case starts with an obituary of a former rock star which leads to a murder investigation. No back-story. No setting the stage. Boom: you’re up-and-running. As the story unfolds, you discover why obituary writer Jack Tagger is investigating the death, how he became an obituary writer, and why he’s obsessed with the death dates of famous people. Green’s The Fault in Our Stars takes a heavy topic: teens with cancer. He balances humor and pathos in a way that makes the characters vibrantly alive (which underscores how imminent their deaths may be). You can feel Hazel Grace struggling to breathe — not an easy thing when you have Stage 4 Thyroid cancer which has metastasized to your lungs. Both novels have gotten me thinking about how I tell stories. Given that my characters often have heavy, internal struggles, I’m learning that I don’t need to weigh down my readers with angst-ridden ruminations. There are ways to succinctly show what your characters are going through. I feel like Hiaasen and Green are the literary equivalent of a leaf-blower: they cleared the detritus out of my brain. Now to turn it onto my writing.