Writing to Make Readers Think Deeply

To Kiss a Ghost by Becky M. Pourchot Help a fellow author

Writing to Make Readers Think Deeply

I have almost finished the edits on Naked Alliances and I still can’t say that I am totally satisfied with it. It’s entertaining, but there seems to be something I enjoy about writing that it is missing.

I like to make readers think deeply, to consider, contemplating an understanding of some serious subjects.

Red Clay and Roses does that.

Naked Alliances has a few moments of prose that might have someone pondering, but it is generally quite shallow. It lacks the depth of the solid reads that I most enjoy.

I have heard readers should never compare their writing to others, but I feel it is necessary to learn and to be inspired.

Anne Rice is one of my most favorite authors. Most people think of her in association to her legendary vampires, but she has written so much more.

She has erotica written under Anne Rampling, The Sleeping Beauty Quartet is a series of four novels written by American author Anne Rice under the pseudonym of A. N. Roquelaure, her Seraphim Series, the Christ the Lord books, The Wolf Gift Chronicles, The Vampire Chronicles, and The Mayfair Legacy trilogy. I’ve probably left something out, but needless to say, she is a prolific author with decades of terrific writing under her belt.

She also writes full-length novels on some of her ancillary characters, like Pandora, Merrick, Armand and writes on other subjects that interest her like Egyptian lore, Servant of the Bones and others.

With all of her writing, regardless of genre, Anne has an intuitive writing style that makes us think.

I believe many readers like to be challenged in that way with fiction.

One of my most favorite scenes in one of Anne’s books comes, not from vampire legend, but a man named Ashler in her Mayfair Legacy.

He’s thousands of years old and extremely wealthy. She has him standing in his penthouse suite in Rockefeller Center surrounded by his doll collection. This eccentric modern man is a descendant of Picts and has lived in some extreme conditions in medieval times.

Here, in his contemporary form, he is thinking about capitalism, corporate America, wealth, prosperity and the Roman Catholic Church’s near poverty by comparison as he gazes out at the snow falling to cover the rooftop of St. Patrick’s Cathedral below.