Patrick Rieck asked L.E. Modesitt Jr.:

One thing that captured me with your writing was how you always seem to respect the reader to draw the conclusions with the characters, based on the evidence present. Is this something you deliberately plan, and do you ever feel that you should be spelling the conclusions out for the reader?

L.E. Modesitt Jr. It's not so much that I plan it; it's rather more of an outgrowth of how I write. For me, what happens in life is the result of the interaction of the world with the person, and I feel that should also be the case in fiction. For readers to understand why a character does what he or she does, they have to have a feel for the character and an understanding of how the world of that character operates... and that every interaction has a consequence, sometimes so small as not to change much and sometimes enough to change lives, societies, and sometimes a part of the world itself.

At times, my characters speculate on possible conclusions, and sometimes they're right, sometimes partly right, and occasionally dead wrong, but if that doesn't fit the characters, I don't do it. I try to create the situation where an outcome is often unanticipated, but where all the pieces are actually there, just not that obvious, but that's true to life as well.

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