Sleeping Beauty has hundreds of versions, with new ones printed every year. Most readers know the glossy animation, perhaps a few scraps of older, darker folklore, and maybe a sprinkling of modern retellings. You can’t surprise an American audience. They know what to expect: first the curse, then the spindle, finally the kiss.

The trick to retelling such a well-known tale is satisfying reader expectations while creating true surprises. A Spindle Splintered by Alix Harrow isn’t shy about delivering all the classic elements and then going absolutely bonkers. Harrow Describes her book as Spider-man: Into the Spider-Verse but for fairy tales. Imagine all the Sleeping Beauties from all the different retellings all mashed together, each cursed with eternal sleep.

The story begins with Zinnia, a terminally ill girl dying in Ohio. Instead of an evil fairy, Zinnia has the careless megacorporation that polluted her town and infected her lungs. Instead of a handsome prince, she has a best friend with a hero complex. Instead of enchanted sleep, she waits for the day when her lungs fill up with fluid and suffocate her. The doctors give her weeks, not months, to live.

Kisses don’t cure you in the real world—fairy tales will only take you so far.

I never liked Sleeping Beauty. The story did nothing for me, even as a kid. The Disney movie is a visual masterpiece but I could never figure out the point of it. There’s a pretty girl and then bad stuff happens to her until someone else wakes her up. What was I supposed to learn from this? Look hot so that a stranger might rescue you?

The main character agrees with my point of view. Zinnia’s opening line confesses “Sleeping Beauty is pretty much the worst fairy tale, any way you slice it.”

She tells you everything that’s wrong with the Sleeping Beauty myth, from the plucky modern retellings to the oldest and darkest versions that we never tell to children. The whole story hinges on waiting, asleep, for someone to come and save you from your curse.

Then she explains why she loves it. In chapter one she remembers being six and seeing Arthur Rackham’s classic illustration of Sleeping Beauty.

“She looked beautiful. She looked dead. Later I’d find out that’s how every Sleeping Beauty looks—hot and blond and dead, lying in a bed that might be a bier. I touched the curve of her cheek, the white of her palm, half hypnotized.

 But I wasn’t really a goner until I turned the page. She was still hot and blond but no longer dead. Her eyes were wide open, blue as June, defiantly alive.

And it was like—I don’t know. A beacon being lit, a flint being struck in my chest… It was like looking into a mirror and seeing my face reflected brighter and better. It was my own shitty story made mythic and grand and beautiful. A princess cursed at birth. A sleep that never ends. A dying girl who refused to die.”

This explanation hit me hard. It grabbed me by the face and yelled. “Yes, absolutely this is a Sleeping Beauty retelling. Strap in because we’re gonna give you the full fairy tale experience but also, we’re gonna make this a metaphor for death or whatever other “curses” you’re carrying around.  Ok? Ok, let’s go!”

It asks us to see the parallels between Zinnia’s bleak situation and the larger Sleeping Beauty mega myth. It promises that no matter how pointless her inevitable death seems, if we stick around, we’ll see something mythic, grand, and beautiful.

The author balances the mundane and the magical as Zinnia climbs the staircase of an abandoned state penitentiary tower. Of course, her twenty first birthday party would be in a tower.

“I waft up the staircase…The highest room in the tower has always been empty except for the detritus left by time and teenagers: windblown leaves, beer tabs, cicada shells, a condom or two. It’s not empty tonight. There are strings of pearled lights crisscrossing the ceiling and long swaths of blushing fabric draped over the windows; a dozen or so people wearing the kind of gauzy fairy wings that come from the year-round Halloween store at the mall; roses absolutely everywhere, bursting from buckets and mason jars and Carlo Rossi jugs. And in the very center of the room, looking dusty and rickety and somehow grand: a spinning wheel.” (Chapter one)

As soon as you see the spinning wheel you know what’s going to happen, what has to happen. You’re waiting, peeking through your own fingers in an “I can’t watch” kind of way. You experience instant tension as you watch the inevitable unfold.

But then, it doesn’t unfold the way you expected it to. It launches you into a series of surprises in alternate dimensions with every possible version of Sleeping Beauty. When at last the final kiss arrives (because there has to be a kiss), you’re so wrapped up in the adventure that it’s a shock. What does it mean? Does this actually fix anything?

A Spindle Splintered completes the checklist of Required Sleeping Beauty Plot Elements while cleverly twisting the tale into so much more. It lovingly presents a centuries old classic, adds crazy new fantasy elements, and leaves you feeling a little stronger—maybe even strong enough to face your own curses.

Add A Spindle Splintered to your reading list on Goodreads. It is available on Amazon, or you can support your local bookstore by purchasing your copy on IndieBound.

Stephen Fry’s Heroes retells the stories of demigods and mortals in Greek mythology with an educated and sophisticated, yet still modern, manner. Unlike most stories that are written through the point of view of a specific character, Heroes is told from the narrator’s perspective flavored today’s knowledge giving insight into the culture of Ancient Greece and adding in different story interpretations. Usually it’s preferred for a book to allow readers to experience the story from a character’s perspective so that readers can feel a personal connection the character and feel as if they’re taking active part in the story. In Heroes, the story changes within each hero’s tale, meaning the characters often change, so instead the narrator’s authorial voice is a connective thread that draws the readers in and allows them to experience the story the way the narrator does.

The narrator’s authorial voice is modern and doesn’t always choose to word things in a way that would be more historically accurate. The story is clearly told by someone to the audience which is often evident in the way dialogue is worded (pages 16-17):

“And how did Athena punish Medusa?”

“She transformed her into a Gorgon.”

“Blimey,” said Perseus, “and what’s a ‘Gorgon?’”

“A Gorgon is . . . Well, a Gorgon is a dreadful creature with boar’s tusks instead of teeth, razor-sharp claws of brass and venomous snakes for hair.”

“Get away!”

“That’s the story.”

 Heroes’ lives are often compared to other situations in our own everyday lives to humanize these larger than life figures (pages 60-61):

Heracles’ life in Thebes was almost modern in its rhythms. Each day he would kiss goodbye to his wife Megara and children and go off to work, killing monsters and toppling tyrants. Today’s commuter finds less drastic ways to defeat competitors and bestial colleagues perhaps – the dragons we slay may be more metaphorical than real – but the manner and routine is not so very different.

The narrator also uses today’s common knowledge and pop culture references to relate characters to known characters or people today. For instance, on page 167, Orpheus is called “the Mozart of the ancient world . . . . the Cole Porter, the Shakespeare, the Lennon and McCartney, the Adele, Prince, Luciano Pavarotti, Lady Gaga, and Kendrick Lamar of the ancient world.” Later, on page 329, Theseus’ story is introduced to readers by an identifying trope:

It’s the archetype of fiction for children, young adults and – let’s be honest – pretend grown-ups like us too. A mysterious absent father. A doting mother who encourages you to believe that you are special. The Chosen One. ‘You’re a wizard Harry!’ that kind of thing.

It goes like this.

This manner of drawing from modern knowledge to relate these stories not only gives personality to the authorial voice, but it also brings readers closer to the stories. While they might be distanced from the characters’ personal experiences, the centuries-old situations feel closer to something readers can relate to and make the mythology more relevant to today’s world.

While this manner of retelling might seem disingenuous to the original stories, in Ancient Greece, these stories were often told verbally and did change from poet to poet, who were known for their own authorial voice. A poet would often draw from common knowledge of the day for comparisons and sometimes even add in or make references to locally known people or families. Stephen Fry follows in their tradition and includes many footnotes offering historical context, different story variations, pronunciations, and, of course, a few jokes too.

Heroes by Stephen Fry is a delightful read for anyone who loves Greek mythology.

Find your copy on Amazon or learn more on Goodreads

Naomi Novik’s brilliant twist on the magic school trope, A Deadly Education, explores the idea of what would happen if the magic school was trying to kill you. The story starts with our main character, El (short for Galadriel, much to her chagrin), having her life saved for the second time, and being so frustrated by her savior’s inconvenient heroics that she decides he has to die. Instant intrigue. It’s been described as Harry Potter meets Hunger Games, but it’s even better than that sounds. It’s a constantly surprising, emotionally satisfying story that ultimately challenges the way the reader views life and social structure.

I loved this book so much. It was one of those “can’t stop till you finish it” stories. As the story unfolds, you get to know El better, and you find out there’s a reason she’s so irritated about being saved—and it’s not that she’s petulant. This school, and this world, are all about the divisions between the weak and the powerful, the haves and the have-nots, and looking weak is as good as painting a target on your back. But as El’s life gets entangled with Orion’s, her perspective starts to change and she starts to see possibilities beyond survival.

There’s a lot the author has to establish about the world for the story to make sense: how the school works, why it exists, why it’s so dangerous, and why anyone would ever send their children there. Not to mention the magic system and various magical threats. On top of that, the reader needs to understand the complex social structure that has left El alone and fighting for her life, while others live in relative comfort with plenty of power to supply the spells they need to stay alive. What surprised me as I read was how thoroughly engaged I was, even as the author revealed this information through long passages some might call “info dumps.” 

The info dump is so dreaded among authors that sometimes new writers leave out necessary information. We’re so afraid to get caught telling rather than showing, that we leave our readers in the dark, confused and unable to connect with the characters and the story because of what they don’t understand.

What we can learn from Naomi Novik in A Deadly Education is how to provide that crucial information and still keep the reader engaged. The first principle is to provide the info in the scene it’s relevant to, and don’t tell the reader everything you know about your world all at once. But another equally important key to keeping information engaging, is to tell it in the character’s voice.

Here’s an example from chapter one, just after Orion Lake has so rudely saved El and left her with the task of cleaning up the dissolved monster that tried to eat her. She tries to summon a useful spell from the school’s collection (housed in an empty void) and instead receives a spell for summoning an army of demons.

“That sort of thing is always happening to me. Some sorcerers get an affinity for weather magic, or transformation spells, or fantastic combat magics like dear Orion. I got an affinity for mass destruction. It’s all my mum’s fault, of course, just like my stupid name. She’s one of those flowers and beads and crystals sorts, dancing to the Goddess under the moon. Everyone’s a lovely person and anyone who does anything wrong is misunderstood or unhappy….Naturally I came out designed to be the exact opposite of this paragon, as anyone with a basic understanding of the balancing principle might have expected, and when I want to straighten my room, I get instructions on how to kill it with fire.”

El’s voice is full of sarcasm and self-deprecation, which I found endearing. This passage reveals information about the magic system (affinities) and one of the “rules” of the world, but all of it is told in a conversational tone by a character dripping with attitude.

Here’s another great example, from a moment in chapter six when El is running through the library on her way to perform an act of heroics that might secure her future in this dangerous world, and instead of hiding useful books and trying to keep her from her destination, as the school library is wont to do, it delivers her a very valuable spell book. 

“You never get anything for free in here. But I’d just been handed an incredibly valuable book, and right behind me in the reading room was everything I’d been hoping for, my best chance for survival and a future. I already knew that the school wasn’t holding that out to me for nothing—and here in front of me was the exact opposite. I was being offered a bribe twice over. But why would you bribe someone if you didn’t have to? The school wouldn’t bother trying to keep me off the maw-mouth unless the school thought—that I had a chance. That a sorceress designed from the ground up for slaughter and destruction might just be able to take out the one monster no one else could kill.”

Again we get this important information about how the school works—it’s a sentient being with its own agenda and students can learn a lot by figuring out what the school is trying to do—and we get it all in El’s unique voice. She brings her signature cynicism and pessimistic worldview to the analysis, giving us the information in a way no other character could—and making it more engaging as a result. 

Not every type of story can get away with these long passages of information and analysis. Typically, it works better to weave the context in among other writing elements like dialogue, description, and action. But every story can benefit from delivering important context for the reader in an engaging, interesting, character-revealing voice. Naomi Novik’s A Deadly Education is a powerful study in voice, and I highly recommend it for anyone wanting to apply this principle to their writing. 

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50548197-a-deadly-education?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=g1Cmltowl4&rank=1

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Deadly-Education-Novel-Scholomance-Book-ebook/dp/B083RZC8KQ/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=A+Deadly+Education&qid=1638309214&sr=8-1

Creating characters is fun, right? Yes? No? …Maybe? 

Creating and crafting a character is, unfortunately, vital to stories because they are the ones actually telling the story. So what makes a reader love a character, especially a main one? The same things that make a person care about another person.  

Think about your closest friend. Have you had conversations with this friend about everything from favorite ice cream flavors to the role of humanity in the grand scheme of the universe? Have you two talked about your independent plans and dreams for the future? What about shared interests? I would hope the answers to these are “yes.”

These conversations most likely brought you two closer together and made you care about each other. Well, it’s the same with characters in a story with the reader, albeit a one-sided conversation.

In The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune, the main character is Linus Baker, a forty-year-old caseworker working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth (DICOMY). This Linus Baker is suddenly assigned to investigate the Marsyas Orphanage, which is under the care of Arthur Parnassus, and the six magical (and dangerous) children under Arthur’s tutelage. Adventure ensues, as it usually does with six children in one place.

Linus, however, is an ordinary man working in a gray office who doesn’t really want his world to change. The author builds a relationship between the main character and the reader through those one-sided conversations. They should (and do with Linus) make a character authentic and human. The authenticity of the main character is achieved by (1) Linus being relatable to us as readers and (2) Linus having a dream.

I, personally, love Linus Baker. Yes, he’s ordinary (aren’t we all a bit ordinary?), but he’s not a flat character (in fact, he’s very (physically) round, so much so that he eats mostly salads in attempts to diet). Both of these alone make him relatable to me as a reader. Compounding on those is his anxiety, which is shown early on in the story (something I relate to as well). 

Linus is summoned to Extremely Upper Management on the fifth floor of DICOMY for an unknown reason. He’s fretting with his paperwork and mentally spiraling until the scheduled time of his appointment. This comes to a head on pages 34 and 35 of Chapter 3:

            By the time the doors [of the elevator] opened on the fifth floor, he was sweating. …

            “Okay, old boy,” he whispered. “You can do this.”

            His feet didn’t get the message. They remained firmly stuck to the floor.

By placing Linus in a situation that is very much a shared human experience, Linus is authentically human. These relatable tidbits about Linus are sprinkled throughout the story, like how he talks to his cat, Calliope, and kind of hates the office side of his job. 

Linus’s mousepad at his office desk has a beach scene on it, the line “don’t you wish you were here?” above it. He has this mousepad because he also has a dream: it’s a simple desire to see the ocean, something that he’s never seen in the gray and rainy world of the city. Klune is clever in giving Linus a small dream (just to have a vacation to the ocean), because it’s something easily obtainable yet just out of reach. Possibly very similar to a reader’s dream. Linus, as his feet aren’t moving from the above example, continues to talk to himself, saying:

“No time for cowardice,” [Linus] scolded himself quietly. “Chin up. For all you know, maybe it’s a promotion. A big promotion. One with higher pay and you’ll finally be able to go on that vacation you’ve always dreamed about. The sand on the beach. The blue of the ocean. Don’t you wish you were here?”

                        Chapter 3, page 35

This dream, to see the ocean by getting a promotion, is something small yet relatable. It’s authentic; it’s something that’s gut-wrenchingly human, just as wanting to know the role of humanity in the vastness of the universe. It’s through that humanity and authenticity that readers will love the characters that are set before them. 

Add The House in the Cerulean Sea to your Goodreads list or purchase a copy or an audiobook on Amazon.

Project Hail Mary is the latest science fiction novel from author Andy Weir. If you loved Weir’s first book, The Martian, I think this latest novel is even better. It has the perfect balance of exciting plot, interesting characters, and fascinating science set in space.

Ryland Grace wakes up alone on a spacecraft, his crew mates dead, millions of miles from home with no memory of who he is or why he’s there. As his memory slowly returns, he must puzzle out a scientific mystery and save mankind from extinction.

What makes this book different? It’s all about how the story unfolds. Immediately thrust into literally the middle of the story, the book is told in first-person as the character uses math and science problem-solving and slowly gets his memories back. The whole book feels like going on an adventure of scientific discovery, led by your favorite quirky high school science teacher who explains everything along the way. Plus, it has just enough realistic space aspects and accessible and easy-to-understand science concepts that readers can follow along without having a science degree. This is a book I believe any reader would enjoy.

As a writer, I found this book a fantastic example of effective tension on every page. Weir gives the reader just enough information to raise questions that keep the pages turning. So many writers struggle with this concept and end up with information dumps that result in a lack of tension. The way Weir does it is like exploring a vast room with a flashlight instead of turning on all the overhead lights.

As the reader, you can’t see into every corner, and you may not even know how big the room is, but you are also less likely to be overwhelmed with everything thrown at you at once. A story built this way is like only being able to see what’s in the immediate vicinity with the perfect just-in-time information being shared in the scene as it is being developed and at exactly the time you need to know it.

The current action is unfolding in the present time, but sporadically Rylan will have flashes of memory that give context to what happened at the beginning of the story and fill in information that is relevant. This feels like exploring deeper in that dark room with your flashlight, stumbling into a giant object that you didn’t know was there until you got to it, and realizing the space you’re exploring is also much bigger than you knew. The buildup of tension this way, where developments are discovered through the plot unfolding, is the key to keeping the reader invested in the story. It is the difference between books you can easily put down and the ones you can’t stop reading until you look up and realize it’s 3:00 a.m. and you have serious regrets about your choices.

For main character, Rylen Grace, it happens for the reader as it happens for him and is told through a fantastic character voice:

This is real. The sun is dying. And I’m tangled up in it. Not just as a fellow citizen of Earth who will die with everyone else—I’m actively involved. There’s a sense of responsibility there.

I still don’t remember my own name, but I remember random bits of information about the Petrova problem. They call it the Petrova problem. I just remembered that.

Chapter 2, pg 26

I stand to get a better look at things.

The lab has smaller equipment bolted to the table. I see an 8000x microscope, an autoclave, a bank of test tubes, sets of supply drawers, a sample fridge, a furnace, pipettes—wait a minute. Why do I now all those terms?

I look at the larger equipment along the walls. Scanning electron microscope, sub-millimeter 3-D printer. 11-axis milling machine, laser interferometer, 1-cubic-meter vacuum chamber—I know what everything is. And I know how to use it.

I’m a scientist! Now we’re getting somewhere! Time for me to use science. All right, genius brain: come up with something!

Chapter 1, page 16

By giving the reader an ever-expanding field of vision instead of the giant picture of what is at stake for the overall plot, the tension is always tight. By the end of the book, the complexity of the plot and all the problems the character has had to overcome are bigger than anyone could have imagined at the onset. More importantly, if Weir had tried to give all that background and information from the beginning in a linear fashion, it would not have achieved the must-turn-the-page tension. Instead, Weir wove a complex plot slowly, in a compelling way that anyone could follow, and had me turning page after page long into the night. The tension holds strong all the way to the end with a surprising twist, just when you think Rylan has gotten all his memories back.

Add Project Hail Mary to your reading list on GoodReads and purchase a copy (or pick up the Audiobook) on Amazon.

Imagine a pre-teen Horse Girl. (No, not literally. I mean the sort of girl who doodles ponies in the margins of her homework. It’s a thing.) After fighting with her friends, she discovers a fantasy world full of Horse People. (Yes, literally. They’re centaurs.) There’s a quest, of course, lessons on friendship, a showdown with an evil queen—you’ve heard this story before.

It’s the plot from The Wizard of Oz and The Chronicles of Narnia. It neatly checks all the boxes for a good middle-grade chapter book; yet it is not for children.

Seanan McGuire knows what she’s doing. This Wayward Children series alone won the Hugo, Nebula, Alex, and Locus awards. She gives us a deceptively straightforward tale of a kid on a quest in a fantasy world. Then she gives us something extra. There’s this clever narrative voice, this sense of looking back on one’s own past, that makes the story wiser, darker, almost gentle with the perspective of an adult speaking about a child.

Not every book about kids is for kids. Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Book Thief are each about children—and yet they are each lousy gifts for a 9-year-old. It’s not the nihilism, racism, and death that turn these books into adult literature; it’s the narrative voice.

In Across the Green Grass Fields, our Horse Girl hero, Regan, wants to pet a snake. Her friends fight about whether or not snakes are gross (but really, they’re fighting about gender norms.) The snake bites Regan and slithers away.  It’s not complicated and it would easily fit into a children’s tale. Except for the way it’s told.

This flash of insight is a treat. It invites the adult reader to consider their own past, old injuries half-forgotten, their own history of conformity and rebellion. It’s the extra layer that makes reading satisfying as an adult.

At the same time, the author never dismisses the drama of childhood. She respects her character and invites the reader to remember just how scary it was to be different on the playground.

“That was something adults couldn’t understand, not even when they understood other things, like a love of horses or a burning need to go to the state fair, lest a lack of funnel cake lead to gruesome and inescapable death. They thought that children, especially girl children, were all sugar and lace, and that when those children fought, they would do so cleanly and in the open, where adult observers could intervene. It was like they’d drawn a veil of fellow-feeling and good intentions over their own childhoods as soon as they crossed the magic line into adulthood, and left all the strange feuds, unexpected betrayals, and arbitrary shunnings behind them.” Ch. 1 Pg. 10

This story succeeds because of the emotional complexity. There’s often a delightful disconnect as characters lie, make a false assumption, or view the whole world through a distorted lens.  In a simpler book, the narrative voice might stage whisper “That’s not true. Just wait and you’ll see how untrue this statement is.” It takes skill and restraint to allow the story to explain itself. The author trusts that the reader is savvy and alert.

The author doesn’t tell you how to feel. Everything from the setting, to the body language, to the dialogue subtly points you toward an emotion. With no context and just the following quote, you have enough information to feel something about the character speaking.

“You mean the centaurs you’ve been living with? They’re animals, beasts. They don’t feel the way we do. They don’t love the way we do.” He scoffed. “Nothing I did to them had to happen. It was your fault, for not coming to me when you were first called into this world. If you’d been a better hero, none of this suffering would have taken place.” Ch. 16 pg. 164

I don’t need to tell you to hate and distrust him. The reader feels that automatically when he dismisses the feelings of others, scoffs, and then finds someone to blame.

Like every book in the Wayward Children series, Across the Green Grass Fields is a masterclass in writing about children for an adult audience. It describes a young girl who feels authentic, unique, and recognizable, but describes her with beautifully crafted language, devastating insight, and a kindness that comes from experience.

Add Across the Green Grass Fields to your reading list on Goodreads. It is available on Amazon, or you can support your local bookstore by purchasing your copy on IndieBound.

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo bands together a motley group of thieves and criminals for a jailbreak heist set in a fantasy world that’s bleeding with magic and racial strife. As the story unfolds through different point of views, it creates a strong sense of each character’s individuality and allows readers a glimpse into each of their backstories.

The found family trope is one of my favorites, and heist plots seem to regularly use it. But does this mean that these outlaws and con artists, who know all too well the consequences of misplaced trust, easily buddy up and confide their deepest fears and compromising motivations with each other?

No, definitely not.

The whole crew of crows all keep their pasts very close to themselves as well as any motivations that other characters in the crew might find traitorous. Most of these details are crafted into the subtext of dialogue between the characters so that while the characters don’t tell each other everything, readers can still understand the whole picture. Dialogue is two or more characters exchanging information, bracketed in quotation marks. Dialogue also includes everything surrounding the characters’ conversation: body language, actions, and most importantly internal thoughts. Just like how tone of voice can change the meaning of words, body language, actions, and internal thoughts can add a layer of subtext to any conversation between characters.

Let’s focus on how to layer internal thoughts into dialogue to add more subtext.

These internal thoughts might be brief and merely hint at or reference something that happened in a character’s past to show readers that there’s something going on that will be explored in further details later, like in this example from Chapter 3, pages 57-58:

“Thank you for sparing me that discomfort,” Van Eck said disdainfully. He opened the door, then paused. “I do wonder what a boy of your intelligence might have amounted to under different circumstances.”

Ask Jordie, Kaz thought with a bitter pang. But he simply shrugged. “I’d just be stealing from a better class of sucker.”

Readers don’t know who Jordie is, but the internal thought shows them that he’s someone Kaz knows and that there’s something complicated about their relationship. While the internal thought doesn’t go into great detail about it here, it gives the readers a promise that things will be explained later or that hints will be given throughout the progression of the story until readers have the full picture.

Not all internal thoughts have to be a bread crumb trail though. They might be lengthier and go directly into what happened in a character’s past, like during a conversation between Inej and Nina in Chapter 16, pages 187-188:

Inej was quiet for a while. “You saw my scars.” Nina nodded. “When Kaz got Per Haskell to pay off my indenture with the Menagerie, the first thing I did was have the peacock feather tattoo removed.”

“Whoever took care of it did a pretty rough job.”

“He wasn’t a Corporalnik or even a medik.” Just one of the half-knowledgeable butchers who plied their trade among the desperate of the Barrel. He’d offered her a slug of whiskey, then simply hacked away at the skin, leaving a puckered spill of wounds down her forearm. She hadn’t cared. The pain was liberation. They had loved to talk about her skin at the House of Exotics. It was like coffee with sweet milk. It was like burnished caramel. It was like satin. She welcomed every cut of the knife and the scars it left behind. “Kaz told me I didn’t have to do anything but make myself useful.”

In this example, Inej thinks about a specific event that happened in her past instead of just briefly referring to it, but she doesn’t confide the whole experience to Nina. In fact, throughout this conversation, her internal thoughts often make references to her past that she doesn’t voice. Her personality is mistrusting and reticent, so it would be out of character for her to say these out loud. These internal thoughts allow readers to know more about her and her past while keeping her in character.

Of course, internal thoughts can show readers more than just a character’s past. They can show readers anything that a character might be hiding or anything that would be stiff or unnatural to say out loud, as they do in Chapter 18, page 205:

“I don’t want your prayers,” he said.

“What do you want, then?”

The old answers came easily to mind. Money. Vengance. Jordie’s voice in my head silenced forever. But a different reply roared to life inside him, loud, insistent, and unwelcome. You, Inej. You.

He shrugged and turned away. “To die buried under the weight of my own gold.”

Inej sighed. “Then I’ll pray you get all you ask for.”

Here, Kaz is trying hide that he likes Inej, and most of his internal thoughts throughout this conversation pertain to what he doesn’t say about his feelings for her. This shows readers, without telling them, what he feels and keeps his dialogue from being out of character or too on-the-nose. It also sets up an inner conflict he has between different things that he wants which will affect the story later.

Internal thoughts can clue readers into what a character’s really thinking despite what they might say, providing information about what’s being discussed that a character might loathe to share with their listener. This not only keeps the characters in character, but it also allows the dialogue to flow more naturally since in real-life, people rarely say everything that they mean or want to say. Layering internal thoughts into dialogue can help the scene multi-task and move both the big story (plot) and small story (character arcs) at the same time.

Find your own copy on AMAZON and learn more on GOODREADS

In the ever-shifting trends of publishing, buzzwords pop up in the first lines of queries with the hope of grabbing attention and making deals. Words like “whimsy” and “quirky” have been around for ages, trends like “own voices” (which is hopefully more a move in the right direction, not a passing fad), and the ever favorite “stand alone with series potential”. But lately you may have been hearing about upmarket fiction or bookclub fiction. It’s the latest buzzword (maybe), but what does it mean?

Upmarket fiction is the melding of two styles of writing that some say have been at odds for years: the literary vs. the plot driven. Finally we’ve reached a cease-fire by realizing that books with fast pacing and plot-driven mysteries can also include the human experience found in the experiential writing of literary fiction.

Since bookclub fiction and upmarket fiction are somewhat synonymous right now, you can guess that this category immerged first in women’s fiction turned mystery-thriller. “The Girl on a Train” by Paula Hawkins and “Woman at the Window” by A.J. Finn are just a few of this category and they are what publishers are itching to get their hands on. But upmarket isn’t confined to women-led mysteries and I believe we will see this literary-plus-plot category spread through many genres.

This brings me to Addie LaRue.

 “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue” by V.E. Schwab was released in October of last year and stayed high on national best seller lists and bookclub must-reads. It grabbed attention not only for its gorgeous cover representing the main character’s distinct constellation of freckles, but because of its captivating premise: a young girl in 18^th century France escapes a life decided for her by unwittingly making a midnight deal with an unseen power. Her wish to be untethered is taken literally and in the first scene we learn that she’s lived an immortal life since that night into present day, but is never remembered by the people with whom she interacts. She leaves no mark in the world. Ultimate freedom? Or an eternal curse? Of course it all changes when she finds a love interest, someone who knew her 300 years earlier, and remembers her.

The concept is wonderful, the setting shifts us back and forth in time as we see what Addie’s unremembered life has been, the plot to find out what happens keeps you turning pages, and if you are any fan of V.E. Schwab (A Darker Shade of Magic or my favorite, Vicious), you know the author has a wonderful way with words.

In my fifteen years as an editor, I’ve heard many of my clients balk at literary writing, believing it to be boring and long-winded, the stuff their AP English teachers made them read and analyze ad nauseam. And I get it, we love a great plot, we pick up every book hoping it will be the one to envelope us in its world, its secrets, and its characters.

But beautiful, expressive writing doesn’t always have to be slow and dull, neither does it need to get in the way of an exciting story. Addie LaRue is a brilliant melding of both.

So if upmarket is your goal, or you just want to up your wordsmithing skills, let’s look at how V. E. Schwab wields adjective and metaphor to create an experience worth visiting again and again, not just for the great plot beats, but also for an enraptured revisit of beautiful language.

Wield both Simile and Metaphor

You’ve heard it before, but adding depth often just means adding description. Using language to shape and mold the thing you are telling about. But description doesn’t have to mean purple prose overkill, so we use comparison to hack a reader’s own experience and add that to the story.

In the book, Addie can’t tell others the truth about herself, but lies come easy as she walks the Earth as an unremembered shadow. This information is important and needs to be clear and succinct—no need for long flowery paragraphs—yet if told too simply, it lacks that upmarket style.

Telling only:

“She will learn in time that she can lie and the truth will always be hard to say.”

Telling plus showing/description:

“She will learn in time that she can lie, and the words will flow like wine, easily poured, easily swallowed. But the truth will always stop at the end of the tongue. Her story silenced for all but herself.” Pg. 63

The telling example is simply too simple and flat, no voice or mood. A writer’s greatest tools are simile and metaphor, comparing one thing to another to create a shortcut in a human brain. A reader already has a concept about something like wine, so the comparison piggybacks on what they already know uses that support the description in the story.

Take note that V.E. Schwab also stays “on brand” for Addie LaRue, and throughout the story chooses comparisons that match Addie’s life in France.

What Do You Want them to Feel?

One of the differences between literary and plot-driven is its central goal. The plot is about the rush to find out the secrets along the way and push toward the end. That’s what sucks us in and keeps us up at 2:00 a.m., turning pages

The literary is about an experience. A human experience, often the smaller and more intimate the better. It uses language to explore the every day and find beauty in it: watching a spider build a web or join in on a personally transcendental (but otherwise uneventful) walk in a quiet forest. It isn’t about what happens, it is about the feeling that small moment produces for the participant.

Join Addie LaRue as she sits in a café, pay attention to how the words make you feel:

“Outside, the white marble sky has cracked, letting through thin bands of blue. The cold has burned off, and Addie finds a café with sidewalk seating, busy enough that the waiter only has time to make a pass of the outside tables every ten minutes or so. She counts the beats like a prisoner marking the pace of guards, [and] orders a coffee.” Pg.126

It isn’t an unpleasant moment, but the use of the word “cracked” instead of “stretched” or “dissipated” is an intentional poke of discomfort. Addie’s comparison of the waiters as prison guards is another invitation to feel as Adie does: she is not relaxed, there is a tension here, her invisible life has become about marking time.

If it’s important to the character, make it important to the reader:

In Addie LaRue, a wooden ring carved by her father in her youth becomes a symbol of her past and the flawed but real life she gave up. V.E. Schwab wants us to feel something when the ring is mentioned, she wants us to see it as a symbol, heavy with regret and loss just as Addie does. 

“It is a ring. A small circle carved of ash-gray wood. A familiar band, once loved, now loathsome.”

“Addie leaves her old clothes strewn like a shadow across the dressing room floor. The ring, a scorned child in the corner.” Pg. 21

Again, the word choices surrounding the mention of the ring—the comparison of the ring to a scorned child—create a link to our emotions, giving depth to this object every time it is mentioned.

Try a Little Upmarket Fiction

If you are plot-driven to your core, try taking a page from the literary side of things and use language to sweep your reader up in not only an incredible plot, but an emotional ride. There is incredible value in both that will appease your love of story while inviting you to experience something deep and memorable. And as you turn to your writing, use descriptive tools, interesting comparisons, and emotional links to deepen your stories. You’ll impress a publisher and gain a fan for life.

Find your own copy on AMAZON and learn more on GOODREADS

The Precious One by Marisa de Los Santos is the story of two daughters: the precious one and the one cast aside. The story starts as the rejected daughter, the elder daughter, gets a phone call from the father—asking her to come home.

This is the most recent book to keep me up all night. I started the book after dinner and could not convince myself to put it down until I’d turned the very last page at somewhere around six in the morning. (I’m not sure because I refused to look at the clock.) This book is not a thriller or a suspense novel, and yet it kept me riveted through a long night and into the morning. I love these nights, both because being absorbed in a book is a true gift and because I love trying to figure out later how the book managed to perform its spell on me. I’m sure I’ll be working out the puzzle of The Precious One for a long time (I’m a chronic re-reader), but I have figured out one way it kept me reading long into the night, and that is by consistently making me ask questions I wanted answers to.

Consider the opening sentence of the novel:

“If I hadn’t been alone in the house; if it hadn’t been early morning, with that specific kind of fuzzy early morning quiet and a sky the color of moonstones and raspberry jam outside my kitchen window; if I had gotten further than two sips into my bowl-sized mug of coffee; if he himself hadn’t called but had sent the message via one of his usual minions; if his voice had been his voice and not a dried-up, flimsy paring off the big golden apple of his baritone; if he hadn’t said “please,” if it had been a different hour in a different day entirely, maybe—just maybe—I would have turned him down.”

I mean, wow. Right? Okay, I know long, complicated sentences are not everyone’s cup of tea, but just look at everything de los Santos is doing in this paragraph. With her charming descriptions of the character’s morning, the “sky the color of moonstones and raspberry jam” and her “bowl-sized mug of coffee,” she makes us love this character instantly. The character (as yet unnamed, but who we’ll later learn is a woman named Eustacia, who goes by Taisy) feels like a real person, a person we’d like to be friends with.

And then she slips in the mystery: “he himself” called, and we’re asking who could this be? Who could warrant this lofty description? And he has minions, too? Now we really have to know who it is. Who does this lovely character, this person we’re already admiring and feeling an affinity for, wish she could have said no to? And what will happen because she wasn’t able to?

And so, with one expertly crafted sentence, the author has made us ask several questions and created a character we care enough about that we want to know the answer to those questions.

It’s not long before we learn some answers. At the end of the next paragraph we learn that the person Taisy wished she could have said no to is, in her words, “Wilson Cleary, professor, inventor, philanderer, self-made but reluctant millionaire, brilliant man, breathtaking jerk, my father.” And by the end of the chapter we learn that the father who so roundly rejected her eighteen years prior has had a heart attack and is asking her to come home for a visit. So we have some answers, but then more questions. How did these two become estranged? Why does he want her to come home now? Even as we’re getting answers, we’re asking more questions, and connecting with the character more and more.

And the novel is constantly doing this, slipping in tantalizing hints of mystery within the story of two unique and compelling women.

When we meet the other daughter, the titular “precious one,” we find out she’s starting high school in the middle of her junior year, after a lifetime of being homeschooled by the aforementioned “spectacular jerk.” Willow is hyper-intelligent, earnest, and instantly endearing. We’re led through a few anecdotes of her first painful days at school, sparking affinity and interest in her, and we learn that not only would she like to quit high school and teach herself, but she’d be wonderfully adept at it. But then, at the end of the first chapter in Willow’s perspective, we get this confession:

“He looked so sick, for one thing, not just pale but dingy, like old glue. … Even so, I might have said it all anyway. I might have planted my feet and looked him squarely in his tired, dull eyes and argued my case with a clear voice and a lot of quotes by people he admired. Except. Oh, except!

Except that what I knew, what I could never escape, what sat like a rock—not just a rock but a molten, seething, blistering rock, if you can imagine such a rock—inside my chest was this: It was all my fault. All. And at my lowest moments, I believed there was no punishment awful enough to balance what I’d done.”

-pg 23

Bam! We’re asking questions again. How could her father’s illness be her fault, or why does she believe this? Not to mention the question of how Wilson could have been one father to her: loving, protective, nurturing, and a completely different father to Taisy: cold, demanding, and distant.

It’s this combination of empathy and curiosity that worked the spell on me. It kept me up all night because I simply had to know. Not just the answers to the questions, but I had to know if these two women were going to be okay. I had to see how it was all going to work out. This is what every good book does to its readers, whether it’s a romance, a space opera, a thriller, or a seemingly quiet story about a broken family. For an excellent study in hooking the reader on every page, I highly recommend The Precious One by Marisa de los Santos.

Find your own copy on AMAZON and learn more on GOODREADS

The Martian by Andy Weir is a survival sci-fi novel that will keep you reading out of utter desperation. We follow astronaut Mark Watney, who is stranded on Mars after an accident that makes mankind believe he is dead. He is alone, trying to survive for an exorbitant number of days (called sols on Mars) before he can hitch a ride on the next Mars mission about four years down the road. As you can imagine, it’s not a fun time for Watney.

I love this novel because it’s different. It’s a harrowing yet funny situation that Watney is fully aware of. He uses his humor as a coping mechanism just as much as he uses his science and math knowledge to survive. I will say that some of this science and math knowledge can be dense, but Andy Weir does a great job balancing the story with the knowledge. 

As much as this is an entertaining survival story, this is also a great novel to study how characterization done differently can actually be done well.

I say this because characterization is normally done well with character descriptions and internal thoughts. However, because most of this story is in a diary format, neither are present all that much. Character description is stripped away because Watney, alone, meets no one new while on Mars (which is unfortunate, really). Internal thoughts are not recorded raw in a moment-for-moment fashion as done traditionally.

But how is characterization still done well? In The Martian, we see the trails of internal thought through the goals and quips that Watney records. The log is basically his daily diary (hence why I consider this a diary-formatted story). And the characterizations of Watney come through in these logs. For example, in chapter 2, page 13, he records:

Log Entry: Sol 11
I wonder how the Cubs are doing.

That is all he records for a three-day span. It gives a very important glimpse into the kind of person Watney is, and what kind of character Andy Weir wants us to imagine. We might not be getting all the thoughts, but we’re getting what Watney believes is important or relevant to himself for his survival. His humor, therefore, comes through as important.

Character description is also hard to come by in this novel. Even when the story jumps back to Earth with Venkat Kapoor or others, description is still mainly nonexistent. Instead, we see the characterization of various characters through dialogue.

A very minor character, Rich Purnell, is a perfect example of this. In chapter 16, page 199, there’s a conversation between Rich, an astrodynamicist, and Venkat Kapoor, the director of Mars operations, that shows how Rich is different from the other characters. This is done almost entirely with dialogue:

 Rich looked at the mess of papers and sighed. “But I had such a cool summary . . .”
 “A summary for what?”
 “How to save Watney.”
 “That’s already in progress,” Venkat said. “It’s a last-ditch effort, but—”
 “The Taiyang Shen?” Rich snorted. “That won’t work. You can’t make a Mars probe in a month.”
 “We’re sure as hell going to try,” Venkat said, a note of annoyance in his voice.
 “Oh, sorry, am I being difficult?” Rich asked. “I’m not good with people. Sometimes I’m difficult. I wish people would just tell me. Anyway, the Taiyang Shen is critical. In fact, my idea won’t work without it. But a Mars probe. Pfft. C’mon.”
 “All right,” Venkat said. “What’s your idea?”
 Rich snatched a paper from the desk. “Here it is!” He handed it to Venkat with a childlike smile.
 Venkat took the summary and skimmed it. The more he read, the wider his eyes got. “Are you sure about this?”
 “Absolutely!” Rich beamed.
 “Have you told anyone else?”
 “Who would I tell?”
 “I don’t know,” Venkat said. “Friends?”
 “I don’t have any of those.”
 “Okay, keep it under your hat.”
 “I don’t wear a hat.”
 “It’s just an expression.”
 “Really?” Rich said. “It’s a stupid expression.”
 “Rich, you’re being difficult.”
 “Ah. Thanks.” 

After this exchange, we never see Rich Purnell again, but this passage makes him a memorable side character. We learn he is difficult, then we soon see that difficulty in action, all well placed and well written. We also see that Rich can be childlike and excitable. This makes his character more round and more believable. But, because he is such a minor character, the characterizations of Rich are not overpowering with lines of description of what he looks like, what he wants, et cetera, et cetera.

Internal thoughts are vital to making any story feel authentic. In The Martian, even if these are seemingly nonexistent, they are actually there in the form of recorded information deemed important by Watney. Description of characters is also important but scarce here. Instead of lines of description, it is shown mainly through dialogue. This is not done in a soliloquy of semi-important information, but instead through sneaking in characterizations for each character.

Check out our video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWx2tpuXsro] on the Manuscript Dr YouTube channel to see more on how traditional characterization is vital to a story. Read The Martian for a great study of a diary-formatted story as well as a funny and witty narrator that will keep you reading even when it feels hopeless.

Find The Martian on Amazon [https://smile.amazon.com/Martian-Andy-Weir/dp/0553418025/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1615219410&sr=8-3] or add it to your Goodreads [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18007564-the-martian?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=a6VCx0UuGw&rank=1