The Chopping Blog

Anne of Green Gables offers many episodic threads that come together to deeply characterize herself, her adoptive parents, and many of the other residents of Avonlea. There is one thread, however, that directly connects the inciting incident with the climax: her relationship with Matthew.

If you’ve sent out twenty or thirty query submissions and received only rejections, chances are the issue isn’t just your comparable titles.

If you can’t put it down, it’s commercial; if you can’t pick it up, it’s literary. If you purposely drop the title into conversations and mention it on Facebook, it’s literary. If you pretend you’ve never read it, it’s commercial.

It’s a writer’s dream: you open that email or get that phone call from a publisher or agent with the big news: they want to publish your novel. It’s actually going to happen. 

In the end, you have one job: don’t be boring.

With these tricks of voice, Salinger creates a character who feels like a real person. He captures the nuances of Holden's emotions, making the reader feel his pain, confusion, and alienation.

This is life. It’s the human experience. And it’s at the heart of why characters either come to life on the page or flatline.

Is it necessary in order to become a published author? No. But I don’t think anyone who embarks on it will regret their decision.

If the scene is the fundamental unit of fiction, chapters are more of an organizational tool that relate to both structure and pacing.

In deep third, the narrative voice belongs to the focal character. Every scene filters through their sensory awareness and cognition. Anything described is necessarily what they see, hear, feel, smell, and taste.

Repeat this to yourself: the world is merely the backdrop. It is not the story. It will want to be the story. It will try. But you can’t let it.  

You’ll never be able to create an engaging plot with deeply nuanced and compelling characters simply by using a formula.