Topic: Writing Fiction

10-second review: What are some problems in writing effective fiction? “We are often offered novels of murder and detection set in some period past—Elizabethan England, Ancient China, Imperial Rome—but they are rarely successful because the author is more concerned with detailing the period than with telling a good story.”

Source: Review of The Detling Secret by J Symons. The New Yorker (February 7, 1983), 123.

Comment: Too much research, not enough story. RayS.