As I’ve mentioned a few times before, Brandon Sanderson was tapped to finish Wheel of Time after Jordan passed away before he could finish it. I can think of few tasks more difficult or daunting than stepping in to finish another author’s masterpiece.
Specificity
Being specific with what you say might seem important in legal writing, essays, philosophy, and other, less fictional formats, but storytelling is less obvious. If you’ve been paying attention to our posts about word choice, though, you can probably see its relevance.
Identifying Descriptions
Many modern books which intrigue me enough to look up a description, or which I hear or read about, lose me at the description stage because they are not highlighting what I’m looking for in a story.
Nature Writing
In a more recent book, you are more likely to find a stand of trees, or maybe a stand of pine trees, while in an older book, you are more likely to be shown a stand of blue spruces.
Bleak House Review
In my review for A Christmas Carol I asserted that I will read most anything with “Dickens” on the cover, and this is a good example; I cannot recall any reason for it being on my reading list except for it being by Charles Dickens.
Description Omission
I’ve recently begun reading Bleak House, a Charles Dickens novel. While I almost always enjoy Dickens novels, with the partial exception of A Tale of Two Cities, the funny thing is that I don’t really read his books for the stories.
IGC Publishing 