the craft. read like a writer vol. 86.

I’d not anticipated another read like a writer this quickly, however, here we are. I guess that’s what happens when you stumble across such immense talent in your writerly travels. This month, I had the pleasure of reading Black Candle Women by Diane Marie Brown for a conversation on her launch in Long Beach at Belcanto Books. Although I had to read rather quickly, there were some awesome things that stuck out to me that I’d like to highlight to a group of writers.

In this book, we get close third person narration from the perspective of different characters. Nickie, Willow, Victoria, and Augusta. Regardless of point of view, it can always be a challenge to ensure that characters show up uniquely in our storytelling. It’s not easy to differentiate characters through writing, but we have to approach it in a ways that helps readers know exactly who is speaking. Certain word choice. Cadence. Maybe someone speaks using run-on sentences while someone else uses short phrases. Small devices help us to say, “okay this is X character” and it’s subtle but you can easily get bored when everyone sounds the same. I think Brown did an awesome job of distinguishing each of their viewpoints. Especially with Nicki who is a teenager and would certainly look at things unfolding in the story much differently than her mom, aunt, and great grandmother.

It was also very cool how Brown introduced other characters that didn’t have their own viewpoint, yet they still felt flushed out and whole. From Madelyn, the estranged mother to Nickie’s love interest Felix and Willow’s love interest, January. They felt extremely present even when being viewed through the viewpoints of the other main characters.

In addition to great character work, I enjoyed the sense of place. The book balances literary and genre fiction in her approach. I guess that’s where upmarket genre fiction comes into place. But you get a great feel for both Long Beach and New Orleans by reading. I mentioned at the talk that on my way to the event, I immediately recognized all the bungalow houses in Long Beach that were also mentioned in the book. When writing, a sense of place can be so important. Even in television, it was so distinctive how Los Angeles was almost like another character in Insecure. In our own writing, however we want to approach it, I think a sense of place can be key in making a story stand out.

Also, like we mentioned when discussing The House in the Pines, there is this mysterious element to the book. I promise it’s not a spoiler because it’s in the promo materials, but the Montrose women are cursed in love. And so Brown does a great job of slowly unfolding the details of how this thing came about and also what these women were going to be able to do about it. Reading this book in a crunched time frame was great because I wanted to know what happened. Our ability to keep readers turning the page cannot be overlooked. And there are some devices to assist with that. How we end our chapters. What we decide to hold close to the vest. Foreshadowing. You want the reader to be saying to themselves “I need to know what happens.” I mean, have you watched The Perfect Match? They got me every time at the end of the episode to hit play on the next. Much to the detriment of my bedtime.

Whether you’re writing an article, fiction, or nonfiction really, you want to keep the interest of the reader. How we decide to organize our words matters a lot. Think about how often we bury the lead in journalism.

Lastly, I’ll say that approach to an ensemble cast is not easy. You have to be able to essentially give every single person an arc in addition to satisfying the overall plot of the story. It can be important to ensure that we’re not minimizing any of the characters to secondary figures. And even when we are writing one particular protagonist, it can be a challenge to ensure that secondary characters aren’t solely a device, but integral parts of the story.

Every time I picked up Diane’s book, I simultaneously wanted to work on my own. This is typically a gauge for me that the author is doing some pretty cool things in their approach to the work.