Write a Tapestry, not a Quilt

This is another excellent exercise from Career Authors, a fantastic resource for writers with advice on everything from writing skills to marketing and more.

https://careerauthors.com/polish-your-prose-write-a-tapestry/

I think a little leeway should be given to allow for establishment of setting and character at the beginning of a story. This is on the third page of a 29 page story, and the first page had a lot more pink and yellow than green. As the story progresses, there is more green than pink and yellow. If you're writing a thriller or mystery, there should be more green. If you're writing a love story, perhaps more yellow and pink. But those are just my thoughts. Try this on a sample of your writing and let me know how it pans out. Meanwhile, do take a look at the Career Authors website. It's great!

Here's a screen shot from something I've written to illustrate:

Book Review: The Ruin

The Ruin by Dervla McTiernan

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


It been a while since I read a mystery as compelling and complex as The Ruin. McTiernan sets the mood from the first page when Cormac Reilly (at that time a very green Garda), is sent to a country house teetering on the brink of ruin to investigate the report of a death. He finds a woman, apparently dead of an overdose, and two children who show clear signs of physical abuse. Maude and James Blake. He takes them to the hospital for treatment, where Child Services will take custody. Maude, at 15, vanishes from the hospital. James, not much more than a toddler, is fostered and then adopted. Cormac moves on.

End of the story? No, just the beginning. Ten years later Cormac Reilly, now a high-ranking Detective in Dublin, has been assigned to a Drug Task Force in Galway when James' body is found in a river, an apparent suicide. His partner, Aisling, doesn't believe it, neither does, a newly returned Maude Blake.

The three lives, Maude, Aisling, and Cormac's entwine quickly in a mystery that starts with a ten-year old death and ends following a mystery of complex twists and turns that leave you breathless as you read.

The story is spellbinding, the atmosphere evocative, the characters likeable and challenging.I am looking forward to McTiernan's next Cormac Reilly mystery, due out in 2019.




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