Kyrie

This book should be called "Reading Like a Writer, If You Want to Write Like a 18th - 19th Century European/Russian Contemporary Fiction Author Who Writes Art With a Capital A". Which, I'm sure there are people who do want to write like that. But even back when the book was published in 2006, that seems like such a narrow scope of writing to focus on.

The advice that the book offers boils down to "actually pay attention to what you're reading" and "there are no rules for writing because every example of a writing rule can be overturned by an example of someone doing the opposite of that, and the book still being really good!"

The specific advice for each section - dialogue, pacing, descriptions, etc - make some decent points. But it's good to keep in mind that different genres aren't handled the same way, and what works in the tropes and trappings of one may not work well in another. For example, the author points out that in today's writing world (again, as of 2006) publishers were pushing authors to write likeable characters and to provide a happily ever after. Back in the Good Old Days you could have a character be miserable at the end of the book and it was Important to the Work!!!

And yet, if you were writing a modern romance novel, you would be doing a disservice to the community, and flagrantly ignoring the rules of the genre if you were to end your story with both MC and Love Interest miserable or dead. Genre matters.

I do agree with her on the other portion of that statement though, that so many characters these days feel like they're made likeable and relatable in order for people to enjoy the book. I want characters with actual, human flaws that aren't clumsiness! I want darkness, and nuance, and despair, and redemption! I hate the current trend of a large group of people seeing a character (in books, movies, video games, whatever) and being like, "Omg I can't believe Author said that the main character once ate a baby! They're personally condoning baby eating!!!"

My other issue here is the heavy focus on primarily European and Russian literature. Outside of mentioning Pedro Paramo and One Hundred Years of Solitude, there's very little diversity in the selections that the author praises and uses as examples. I mean, I understand writing what you know (though that's an awfully silly way to write) but just like with genres, each culture has different rules and themes and shorthands that are important to the way that they write. And for a moment, I wondered if perhaps it was because of the added layer of translation and how to localize a story without losing the original meaning and authorial intent behind the deliberate word choice...but the Russian novels and my South American examples above all had to be translated into English.

Eh. At the end of the day, I'm not a writer. Those things just kind of stood out to me.

Less a book collecting cases of the missing who have disappeared into the woods, and more a loose scattering of better-known cases shoved between chapters chronicling the story of the author joining a man's search for his missing son. There is SO MUCH MORE Bigfoot in here than I was expecting - which wasn't a non-zero amount, if you talk about people going missing in the woods, eventually someone will suggest that maybe Bigfoot did it.

- the cabin that Randy stays in is called the "Bigfoot Cabin" because it's owned by a group of people searching for Bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest

- several cases, the author floats the idea (tongue-in-cheek, mostly) that maybe Bigfoot did it

- a woman claims that she is feeding a family of Bigfoots, and they telepathically communicated to her the location of Randy's missing son

- when they go to check out said family of Bigfoots, the lady who actually owns the communal Bigfoot feeding spot goes on a rant that leads to my personal favorite quote of the book, which is, "F*ck you, Bigfoot!"

- the author calls out David Palides for claiming that he doesn't always suggest that Bigfoot did it, and his Missing 411 series should not be conflated with his Bigfoot/UFO work. Despite the fact that the entire point of his Missing 411 series is that there are a lot of people who have the same patterns when they go missing - "vanishing" off a trail, no trace of them being found, being found later in an area that was already searched, bad weather immediately following their disappearance, tracking dogs can't find a scent, etc - and that clearly, all of those cases have a common, supernatural root.