How I Write Novels

What to Read (and Not Read) when You’re Writing Your Novel

1 Trick I’ve Used to Write 5 Novels

When I have an idea for a book, other books, that tell a story in a similar way to what I’m envisioning for my own, come to mind. Maybe it’s a voice I want to emulate. Maybe I want to study how time moves in another book. To someone else, the books in this category might not look as though they share kinship with the book I’m scheming up — but there’s always something elemental in them that help me understand what I’m working on — like this brilliant memoir by Claire Dederer, that really changed my understanding of how Saskia, the narrator of my psychological thriller, Fierce Little Thing, could think and speak.

Then there are the books I have to read for research. These are usually nonfiction books, and inform me about some aspects of my own book that I simply don’t know enough about yet — above, you’ll see few that helped me immensely with thinking about my characters and the landscape of Fierce Little Thing.

The third (and arguably most dangerous) category is: books that I have to avoid. This is where things…