How to Read a Novel Like a Writer

To write a novel you have to be a reader. But your reading style has to change once you know you want to tackle the awesome job of completing a novel. You have to learn how to read a novel like a writer.

Reading a novel for analysis

On Monday, I asked you to name your three favorite novels. Once you decide which ones are your favorites in the genre you want to write in, you need to sit down with that book and dissect it, study it, analyze it like you’re preparing for test that your class grade hinges on. How? Keep reading.

What do you love about your favorite novel?

On your computer, phone, or notepad, jot down what you love about your favorite novel. Is it the characters? The plot twists? The descriptions?

After writing down what you like about the novel, think about why you like those aspects. For example, I love the descriptions of the world the Time Traveller finds when he uses his invention to travel to the year 802,701 in The Time Machine by H. G. Wells. Why do I love those descriptions? Well, they’re described so well that I can see myself walking beside the Time Traveller, living the scene with him. He thinks he’s found humans on the wane, in the sunset of their evolution, and his description of the evening while he considers this theory complements his thoughts.

Now that I know why I love this description, I need to dig into it and analyze it. There are a number of ways to do this, but the easiest it to write or cut and paste the section you want to analyze and then highlight the words, sentences, and other elements that makes this part of the novel resonate with you.

Here’s a sentence from The Time Machine I think describes the evening vividly and sets the mood for the scene:

“The sun had already gone below the horizon and the west was flaming gold touched with some horizontal bars of purple and crimson. Below was the valley of the Thames, in which the river lay like a band of burnished steel.”

Color seems to be the key to creating a vivid description in this sentence. “Flaming gold”, “purple”, “crimson”, and “burnished steel.” What’s the lesson? When I want to describe something or set the mood of a scene, specific colors can do that work for me.

You can use this approach for any writing you admire to draw lessons you can apply to your own novel.

What novels have influence your writing and why?

Here are more tips on writing descriptions.

January 15, 2026 3

Book Review of Go Teen Writers: Edit Your Novel

I am reposting this book review of Go Teen Writers: Edit Your Novel to go with this month’s theme of editing. This book is packed with so much good advice that’s it’s worth posting again to give you a second look.

Don’t let the title put you off if you’re an adult. The editing advice in this book is appropriate for any beginning writer. Or even a seasoned writer because it’s always helpful to review or relearn the basics of good writing. The book cover both both macro- and micro-editing. Don’t know what those words mean? Get the book because it will explain that macro- editing is revising the big issues, such as character development and theme. Micro-editing is all the tiny things that need taken care of, like knowing when to insert or remove commas.

One of the most helpful sections under micro-editing is the chapter on punctuation. Author Jill Williamson sets out the rules from how to punctuate dialogue to how to correctly type and use en-dashes and em-dashes. I would have loved to have had this handy guide earlier in my career.

The other half of the book provides all kinds of advice on how to get published with chapters on how traditional publishing works, how to write a synopsis and a query, find a literary agent, and deal with rejection.

The extra chapters at the end are the kind of bonus material I love. There’s self-editing checklist, brainstorming ideas, and the authors’s list of weasel words and phrases, which are words and phrases each author falls into the habit of using over and over again in their first draft. “Just” is a particular weasel word of mine. When I edit, I have to find them and retain only the ones that actually serve a purpose.

But what if you’re still writing your novel? These lovely authors have you covered with Go Teen Writers: Write Your Novel.

For another recommendation of writing book, click here.

What books on editing do you recommend?

March 13, 2025 1

Book Review of Murder for Christmas

Since it’s my favorite Christmas mystery novel, here’s my book review of Murder for Christmas by Agatha Christie. It’s also known under the titles Hercule Poirot’s Christmas and A Holiday for Murder–for some reason when many of Ms. Christie’s books crossed the pond to the U.S., publishers changed the title.

It has all the ingredients you’d expect in a mystery written in 1939–a large, wealthy family riddle with difficult relationships and ugly backstories, a patriarch so nasty that even the kindest person in the family would have a reason to kill him, a seemingly impossible murder, and a brilliant detective. Then Ms. Christie layers over all of that the trimmings of Christmas.

Simeon Lee has asked all his children, most of whom are estranged, their spouses, and one grandchild to come to the family estate for a tradition, English Christmas. All his relations have different reactions to the old man’s invitation and reasons for accepting. Once the family is gathered around, they soon learn Simeon Lee hasn’t mellowed with age. He’s still the vengeful, manipulative, ladies’ man that he’s always been.

When he’s found dead from a cutthroat amid the broken furniture of a terrific fight in his locked bedroom, the local chief constable brings his Christmas house guest, Hercule Poirot, into the investigation.

This is one of Agatha Christie’s best mysteries. The clues are well laid out, the unveiling of the criminal stunning, and but best of all for me, her characters seem much more like real people in this book. Simeon Lee has four sons, each one with their own personalities. His daughter-in-laws are distinct individuals.

The family also acts more like a real-life family. Simeon had not met before his young adult granddaughter Pilar, who had been raised in Spain. When his will is read after he dies, the family finds he left nothing to Pilar. Because everyone had seen that Simeon liked his only grandchild, three of the brothers and their wives decide to take money from their inheritance and give it to Pilar. They know Simeon would have changed his will to leave her something if he’d lived longer. Of course, just like in a real family, someone objects. George, an MP, with an expensive wife refuses. That conflict seems so natural to me. A family is made up of all kinds people–generous, greedy, kind, selfish. It gives a traditional mystery, which can seem very artificial, a nice veneer of reality.

If you read mysteries, what are some of your favorites?

For more recommendations of Christmas stories, click here.

December 5, 2024 0

Book Review of Fun Phantoms

To celebrate Halloween, here’s my book review of Fun Phantoms, an anthology of funny ghost stories, published in 1979. I’ve always enjoyed scares with laughs, and that’s what these stories deliver. All of them are fun, but I’ll highlight my four favorites below. Because it’s an old book, your best bet at finding a copy is going to your local library and searching for it through inter-library loan.

“The Water Ghost” by John Kendrick Bangs

The current head of a British family takes steps to end the haunting of the Water Ghost in a particular bedroom at Harrowby Hall. When the master asks why the ghost haunts his family, the specter replies says that she haunts the room that would have been her bedroom because her father decorated it in pink and yellow when she could only stand blue and gray.

“That night I ran from the house and jumped over the cliff into the sea.”

“That was a bit hasty,” said the master of Harrowby.

“So I’ve heard,” returned the ghost.

“The Night the Ghost Got In” by James Thurber

Although this story takes place in 1915, there’s a modern feel to Thurber’s whacky family as they deal with the possibility that a ghost is running around in their dining room at one in the morning. Thurber and his brother hear the ghost, but when their mother gets up, they tell her it’s a burglar. This unleashes a whole train of events, including Mother hurling a shoe through the window of the neighbor’s house to get their attention and tell them to call the police. When the neighbor finally gets the message, Mother gets ready to throw another shoe.

Not because there was further need of it, but, as she later explained, because the thrill of heaving a shoe through a window of glass had enormously taken her fancy. I prevented her.

“The Open Window” by Saki

This short story has one of the all-time great surprise endings. It seems like a typical ghost story until the rug is whipped out from under readers’ feet.

“To Starch a Spook” by Andrew Benedict

When Sue’s father and a developer realize they have unwittingly bought a haunted house, chocked full of ghosts that the previous owner, Mrs. Ferguson, collected as a hobby, they don’t know how to rid the property of the phantoms. Sue and her friend Bill set out to take care of the problem with a special solution and technique.

When they enter the house, they find a ghostly knight in the library.

Inside that suit of ghostly armor was a ghostly skeleton! He clashed his teeth at us with the most frightening noise. Bill and I were speechless in admiration.

“Mrs. Ferguson certainly knew quality when she collected phantoms,” Bill said.

So if you like fun instead of frights with your ghost stories, see if you can locate a copy of Fun Phantoms. For a recommendation of some chilling short stories, click here.

October 31, 2024 0

Book Review of Home Sweet Homicide

October on JPC Allen Writes means mysteries, so I’m starting off with a book review of Home Sweet Homicide by Craig Rice, published in 1944. Craig Rice was the pseudonym for Georgiana Ann Randolph Craig, who credits her kids for inspiring this novel about the three children of a widowed mystery novelist solving the murder of their neighbor.

When the nasty neighbor of the Carstairs children, 14-year-old Dinah, twelve-year-old April, and ten-year-old Archie, gets killed, the siblings decided it would be great publicity for their mother and her string of crime novels if she solves it. But Mother isn’t interested, and besides, she has a deadline to meet. So the kids decided if they solve it, Mother will still get a lot of publicity.

This novel is a hoot with the three kids running circles around the cops as they try to mislead them so they have time to figure out the mystery for themselves. At one point, the girls decide they have to search the dead woman’s house. But the police have a guard. So they invite a bunch of their friends, along with Archie’s Mob, to their house for a party and treasure hunt. Dinah and April figure that once the treasure hunt spills into the neighbor’s yard, the chaos their friends make will cover their entry into the house.

When it isn’t working, the girls tell Archie that he and his Mob to create another diversion. By the way, Archie wants to swear but isn’t allowed to so he uses regular words as if he’s swearing.

“Oh, corn, corn, corn,” Archie swore. “We gotta do something. Why don’t you do something. And whether we gonna do?”

“Well, my gosh,” Dinah said, “you can think of something. Go burn down a house.”

A few minutes later…

There was a brilliant red glow just around the bend in the road, and great clouds of smoke. An instant later they could see the flames beyond the trees.

“Oh, my gosh,” April moaned, “oh, my gosh! Archie thought we meant it!”

The kids are also busy matchmaking because the lead detective of the case is named Bill Smith, the same name as one of their mother’s fictional detectives. The children think they’d make a great couple.

The novel reads like a cozy mystery with kids as the amateur sleuths, but it’s an adult book. There is murder, and the murderer’s motive is sad. One thing about current cozy mysteries is that food is often a focus in them, and many of the detectives have food-related jobs. This book is no different. Boy, do these kids eat. The girls do a lot of the cooking because of their mother’s work. The kids go down to the malt shop and get treats. The first time Mother and Bill Smith start getting to know each other, it’s over a late-night meal of roasted turkey and maple fudge cake.

If you don’t mind reading older books and want a good laugh, check out Home Sweet Homicide. It’s now one of my favorites, which means I’ll have to get a copy of my own.

For more reviews of mysteries, click here for The Daughter of Time, “A Scandal in Winter”, “The Long Way Down,”, and The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked Room Mysteries,

What mysteries do you recommend?

October 3, 2024 0

Category: Favorite Books