Monday, December 19, 2011

What's the structure of your book?

Here's an incredibly valuable interview with Rebecca Skloot about how she decided to structure her book THE INCREDIBLE LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS.

Her book is narrative non-fiction but what she says will resonate with novelists as well.

I learned a lot from this; I think you will too.
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6 comments:

  1. Ali Trotta12/19/11, 9:58 AM

    I've printed that out. Thanks for sharing that link. :-)

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  2. Kitty12/19/11, 11:03 AM

    I've never heard of the book, but I had recently seen a Law & Order episode that obviously was based on Henrietta Lacks: What do we call the Law and Order "Immortal" rip-off of the HeLa story?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Elisabeth Black12/19/11, 11:08 AM

    Very good.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Guilie Castillo12/19/11, 4:15 PM

    Great--thanks for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Heidi Willis12/21/11, 9:00 AM

    That's a fantastic interview. The way she struggled with the structure reminds me a great deal of Dave Cullen and Columbine. All the information can be there, but until you figure out how to structure it into a narrative that both flows and maintains interest, it won't fall into place.

    Structure is something not talked about nearly enough in fiction, but many ground-breaking books are so unique because of their structure.

    Thanks so much for passing this on. There is a lot to chew on in here!

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  6. BP12/24/11, 8:46 PM

    I just finished that book, today! Well-written and absolutely fascinating. Thanks for the link!

    ReplyDelete

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