Ron Toland
About Canadian Adventures Keeping Score Archive Photos Replies Also on Micro.blog
  • The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

    Masterful. Incredibly well-crafted series of nested narratives that simultaneously did a deep dive into Dracula lore and sucked me into a single family’s generations-long saga. Just…wow. So well done.

    Three things I learned about writing:

    • You can use flashbacks to cover over narrative time that would otherwise be boring, like train (or plane) travel
    • To make an old myth feel fresh, look for the side that's not usually given a starring role (like the Turkish side of the Dracula legend), and explore it.
    • Journals and letters are a great way to both nest stories, and keep each story personal, told by the person that lived it
    → 6:00 AM, Apr 17
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