All posts tagged: character

Naima Coster is back with a bold and moving tale of legacy, family, displacement, and rootedness in WHAT’S MINE AND YOURS, plus tips on writing character, developing setting, more

By Leslie Lindsay  Extraordinary tale of gentrification, equality, race, and legacy that begs the question: what are you leaving behind? ~WRITERS INTERVIEWING WRITERS|ALWAYS WITH A BOOK~ Spotlight on family legacy, race, history Several years ago, I read and loved Naima Coster’s debut, HALSEY STREET, and fell in love with her voice and writing. Her sophomore book is so daring, so beautifully told, but also bold and passionate, exploring comforting companionship, siblings, home, parent and child, and so much more. Set in the foothills of North Carolina, WHAT’S MINE AND YOURS (Grand Central, March 2 2021) is beautifully written, in elegant and moving prose, but also rife with deep, perceptive description from a poet’s heart. There’s the “Black side” of town and the “White side,” school integration, and the resistance of residents. For Gee and Noelle, this integration sets off a chain reaction bonding the two together for at least the next twenty years. Families are split–in their desire to integrate, how they see it benefitting each family and race/culture. But there’s also mixed-race Latina individuals …

Write On, Wednesday Thursday: What you can learn by reading a bad book

  My critique partner and I love to, well…critique. It’s part of the job. Occupational hazard. We critique our own work, we critique each other’s. We gripe about good authors who write bad books and bad authors who write good books.  We compare ourselves to other debut authors–what have they got that we don’t?  What made an agent sign them, but not us?  We love to find fault with characters and plot, and dumb sentences. We aren’t perfect. Therefore, we can’t possibly write a perfect book. No one can. In this business, we find that there’s a buzzword: subjective. What I like, she may not. What she likes, I am may find garbage. And then there’s the whole literary agent rejection letter, “We wish you all the best, and please keep in mind that this is just one opinion and another agent my feel differently.” [hint: subjective]. So, what can be gained by reading a so-called ‘bad’ book? A lot. For one, we learn what we don’t like. Be it too many f-bombs, or too …