Blue Skies

A brilliant blue sky over Centerburg, Ohio.

Thursday, driving to work under heavily clouded skies, Willie Nelson's Blue Skies played on my queue. There is nothing remarkable about the song, but because of the dark skies, it reminded me of flying on an overcast or raining day and the absolute joy when the plane soars above the clouds into sunny, brilliant blue skies. It is hard to remember, when we are under heavy clouds, that it is always sunny--and the skies are always blue--above us. It's just an issue of vantage point. An issue of perspective.

Which brings us to storytelling. The issue of perspective or vantage point is critical for developing tension, building character and keeping the reader in a state of unknowing, where they must finish the book to discover what happens. I spend a significant amount of my reading time yelling at authors (who are making a hell of a lot more money than me from writing) about how dishonest or lazy they are with the issue of perspective. It is one thing to have an unreliable narrator or characters who are not extremely self-aware. In those situations, we build tension because the reader knows, or suspects what the character does not know. The reader is, in a sense, in on the joke, even if it is not funny.

I respect writers who can, through careful plot twists and misdirection, hide from the reader facts that are in plain sight. There is a scene in Mailer's The Naked and the Dead, where the narrator is killed. It's brutal because it is entire unexpected; as readers we miss the change in perspective. It is our assumptions, and Mailer's beautiful misdirection, that deliver the killing blow. And I get caught by that moment every time I read the novel, even though I know it's there. (Writer's Note: Yes, I re-read novels. Not as much anymore as when I was younger, but brilliant storytelling should be celebrated again and again.)

What I hate is when a writer, in order to get to a pre-determined outcome, pulls a surprise. In a mystery, the murderer cannot be a character outside the general narrative flow, i.e., it cannot be the parking garage attendant who only appears on page 4 of your book and then is revealed on page 300. That is not fair to the reader. I've mentioned before, I write without an outline, and only a general sense of what is going to happen. I let my characters make their own decisions. Once they do, however, it is incumbent on me to reverse engineer who they got to this point and put in all the easter eggs that make it real.

One of my goals as a writer is to create a blue skies moment for my readers. A moment where the reader's perspective suddenly shifts to something new, something deeper and more revealing than where they were before. It may be a devastating moment, or one filled with joy, but it should recenter the narrative.

Back to Thursday: we did get blue skies for most of the day. I have a real appreciation for poets and songwriters who can say in 200 words what takes me 90,000 words. Especially because it takes me creating a 140,000-word draft before I have a narrative that warrants being cut down to 90,000 words. And cutting a third of a manuscript is torture, but I'll never give it up.

We must not abide cruelty.

And now, thanks to our friends at Black Rose Writing, Love: a novel of grief and desire you save 20% on your purchase, if you buy directly from the publisher. Just use the promo code SEASON20 at the link below. The discount is good through January 31, 2026.

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