Sarah Waters' Rules for Writers
by NZ author/teacher/bookseller Mary McCallum

I've finished Sarah Waters' magnificent ghost story The Little Stranger (in the dark, on my own, the windows unshuttered....in other words, very nervously, but compelled to keep reading, unable to put it down and wait until daylight hours). The ending of this novel is a tour de force - the kind of gorgeous revelation that leaves me hurtling back into those 500 pages  again trying to make sense of the whole thing now I know. And yet the sheer gorgeousness of it, is that I still don't know for sure...

There is much to learn from Waters about pace and tension and layering, and I plan to go back through the novel and make notes. In fact, top of Waters' ten rules about writing (as published in The Guardian UK) is  'Read like mad. But try to do it analytically...' - which I do try to do, but often forget, moving on to the next novel and the next. This time, I have the notebook ready.... and tucked under my belt, number 4 on Waters' list of writing rules:


Read Mary's full piece on her blog. O Audacious Book.