Our stories are living beings, equal partners in our passionate, purposeful, plain fun lives.

Our stories matter.

The process of telling them matters.

How do you learn to write?

You write. You think. You read.

Here are two novels to think about.

What do they share?

Christopher Moore. Fluke, Or I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings.

Harper Collins (paperback), 2004.

Moore shines in this goofy novel featuring marine biologist Nathan Quinn as he and his team investigate why humpback whales sing, only to have one literally ‘phone home.’ My book club members swore this is the strangest book they ever read, yet are still recommending it years later. Why? Moore’s skilled writing makes every sentence sing. Coleridge’s ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ is required here, making this a great example of accepting the author’s premise, then seeing if you buy it. But I accepted his premise, and where he took his story. Others didn’t buy the sunken city scenario. I think Moore’s world and his characters come alive. What else is there?

What I would have done: Honestly? I wish I’d written it. I’d consider it a life achievement. And Moore’s impassioned, educated plea to save the world’s whales? Icing on the cake—here’s a writer who believes he can make a difference, simply by making a story, and a species, live for us. In one brilliant novel, he did both.

Robin Oliveira. My Name is Mary Sutter. Viking. 2010.

A debut novel by a Seattle writer, it’s historical fiction about a young midwife who yearns to be a physician, and ends up a nurse and battlefield surgeon at the beginning of the Civil War. Mary perseveres through incredible hardship and opposition to women in medicine. Oliveira’s research revealed the hardship, filth (I kept yelling, “for crying out loud, wash your hands!”) and her passion is for the faceless women who nursed the wounded, and the few who later became surgeons. And that’s where I felt she lost her narrative thread, writing instead an emotional elegy to people who suffered through that terrible time without quite understanding what they were doing, or why. I loved this book. It was compelling and well written, but in the end I didn’t really know any of the characters, even Mary, and that was disappointing. Still, I keep thinking about them.

What I would have done: I would have shown us the characters as they struggled to make sense of their world and their choices, instead of making them stand-ins for national grief over painful, senseless loss of any war, especially one that divided America. Still, well done, and I’ll watch for her next book. ‘Show don’t tell.’

Two good writers. Two novels. They share a love of storytelling.

• What worked for you?
• Were the characters real?
• Did you believe the story?
• Where did it lose you?
• Why?
• What would you have done differently?
• And, most important: how does the comparison help sharpen your own writing?

(c) 2011 Robyn M Fritz