My basic advice when writing is to get three things happening every two pages. Keep things moving. Think about the book from beginning to end and see the key moments. I recognize my strength and my weakness as a writer. My strength, if I might say so without being immodest, is that by and large, once people start reading they can't stop because they are drawn in. The weakness of course is you don't really hang about and develop characters too much. You don't stop for long lyrical passages. I do like stories. I like the business of telling a story. Having said that, there is no reason why a story shouldn't carry a lot more freight with it. You can get at a truth as a novelist in a way that you can't as an historian. I think you can bring things alive, the sense of fear, prickly fear, the sweat, the smell of the place and so on. Show less «