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The Authentic Eclectic
Leave Room for the Reader
The final piece in the puzzle of a well-told story is the audience.
I’ve had a number of questions requesting clarification on plot points in my fantasy novella Bloodmire (recently serialised in Fictions). Encouraged by positive response and engagement with this story, I originally intended this article to be a breakdown of all seven parts, in which I would expound on narrative clues and character nuances for readers to pick up on in order to extrapolate varying interpretations. However, after writing about a thousand words of narcissistic self-analytical drivel, I came to my senses. Leaving aside the sheer boredom inflicted on anyone foolish enough to actually read such a damn dull running commentary (which had all the entertainment value of an up-its-own-backside undergraduate English Literature essay), why would I rob readers of the very power I wished to bestow? I wanted to leave room for readers to make up their own minds.
The Lesson of ‘Munich’
In 2005, Steven Spielberg made what I considered an outstanding thriller called Munich. Based on the aftermath of the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre, when the Israeli team was murdered by Palestinian terrorists, it tells a (loosely) fact-based story concerning Mossad reprisals…