Reading the Masters (and saying ... wha?!!)

by Klaire Johnston

I was recently recommended a Nora Roberts novel.

Let me say this upfront, and with respect: Roberts is a prolific, profound, wildly successful writer. She has built a career most writers can only look at in awe. Me included.

So when I picked up one of her books for the first time - mid-career, mid-empire, long after she’d proven everything there is to prove - I expected to witness perfection of the craft. I was completing a ‘Write Your Novel’ course, so I’d spot the mastery immediately, wouldn’t I?

Instead, I found myself thinking:Wait … what?

Because amidst the interesting-ish plot, there were things in those pages I have been explicitly taught not to do.

The most profound was switching ‘POV’. POV stands for Point Of View and references the character through whose ‘eyes’ we’re seeing the scene. Typically, one scene = one POV.

That’s so you become immersed in the story, feel what the character feels, and can invest in the emotion of the moment.

So, I read one chapter, then another, where in between paragraphs, Roberts commentary flicks to the point of view of an alternate character and then back again.

I thought: Have I misunderstood the rules?

And it wasn’t because I was trying to be ‘academic’ about things (although, given the choice, I unashamedly lean in that direction).

But that change in POV took me - repeatedly - out of the story. I was invested and then - BAM! - sidelined. I’m thinking, ‘Who said that?', ‘Why would this character now think like that … oh, wait…'.

And after a re-read, I’d see the thing I couldn’t unsee.

This is one of the strangest side effects of learning to write seriously. Once you’ve studied craft, you can’t un-know it. You start reading with a highlighter in your head. You notice chinks in the armour.

You - as you are being trained to do - see the scaffolding.

And when the book in your hands is written by someone who has sold millions upon millions of copies, the cognitive dissonance is intense.

You think: But I was told this was wrong!

Here’s the uncomfortable truth I’m slowly learning:The rules apply differently once you’ve earned your place.

A writer like Nora Roberts isn’t writing to prove she can write. She’s writing with decades of instinct, an intimate understanding of her audience, and a deep trust in her own voice. She knows exactly what she’s doing - even when it looks like she's (or when she actually IS) breaking the rules.

Maybe what looks like a flaw to a developing writer is often a choice made by a master. Or a trade-off.

But to me, with my reader hat on, this time it felt sloppy and lazy. It felt like her editors hadn't done their job.

That said, seeing ‘flaws’ in a celebrated writer’s work isn’t a reason for arrogance. It’s a reason for humility.

It’s a reminder that craft and career are not the same thing. That writing lives in context. That success changes the rules of engagement.

And that the goal is not perfection - it’s connection.

It’s a connection Nora Roberts didn’t build with me, and for these two books on my tabletop - the next two in the trilogy - I don’t think she'll get to. I took ‘Blood Brothers’ on a plane with me and left it somewhere, unfinished, in an airport, and I’m not grieving the loss.

So I keep reading as widely as I can. I keep learning. I keep occasionally thinking ‘wha?!’, and then sitting with that feeling.

Because somewhere in that confusion is the real lesson:

One day I may write well enough, and have enough of a following, that I might earn the right to break a writing rule or two myself.