I write books that I want to read. I like when there are no holes in a plot, when there are setups and payoffs, and when someone doesn’t feel like they’ve been ripped off by an author seeking convenience or their characters not playing by the rules of the world that the author has set up.
As authors, we have to play by the rules we’ve put into place, and we can’t just dump the rules or put them aside to get to the end. I think that the human factor, and the thought process behind what a character does is appealing in my books because I come out of a screenplay discipline, where it’s all about the action that is then supported by text, but rarely do you go into subtext, context, pretext.
So the novel form, or the prose form, allows me to actually get into the character’s head and approach a technical story from a human perspective. I hope that when I do that, that I’m kind of joining into the thought process of the reader. Even if the reader doesn’t understand nuclear physics, they can resonate with the character who does, and get a common touch point in which the character’s actions are explained.
Tom Avitabile | Best Selling Author, Book Coach, and Screenwriter 