Today when it is pouring rain outside, I mull about what makes books special, which is very difficult to define.

For the vast majority of people, the magic doesn’t lie at the sentence level. Good sentences simply communicate meaning. Once they do that (and they *must*), they add little extra value.

It’s mostly also not about the overarching plot. A lot of beginning writers worry about writing similar plots to existing books, or they sweat over the big reveal or the hat trick at the end. Most boo...