The following takes place between 11pm and 2am on the day of the reopening of the American Embassy It's true. I didn't think of that when I was writing the story. I liked the conceit of writing an epistolary section of the book. On the page, letters, and the way the story is set up, it works better with words rather than dialogue. What am I saying? I know what you're saying. It's a good point. In terms of scenes in books I'm writing, in terms of how words look on a page, in terms of space breaks, in terms of how much white should be on a page: these are all things that I think about constantly. If I see that a paragraph looks--just aesthetically, visually--too long and for some reason interrupts some narrative flow or fluidity, then I will break that paragraph up. Not necessarily because of the language or the words, but purely on a visual basis. With a conversation, you might want to get across the idea that they're not connecting, so in a visual way you can string along twenty single lines of dialogue. The visual stimulus that words have on a page is something I think about. I don't know if older writers are concerned with that. member login: http://www.amerikanischebotschaft.org subscribe/unsubscribe: http://www.amerikanischebotschaft.org