Write a GREAT Book! 55 What works in advertising may be irrelevant to your writing—unless, as Hemingway said, you actually expect someone to read it! If you really get on a roll, you may 昀椀nd that you can 昀椀ll page after page with long paragraphs or even solid text. 吀栀at’s a great feeling, and you should de昀椀- nitely roll with it. But afterwards, edit your work so that there are 昀椀ve or eight short paragraphs on each page, not two or three long ones. 吀栀at will keep your readers happy! But don’t take my word for it. 吀栀e next time you’re in a bookstore, pick up some best- selling books and check out the lengths of the paragraphs. (Uh- oh! 吀栀is paragraph is getting much too long!) Use Dialogue as Much as Possible I’m looking at random through my copy of 吀栀e Da Vinci Code. What I see resembles a play as much as a novel. 吀栀e large amount of dialogue really opens up the page, so that readers aren’t faced with a dense onslaught of text. It cap- tures you in a conversation that you continue having in your mind. Face it: we live in an age when people aren’t really used to reading books, and they’re getting less comfort- able with it all the time. So make it easy for them. Even in a non昀椀ction book, dramatize your ideas by express- ing them through conversations between recognizable human beings. Be creative about it. Don’t say there’s no