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The Sins of Literature

The Sins of Literature: Episode 1: Thou Shalt Not Bore

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Thou Shalt Not Bore

Episode 1

Episode 1: Thou Shalt Not Bore

BBC Radio 4 - The Sins of Literature, Thou Shalt Not Bore

Robert McCrum and his guests look at how to avoid writing 'the bits that readers skip'.

Robert McCrum and his guests, including Sarah Waters, Martin Amis and Howard Jacobson, look at how to avoid, as Elmore Leonard put it, writing the bits that readers skip.

In the Sins of Literature Robert McCrum casts a seasoned eye over the literary mores of our age. 

Sarah Waters, Martin Amis, Will Self, Siri Hustvedt, Paul Auster, Deborah Moggach and Howard Jacobson talk about their literary sins and commandments. 

Thou Shalt Not Bore looks at how to avoid writing a boring book or, as Elmore Leonard put it, how to avoid writing the bits that readers skip. Try to make your characters believable, your plot snappy and your sentences taught and bright or sinuous and fecund. And if that doesn't work you can always insert a juicy sex scene... 

In this episode some of our finest novelists tell us how they write, give lessons in style, tell of whose work they love and argue over what makes a book good.

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Robert McCrum explores the literary mores of our age

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Episode 1: Thou Shalt Not Bore

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