Fluff

 Getting into this book took a little longer than I thought it would. Nothing very exciting happens in the first few pages. We meet our main character, Paul Kemp who moves to Puerto Rico from New York to work for a crumbling newspaper called The Daily News. 

 This book is written through the eyes of Kemp and we get to read his thoughts on his new life as he goes from one mini adventure to the next. As I continued reading, I realized that although it isn't written in a typical diary entry form, that's basically what it is. I found this technique interesting. Wouldn't it have been easier for Hunter S. Thompson to write it in a diary entry format? But then I realized that the way the book is now fits the story better. Kemp isn't trying to keep a diary or to keep track of what's going on in his life. He's just going at it day by day at a leisurely pace, just the way the book does. This diary entry-like format also keeps Kemp and the story as real as possible. There isn't any "fluff" that cushions the writing. It's just sort of like, "okay, here's what happened, with these people, in this order." I really like that.

 From Hunter S. Thompson I learned that you have to format your writing in a way that'll actually benefit it. How you write it is almost as important as the writing itself. I'm also one to write with a lot of unnecessary detail, and reading this novel is helping me to see that you can try taking all that out so you're left with only the core. Sometimes that's really all you need.