Prose is like designing an animal—it works better when the muscles are hidden and you only touch fur. So I though it’d be fun to dissect some prose from my upcoming novel Mantids and explain what made me draw that particular hoof that way. The paragraph below happens in an Astoria, Oregon nudie bar where the narrator’s wife works. It’s basically scene-setting, a 360-degree scan to let the reader know where they’ve been plopped down. First, the excerpt in its entirety: