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When Ann Patchett appeared at the Fitzgerald Theater as part of our "Talking Volumes" community book club, she said, "Writing a novel is like doing magic. Writing a novel is faking it with authority."

That got me thinking. When a novelist creates the illusion of reality, it's a kind of magic. In what other ways, I wondered, do writers perform magic for their readers?

I can think of many -- some good, some not.

Skilled writers create the illusion of ease. After years of studying language and hours of careful editing, they create sentences that flow as though they were created without effort. Skilled writers structure an argument so seamlessly there appears to be only one logical conclusion: theirs.

On the negative side, some writers fake it when it comes to knowing the rules of grammar and punctuation. Others fake it when they don't have all the facts and they don't want to take the time to get them. Some fake an interest in their readers to gain a persuasive advantage. And some writers in positions of authority fake knowing the answers to complex questions when in reality they don't have a clue.

At its most basic level, magic is reaching into a hat and pulling out the improbable and unexpected to the delight of the people watching. Readers, like audiences at magic shows, generally like surprises. There is, however, one way in which readers don't like surprises, and that's with sentence structure.

Imagine, for example, a magician reaching into a hat and pulling out a rabbit, reaching in again and pulling out a white dove and reaching in a third time and pulling out a red 1966 Ford Mustang convertible. That would be a neat trick. The audience would be delighted.

Now imagine a writer beginning a sentence with "She was," reaching into a hat and pulling out the word "healthy," reaching in again and pulling out "wealthy," and then reaching in and pulling out "an athlete," so that the sentence read, "She was healthy, wealthy and an athlete." That structure would be awkward and disconcerting. In writing, when a pattern is established, the reader expects consistency, in this case a third adjective, and out comes a noun. The name for this common error is "nonparallel structure."

Compare "Ask not what your country can do for you; it's better for you to ask what you can do for your country" with "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." The parallelism makes the statement not only correct but memorable.

Perhaps nowhere are nonparallel structures more pervasive and distracting than in PowerPoint presentations, where vertical lists are common. Consider this list, introduced by the phrase "To improve your writing":

•Use a style manual.

•Look up words you don't know.

•Proofreading is important, too.

The reader doesn't want animal, animal, car; the reader wants animal, animal, animal. When it comes to consistency in sentence structure, writers should not do magic.