The books of Mark Z. Danielewski (House of Leaves, especially) are complex, dense, and thrillingly visual. He tells BOMB that his process is a lot like construction:

Writing is so much about laying down brick after brick, and yet you can’t just stack bricks, because then you’re making a tomb. There has to be this mortar, and that mortar, as we can see for ourselves, right now even, is the space between words…