Markson described the action of this tetralogy as a character "sitting alone in a bedroom with a head full of everything he’s ever read." Most of the traditional comforts of the novel form are absent, as an author-figure closely identified with Markson himself considers the travails of the artist throughout the history of culture. In "Reader's Block", he is called Reader; in "This Is Not A Novel", Writer; in "Vanishing Point", Author; in Markson's last novel, "The Last Novel", he is known as Novelist. His working process involved "scribbling the notes on three-by-five-inch index cards" and collecting them in "shoebox tops" until they were ready to be put "into manuscript form."