Story Structure... Demystified, by Larry Brooks

I stumbled upon the blog at storyfix.com because of a post critical of Stephen King that popped up from a Google search.  A few hours later, after reading quite a few posts, I downloaded a sample of his book, Story Structure...Demystified, onto my Kindle.  Later that night I bought the book.  How's that for internet marketing?

Ever since I've thought about seriously trying my hand at writing, I've been looking for principles of good writing, especially in creating suspense with a good plot.  Well, I think I've found it with this book.

Brooks doesn't claim to have discovered these principles.  He's merely adapted them from screen-writing principles so they apply to novels.  What I liked most about his presentation is that he not only tells us the principles, but why they work.  He also gives many examples, including a detailed analysis of The DaVinci Code, which I found very useful.  I won't go into the principles here because his blog has a good overview.

All That Remains, by Patricia Cornwell

This was the first Patricia Cornwell book I've read, and it will probably be the last.  It was hard to be motivated to finish it.  Here's how I broke it down:

Plot:  It was a standard murder mystery with a few sub-plots thrown in.  However, it was all just about solving the mystery and there wasn't any back-and-forth between the hero and the killer.  Another problem was that the hero was an outsider to the investigation which gave her little impact.  Finally, the key break-through happened by coincidence which is never very satisfying.

Characterization:  The hero had a back-story, inner dialogue and internal conflicts, but none of it made the character come alive for me.  Perhaps it was because these things weren't integrated well with the plot.


Style:  The style was fairly pedestrian.  The few attempts to be more literary, for instance with descriptions at the beginnings of chapters, stood out as awkward because they were inconsistent with the rest.

Theme:  There wasn't really a theme, but I don't think the author was really trying for one either.