Fragment, by Warren Fahy

This book is ridiculously bad.  It appears to have been published by a major New York publishing house (Delacorte Press which is part of Random House) and it's by a first-time author, so I'll analyze is according to Brooks' six elements of fiction as I did with Calumet City.

Concept:  What if a new island was discovered which had completely different animals?  What if the animals were more vicious than the others in the world and threatened to take over the planet if they escaped?  The only thing this book has going for it is its high concept.  Unfortunately, Fahy makes it completely unbelievable, which is the danger of a very high concept.  But it can be done, such as with Crichton's Jurassic Park.  Fahy doesn't even come close to making his concept plausible.

Theme:  Fahy goes on about protecting the planet from humans or other intelligent beings (typical environmentalist ideas), but the book didn't really demonstrate this theme with the plot.  The plot did demonstrate free will vs. determinism, but that's such an obvious choice that this theme didn't really add to the book.

Structure:  This was terribly done and it shows that Fahy knows nothing about dramatic tension.  The main characters don't have a big choice to make until about 80% of the way through the novel.  But even when this moment comes, Fahy doesn't build the tension or develop the conflict.  About half of the book reads like Wikipedia and appears to have been included so we can all appreciate how smart Fahy is about biology.  Another third is pointless action, most of which are characters being chased by vicious island creatures with no tension because we don't care about the characters.

Character:  Even worse than the structure is the characterization and dialogue.  The characters are worse than stereotypes because they are so juvenile.  Here is perhaps the most laughable dialogue in the book:

"I wish you were my girlfriend, Nell," Andy blurted.  Now it was Nell who was blushing.  "Thanks, sweetie."  She tousled his hair.  "But I'm nobody's girlfriend." 

These aren't fifth graders talking, they are grown adults in their late twenties!  Then there are countless action scenes where characters just say "Wow!," "Look at that!," and "I can't believe what I'm seeing!" to make us think it's exciting.  Needless to say, it doesn't work.

Writing Voice:  At least Fahy doesn't try to be fancy with his writing--the writing voice is pedestrian at best.

Scene Construction:  Many of the scenes are pointless and don't move the story forward.  But since there's no structure, the scenes can't really have a mission, can they?

Once again, this book is ridiculously bad.  Surprisingly, it was published by a major New York publisher in hard cover, then as a paperback.  It has also been optioned as a movie.  Did all this come from an interesting concept that they thought they could market by comparing it to Jurassic Park?

Starvation Lake, by Bryan Gruley

I liked this book. It's another book by a first-time author which got published by a major New York publishing house, so I'll analyze it according to Brooks' elements as I did with Calumet City.

Concept:  What if a reporter in a small town started to dig up the past of a town hero?  What if the hero had done something terrible?  What if the town people didn't want to dredge up the sordid past?  This concept was good enough to keep me interested, but no more.

Theme:  One theme was being honest with yourself and not running from the truth, although more could have been made out of it in the resolution.

Structure:  The basic structure of set-up, response, attack and resolution was followed, but not rigorously. The ending tried to tie together several minor details in the story as part of the big picture, but it was unnecessary.  Some of the details didn't need to be tied to anything, but trying to make them fit with the main story just begged plausibility.

Character:  This is the book's strongest element.  We get to know well not only the hero, but several other characters even though the book is written in first person.  I think the key here is that we get the motivations of the other characters and enough of their background so we care about them.

Writing Voice:  This element is also well done.  There are several hockey scenes that I thought would be boring play-by-play action scenes, but they aren't.  Gruley makes the scenes part of the dramatic nature of the story in that we are learning something about the characters.  We are also hearing what the hero is thinking throughout them which puts the action in context and makes us care about it beyond just the results of the game.

Scene Construction:  This element is well done too.  The scenes get quickly to the point and they reveal one more piece of information to move the story along.

Overall, Starvation Lake was well-written.  My main complaint is that the concept wasn't higher.  It's so hard to find a book that has a high concept that is also executed well.

Calumet City, by Charlie Newton

This was a disturbing read, but well done in most aspects.  I've become a fan of Larry Brooks' storyfix.com site which aims to help writers get published.  One intriguing point he makes is that to get published by a major New York publisher, an unknown writer must be proficient in the six elements of fiction:  story structure, writing voice, concept, theme, character and scene construction.  Thus, I sought out first-time authors published by major New York firms, and that's how I found Calumet City.  To see if Larry's assertion holds water, I've analyzed the novel according to the six elements below.

Structure:  This is one of the weaker elements in the six, but the book still has the standard structure.  The basics of structure are:  set-up, response, attack & resolution.  Calumet City has these elements, although they don't occur at the points that Brooks suggests.  In the set-up, we learn that the protagonist, Patti Black, is a tough, decorated Chicago cop who grew up in and now patrols the slums on the South Side of Chicago.  She becomes involved in a case that involves her past (she was abused as a child) and corrupt politicians.  Her response is to try to hide her past while figuring out what is going on.  Once she realizes she can't hide her past, she doesn't trust her colleagues to understand and so goes on the attack to stop a killer by herself.  The story is resolved well enough, but a twist at the end makes it less satisfying because the main bad guy that was built up throughout the book turns out to be a non-factor.

Writing voice:  This is probably the book's strongest element.  Charlie Newton uses first person, present tense for Patti Black, and it is very effective at getting inside the head of his gritty, determined heroine.  It works so well, I didn't even realize the whole book was in present tense until about a quarter of the way through!  (I had the opposite experience when King used present tense occasionally in Under the Dome where I found it very distracting.)  Using a writing style that is so personal also allowed the reader to identify with Patti Black and to feel her confusion and angst throughout the story.  It also added to the disturbing nature of the novel when she dealt with child abuse issues.

Concept:  The concept is fairly well done, but is also disturbing which might make it more interesting for big New York publishers:  What if a female cop had to investigate a case of child abuse (including rape) where the suspect is the foster father who abused her as a child?  What if this suspect was also connected to powerful, corrupt, local politicians?

Theme:  There was no dominant, explicit theme, as with most novels, but this one touched on justice, friendship, trust and adoption.  It was done well for this type of story.

Character:  Since this was written in first person, we really got to know Patti Black well and she was definitely a well-defined, three-dimensional character.  The other characters were much less defined, but it didn't detract from the novel.

Scene Construction:  While reading the book, it seemed that the scenes were not delimited very clearly and the whole novel seemed to be one long adventure as we followed Patti through her investigation.  However, in thinking back on the book, I do recall specific scenes with definite locations and narrative missions that were accomplished.  Because Newton did such a good job of getting the reader into Patti's head, it almost seemed like the book was taking place in her consciousness rather than the locations in Chicago.

Overall, I would say Calumet City does execute well on the six elements of fiction as described by Brooks.  However, I have to say I ended up not liking the book because of the elements of child abuse.  I just didn't like being inside the head of a character reliving her abusive past and her fear that the abuser was at it again.

Screenplay, by Syd Field

I read this because Larry Brooks suggested it in Story Structure...Demystified because it was inspiration for Brooks' book.  Unfortunately, this book did not contain much new information that I didn't already pick up from Brooks.  I suppose if one is writing screenplays, it has some useful information.  But for writing novels, not so much.

Whisper of the Seventh Thunder, by Larry Brooks

I really like Larry Brooks' website storyfix.com.  He gives great advice on how to structure a novel to create drama and suspense.  In addition to structure, he also stresses the need for stories to be good or great in terms of character, theme, concept, scene construction and writing voice (he calls these the Six Core Competencies).  WARNING:  SPOILER ALERT BELOW!  (But why are you even reading this?  Didn't you see the line at the top of the page telling you to go away?!)

Since it seems that Brooks' has the basics figured out, I was really looking forward to reading his latest book to see the theories in action.  Maybe my expectations were too high, but I didn't like this book as much as I thought I would.  Below is my estimation of how the book measures up against the Six Core Competencies.

 

Concept:  This is a "what if" question that should present an interesting situation that will make the reader pick up the book.  In this book, the question is:  What if an author wrote a novel which accurately predicted the Apocalypse as described in Revelations?  Even though I'm an atheist, I was willing to suspend disbelief for this premise.  However, one inherent problem with this concept is that if God is all powerful and has prophesized the events that will happen, there's no point in trying to stop it because it will come to pass no matter what the hero does.  This stole a lot of potential tension in the book.

Theme:  I think the ultimate theme was "to have faith" and perhaps my atheism prevented me from getting into the book.  However, the theme was not strongly connected to the plot (in my opinion) so it wasn't the major problem.

Characterization:  The most deeply drawn character was the hero, Gabriel Stone.  He lost his wife in a plane crash which shook his faith and led him to write his book.  Once that was done, he wasn't motivated by much except to get it published (although this had only been his goal since his wife died, and the writing of the book seemed easy, possibly because it was dictated by God).  Once the story gets rolling, he's motivated to avoid being murdered and later on to save a potential love interest.  Unfortunately, these motivations are recent on not very deep (except, perhaps, the not wanting to be killed part!).  Besides Stone reacting to his new situations, he's not really driven toward any grand goal.  In the end, he is charged with preventing the Apocalypse, but this doesn't motivate him to act--only saving a pretty girl he only recently met does.  The motivations for the other characters are not developed in any great depth and they were not compelling for me (and I had trouble keeping several of them apart as a result).

Structure:  This is the subject Brooks writes the most about on storyfix.com.  He states there should be four main parts to the story:  the set-up, the response, the attack, and the resolution.  The book is divided pretty cleanly into four parts, but I think Brooks tried to break the rules and got himself in trouble.  The set-up was fine, although it didn't establish a strong motivation for Stone.  But in the second quarter, the response, Stone is in danger of being killed, but he doesn't know it!  As a result, he doesn't respond to it.  Instead, he sits around his house, is almost killed when it burns down (he doesn't know it was meant to kill him), and sits in a hospital.  Toward the end of the 2nd quarter, he starts to react to being targeted when he finds out the truth, but it's around the 40% point in the book.

I have another problem with the structure/plot.  Not only are there  too many sets of bad guys with different agendas, but they keep changing their plans.  They want to kill Stone, then protect him.  They want to publish his book, then destroy it.  They want to kill the Antichrist, then protect him or her.  I was confused for about half of the book and even when it was done I wasn't really sure who was working for whom or what their motivations were.

It seems that Brooks was attempting too much with the structure to the detriment of the book.  It as if he presents the undergraduate view of story-telling on his website, but wanted to show us what graduate-level story-telling was like with his novel.

Finally, one point in the resolution was hard to get past.  A nuclear bomb destroys some (most?) of Israel.  Then, a few days later, Stone tries to clear out a hotel by telling security there is a bomb in the building, and the building has the first major Jewish presidential candidate sleeping in it, but the security guards don't immediately clear the building!  The plot needed the guards to doubt Stone, but this was just not believable.  There were ways to make this work, and I can't figure out why Brooks didn't work harder on the plausibility of the major plot events.

Scene construction:  The scenes were well written and overall the book was easy to read (except for my confusions with the bad guys).  I think Brooks does this well and it made the book easy to finish.

Writing Voice (aka Style):  There's nothing too fancy about Brooks' style, but that's way better than the other extreme of purple prose (something he points out on storyfix.com).

So I guess I'm trying to say I was disappointed with Whisper of the Seventh Thunder.  Perhaps I should try reading it again.  Now that I know the story and characters better, I shouldn't be too confused and perhaps I'll pick up interesting parts of the story that I missed the first time through.  Or maybe I should just write my own damn novel if I think it's so easy (I don't, actually).

Under the Dome, by Stephen King

I think my infatuation with Stephen King's writing just ended.  I loved Misery, The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption and so my expectations for Under the Dome were high.  Unfortunately, King's latest novel suffers from the same problem as The Stand--the huge investment in time is not rewarded by the ending.

I enjoyed the beginning of the novel where a small town in Maine is trapped under a dome.  A political struggle ensues between a power-lusting local Selectman and a visiting ex-soldier picked by the U.S. government.  The first quarter of the book does a good job setting up the confrontation between these two, but then the plot slowly fizzles after this.

In the third quarter of the book when we want to see the ex-soldier on the attack and fighting back against the bad guy, he spends most of the time in a jail cell while minor characters run around mostly responding to the bad guy.  When the good guys finally do show some initiative in the fourth quarter, much of their plans are overtaken by other events and they are never really controlling the situation.  The final resolution was also not satisfying and was too deus ex machina for me--the final resolution was not set up in the first part of the book and was not even really connected to the main story.

One final complaint was that I wasn't really drawn to any of the characters like I was in The Stand (a very comparable book).  The bad guys were actually portrayed more fully than the good guys in that we understood their motivations better.

Its too bad, really, because I had been looking forward to reading this book for quite some time.  But perhaps that is part of the problem--my expectations were just too high.