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).
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