Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 10

School of Athens, with labels

I just thought some of you might like this Substack post

which includes the painting “The School of Athens,” except with all the philosophers labeled. According to the Wikipedia article linked in this paragraph: Commentators have suggested that nearly every great ancient Greek philosopher can be found in the painting, but determining which are depicted is speculative, since Raphael made no designations outside possible likenesses, and no contemporary documents explain the painting. Compounding the problem, Raphael had to invent a system of iconography to allude to various figures for whom there were no traditional visual types. For example, while the Socrates figure is immediately recognizable from Classical busts, one of the figures alleged to be Epicurus is far removed from his standard depiction.

I don’t know, I just thought the labeled image and the post at Substack were kinda neat. Here it is if you would like to click through and look at it.

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What Makes Characters Interesting?

A post at Writer Unboxed: What Makes People (and Characters) Interesting?

Well, what DOES make characters interesting? (I don’t really care what makes actual people interesting.)

It’s all very well to say, “The character is complex!” I expect that’s what the linked post is going to say, and it’s not untrue, but it’s unhelpful, and this is making me think that the actual question isn’t phrased as it should be.

What makes a character sympathetic?

Oh, wait, that’s not the right question either.

What makes a character engaging?

There you go, that’s what I think is the right question. I mean, we can think of characters who aren’t at all complex, who may not even be interesting in the sense we’d normally use the term, but who are nevertheless highly engaging. I mean … Superman. There you go. He’s a very straightforward type of character, and also has zero character development. Even his backstory is boring. Happy childhood, nice parents, straight to a job he likes, never changes jobs, what in this is remotely interesting? Yes, yes, saves the world all the time, but I mean the backstory and the character are both quite simple. If Superman is engaging, it’s not because the character is interesting in the sense of being hard to understand or complex. Sympathetic, yes, sure.

In contrast, how about … oh … Hannibal Lecter. Interesting, yes. Sympathetic and engaging are then in the eye of the beholder. For me, NO. For plenty of viewers, YES. As far as I’m concerned, the most interesting thing about the movie Hannibal is that the screenwriters and director tried to make Hannibal sympathetic by making all the characters who could have been good guys into petty, venal, incompetent, unpleasant people. In contrast, Hannibal is suave and competent, so he must be sympathetic, right? He’s the guy you’re supposed to root for, yes? And this is, as I say, interesting as a way to manipulate the audience, BUT, it is also repulsive. It shows how to make a complicated but horrible character sympathetic and engaging for at least a pretty large share of viewers.

I’m betting the linked post is going to be all about “Make him complex! Make his backstory complex! Bring the reader into the character’s head because you can’t help but sympathize with a character you understand and relate to!”

This is wrong, because you can absolutely decline to sympathize with a character you understand. Plus, it isn’t great to feel like you can relate to Hannibal Lector. He’s not the only character like this, either. But I do think this is probably what the linked post is going to say. Let’s just take a look and see …

Ah ha! It’s all about understanding the character’s motivations! It’s getting into the character’s head!

It occurred to me then that it’s not our doing – our shenanigans, stunts, and schemes–that make us interesting. It’s our wanting – our needs, longing, and thirst – that make us interesting, especially when that thing we want isn’t easily gettable. Or, when the thing we think we want is not the thing we need. …

If I am to build stories filled with characters who grab and hold fast to a reader’s attention, I need to study people, real and fictional, who hold my attention: ordinary people fueled by their mess and their passion, their desire to satisfy their needs, fill their emptiness, and mend bits of their brokenness.

What do you think?

I think: good job including “fictional” as well as “real” when mentioning that you should study people. Fictional characters tend to be bigger than real people — quicker-witted, braver or more cowardly, more selfless or more selfish. You take real qualities and exaggerate them a bit. You do that because you want to create characters who are admirable or despicable, one or the other, because either is the antithesis of boring AND because people — real people, readers — want to admire heroes and boo villains. Not every possible reader, I suppose, but a lot of readers, emphatically including me.

Fueled by mess and passion, not really. Fill their emptiness, not really. Do we have to mend brokenness to create a compelling character? Obviously not. I’m sure we can think of any number of characters who don’t start off broken and then mend their brokenness.

Cassandra in the Touchstone trilogy. Mark Watney in The Martian. Torin Kerr in the Valor series. Honor Harrington in that series. Rowen in The Steerswoman series. There are just absolute heaps of characters who start off competent and confident and go on from there. Sinowa inGara and Marag inKarano too, of course.

Personally, I really appreciate characters who start off thoroughly competent and confident and have some other arc that doesn’t involve becoming competent or confident. I’m sure there are a lot more than I didn’t mention above. Who’s YOUR favorite character who is confident and competent right from the get-go, and who therefore goes right through the story without mending any particular brokenness?

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Update: Hindsight is Always 20/20

So, you know what I did yesterday? I unearthed the complete fantasy novel I wrote in 2018 and read it. And, dammit, if I’d done that March, I bet I could have released it in, say, May, because honestly I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it.

I think there were two reasons why I hated it 7 years ago.

A) I’m seeing the ghosts of revision past everywhere I look.

There are big, important scenes I remember that aren’t there. There are important characters I remember that aren’t there. I doubt I have fallen into an alternate universe, and anyway I can see why I took those scenes and characters out, but what this means is: I did a TON of major revision. A TON. No wonder I was direly sick of this book and didn’t want to look at it again.

B) There’s a divine intervention ending and I’m not sure I liked this ending, although, I mean, the metaphysics is extremely present in the story, in a very up-front, you’re-tripping-over-it kind of way, and it’s not like the characters don’t believe in the metaphysics, because that would be like not believing in, say, trees and rocks. But I think it’s probably okay, though I ought to emphasize certain elements earlier.

C) It’s a fast-pace / less-character-depth story, and I think … I sort of suspect … that I was at that time moving more toward writing books with deep characterization, and I think I wasn’t happy with this one because it’s not really that kind of story. It’s more like No Foreign Sky, with a super complicated world and a really fast pace. Which, I mean, honestly, go me, because if I wanted to pull off a fast pace, I sure did.

D) This isn’t a reason I didn’t like this book at the time I finished it; it’s just an observation: I’m going to have to dedicate this one to Doris Piserchia, because obviously the key idea for this world came from her book Spaceling. Everything about the world, the characters, and the plot is tremendously, immensely, stupendously different, except for one key element, and that single element is definitely inspired by this book, which … have any of you read it? It came out in 1978. Anyway, I read it a bunch of times. The cover for the Kindle edition is awful, totally unrelated to the story, but on the other hand, it is available in Kindle format for a mere $1.99.

Anyway, I kind of like this book now, so I’m glad I just didn’t look at it for seven years rather than throwing it away.

Here’s the first page:

***

Vích made a small, terrible mistake late one summer evening, while she was trading gossip with Mama Guè in the remedies section of the open market. Everything that came later came from that one mistake, exactly as one raindrop falling at the right moment may turn a man’s step from the left to the right and so lead him to encounter the woman he will love rather than the man who is his enemy, and thus change his entire fate.

The people of Daì told a thousand such stories: about one drop of rain or one note in a bird’s song or one chance-heard word that changed the course of nations. Vích’s whole ambition for almost the entire span of her very long life had been to avoid stepping into any story of that kind. Also, more difficult, to prevent her brother from ever stumbling into such a tale.

It was harder for Lahn because he didn’t remember their distant childhood as well as Vích did; also because his gift was not remotely as terrible as her curse. For those reasons, he took every kind of danger too lightly. Vích had tried very hard to teach her brother to live quietly, scattering no raindrops and disturbing no birds and most of all speaking no incautious words. But restraint was not in her brother’s nature: Lahn liked to play with risk and enjoyed walking the thin edge of catastrophe. Infuriating, yes, but Vích understood: her brother toyed with small dangers in order to forget great ones, and although he was afraid of her, he was not afraid she would lose her temper at him, so she could not rule him.

But that evening Vích herself made exactly the wrong small mistake, and found no way to take it back.

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Back Cover Copy: HEDESA — What Do You Think?

First, just to reduce stress all the way around, I’m going to set the release date to, sigh, August 2.

This should provide PLENTY of time for any amount of tweaking and proofing. My best guess is that the drop date for my Patreon will be July 2 — a month in advance — but if that becomes difficult for any reason, then the release date there can easily move back a week or two. That’s what I mean by “reducing stress.”

AND

As always, the minute I began to add this book at KDP, I found myself facing the empty box for back cover description. Here is what I’m going with for right this minute. This is easy to change, so comments would be welcome:

Into the Starlit Land

Tano knew his people would need to return to the starlit country — and he knew his friend Raga would be among those who crossed the mountains into that lovely and mysterious land. Where Raga goes, Tano will certainly go as well.

He looks forward to the journey — mostly. He’s almost certain every Ugaro who accompanies the expedition can be trusted, and he’s almost certain the Lau who come along won’t cause too much trouble. Most of all, Tano knows the gentle people of the starlit land offer no threat at all. Everyone knows the Tarashana are harmless …

This is very brief, obviously, and I started to put in another paragraph, but then I thought, hmm, actually, this seems like enough. This is, after all, Book 10, so it’s not like readers aren’t familiar with both Tano and Raga, or have forgotten the starlit country is there, or anything like that. The setup here really is simple, and I decided there’s no need to remind readers WHY the Ugaro have expected to return to the starlit country. I most particularly did not want to try to remind the reader about anything to do with the Saa’arii, partly because I want to avoid too many names on the back cover. I have five, basically, in these two very short paragraphs: Tano, Raga, Ugaro, Lau, Tarashana. This seems like enough (or too many).

I could change my mind about all sorts of things based on feedback, so what do you think?

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The Art of Writing Dialogue-Heavy Scenes

Here are two snippets from novels, which I’m showing side by side. Both are largely dialogue between two people in somewhat similar settings. This is what I want to focus on – the dialogue itself, and how the author leads into and out of the dialogue. Each snippet moves from the beginning of the scene to, in Novel A, the end of the chapter; and in Novel B, midway through the scene, because that’s an equivalent number of words plus I got tired of typing. The first is from a novel I happened to encounter semi-recently. The second is from a Dean Koontz novel. I’m going to bold everything that’s not dialogue. Movement tags count as part of the dialogue.

Novel A: not generated, but I’m not going to name it.  Novel B: Brother Odd by Dean Koontz
She took a shower and laid three outfits on the bed. A long turquoise sleeveless dress, white capris with a royal blue top, and soft apricot jeans with a black Lululemon tee-shirt. After trying them all on, she decided the dress showed too much cleavage, and the capri/top combo was too “navy.” The jeans-tee combo would have to do.  

Kara was opening a bottle of Christalle when she stopped herself. Too much. The scent of her coconut shampoo would have to do. Then she stopped dead walking out of her bedroom and started laughing. What was going on here? She was nervous. About a guy. When was the last time that had happened? Years.  

The waiter strolled by, stopped, chatted. and left two waters and menus.

She’d chosen a seat in a tiny alcove by the window tucked out of the fray. D’Angelos was popular, and a difficult place to hold a conversation. She’d had luck in this cul-de-sac before. She studied the menu, the Italian street scene wall art, her fingernails, pathetically cracked and unadorned. 6:30 came and went. She shot Dirk a text, then another a few minutes later. No response. 6:45. Was she about to get stood up?  

She was in the act of texting a third and final time, when she felt someone lean over her and she looked up.  

“Dirk! Finally! I’ve been texting you.” Kara sounded more irritated than she meant to.  

“Don’t have my phone. Sorry.”  

“Where were you?”  

“Waiting at a table in the far room.”  

After momentary silence they both exploded with laughter.  

“I thought you stood me up,” he said.  

“I thought you stood ME up,” Kara replied, wiping her eyes. “This is hysterical.”  

“And this is a nicer table. I’ll switch.”  

“Have a seat.”  

“It’s a cool place. I don’t eat out much. Mostly take-out and energy drinks.”  

“It’s my favorite. I used to come here a lot, but I don’t get out much anymore either.”  

Dirk stared at her intently as he pulled out a chair and sat down. “You look very nice,” he said.  

“Thanks,” Kara said. “You do too. A sports coat. I didn’t expect that.”  

“Oh, it’s not for this. I came right from meetings. Trying to jack up my funding.” Then seeing Kara’s reaction, “No, I didn’t mean it that way. You’re way worthy of a sports coat.” Then, laughing, “Did that come out wrong?”  

Kara snickered. “Sort of. That’s okay.”  

They ordered a carafe of house wine from a short woman with a gold nose ring, and Kara took in the blended buzz from conversation, the soft Italian pop music.  

“Who were you meeting with?”  

“Some profs from Western and UBC that have overlapping interests.”  

“Sounds like this is a big field in silviculture. I’ve never even heard of it.”  

“Well, there are a lot of different pieces. The meetings today don’t really have the same interests, or ambitions that I have. To be honest, they were all pretty skeptical.”  

“So if you don’t get this funding, where will you get it?”  

“I have some other sources. One in particular. I’m pretty indebted to him already. I mean, I’m not ruling these guys out. They’re into things that might help me, but they’re not seeing the picture the way I do.”  

“When do you hear?”  

“It will be quick. They’ll call by Monday.”  

“Well, good luck.” She raised a glass of water, and he clinked it with his.   “I really didn’t think about this fundraising issue when I took the plunge.”  

Kara said nothing. Much of her job relied on fundraising, and although she didn’t do it directly, she was involved. Dirk was looking like more of the naïve idealist than she’d thought.  

“What?” Dirk was watching her eyes. “You’re being enigmatic.”  

“Sorry, didn’t mean to. Tell me more about this…stuff?”  

“Really? I thought you’d want to know about my childhood, if I was seeing anyone, been married, what my sign is, what music, movies I like. That kind of getting to know you stuff.”  

Kara smiled. “Not interested. Tell me about your project.”  

“Okay. As I was saying…”  

The waitress interrupted Dirk with two colorful salads, a plate of warm bread, and the carafe of wine. The yeasty smell of the bread was too much for Kara, who lifted one to her plate and smothered it with butter, then took a large, inelegant bite.  

“Sorry. I LOVE their bread.”  

Dirk followed suit, pouring himself a stolid glass of Barbera. “So, anyway, nanobiology. Using nanoparticles to create new nucleic acid chains. To insert the chains into chromosomes, the genes, to redesign the DNA of an organism for maximum growth, tensile strength, nutrient digestion, and so forth. Anything, really.”  

“You can do this?”  

“Not by myself, and not yet. I mentioned my team. Trim, fleet of foot. An elite corps.” Dirk raised the glass to his nose and inhaled. “Ahhh, the wonders of grape.”

He tipped the glass and took a gulp, half-draining it. Sipping is not Dirk’s forte, Kara thought, watching him. She thought it applied metaphorically as well.   “

Stephan Hauge is the smartest man I’ve ever met, bar none. He’s MIT, Stanford, Indian Institute of Technology. But that’s a credentials list. This guy is amazing.” Dirk stopped a moment and looked off. “A super nerd though. Can’t talk to people. ‘What’s the weather Stephan?’ He’ll look at you cluelessly. Couldn’t make small talk if his life depended on it.”  

“You like him.”  

“I love the guy. Anyway, that’s his thing. Programming nanoparticles with AI.”  

“Artificial intelligence.”  

“Exactly. We’re hoping to do something no one has ever done before. Create an organism that can rapidly alter its DNA to better its current situation.”  

“Like Washington Timber has done?”  

“That remains to be seen. If they’ve actually done it.”


Kara took another bite of bread. “It smacks of Lamarckian inheritance.”  

“Lamarkian evolution. Huh.” He took another gulp, smaller this time. “You’re a biologist? I guess I wasn’t sure. Thought maybe you were a writer.”  

“I do some of that too. MS at Berkeley, PhD at UW.”  

“So, you’ve studied evolution, and know by heart the drill. Darwin. Survival of the fittest. Natural selection.” A sip this time, then a refill. “Well, there are other models besides Darwin and Lamarck you know.”  

“I didn’t.”  

“Fractal Evolution, Dr. Albert Froch’s discovery, is getting some press these days. Enormous mutation and genetic change at an organismal level bypassing natural selection entirely. Random leaps and genetic changes. Or maybe not so random. We’re experimenting with how to create this.”  

“You’re forcing evolution, directing it.”  

“Not exactly. We’re giving an organism the means to direct its own evolution.”  

“That could mean a lot of different things, depending on many other factors.”  

“Sure, and we will try and nudge it toward what interests us, maximizing tree size and growth rates as an example.”  

“Nudge?” Kara snickered. “You’re playing God again.”  

“Hah,” Dirk guffawed. “Not exactly. We are letting the organism play God with itself. Besides it’s never been done and may be impossible. We’re just getting our toes wet.”  

“I think it’s impossible. And potentially disastrous.”  

“Probably.” Dirk killed his wine. “Come on, drink up. I came here to unwind, not talk about work.” He poured another small glass from the carafe, now half-empty.  

Kara couldn’t take her eyes off him. “You’re insane, Dirk.” His smile again, damn it.  

“Someone’s gotta be.”  

“Can you send me a reading list? I want to catch up on this.”  

“Sure. As soon as I get back to UW.”  

“Give me some of that.” She reached out her glass and he poured a healthy amount into it. She quickly took a sip. “That’s better. Now. Return to normalcy.”  

“You’re nervous?”  

“I don’t do this every day.”  

Dirk was suddenly serious. “Neither do I. And I admit to being a bit nervous as well.”  

“Okay then. Touche.” They clinked glasses. “So tell me about your team.”

“Me and Stephan. I told you it was lean and mean.”  

“And the U gives you lab space?”  

“They rent us lab space. I’ve had to buy my own equipment.”  

“Ouch. Sounds expensive.”  

“That it is. Hence the fundraising.”  

“So just the two of you?”  

“Well, there’s another team, outside the University. I’m kind of racing them against each other to see which bears fruit first.”  

“One academic and one private?”  

“Something like that.”  

“Hmmm.” Kara was silent for a moment. “Maybe we should change the subject.”  

Dirk was staring at her, smiling. “Thank you. Will you tell me about your childhood? Or I could go first.”  


Chapter ends.  







My immediate reaction to having seen Death himself was to get something to eat.  

I had skipped breakfast. If Death had taken me before I’d had something tasty for lunch, I would have been really, really angry with myself.   Besides, I couldn’t function properly on an empty stomach. My thinking was probably clouded by plunging blood sugar. Had I eaten breakfast, perhaps Jacob would have made more sense to me.  

The convent kitchen is large and institutional. Nevertheless, it’s a cozy space, most likely because it is always saturated with mouthwatering aromas.  

When I entered, the air was redolent of cinnamon, brown sugar, baked pork chops simmering with sliced apples, and a host of other delicious smells that made me weak in the knees. The eight sisters on the culinary detail, all with shining faces and smiles, a few with flour smudges on their cheeks, some with their tunic sleeves rolled back a turn or two, all wearing blue aprons over their white habits, were busy at many tasks. Two were singing, and their lilting voices made the most of a charming melody.  

I felt as if I had wandered into an old movie and that Julie Andrews, as a nun, might sweep into the room, singing to a sweet little church mouse perched on the back of her hand.  

When I asked Sister Regina Marie if I could make a sandwich, she insisted on preparing it for me. Wielding a knife with a dexterity and pleasure almost unseemly for a nun, she sliced two slabs of bread from a plump loaf, carved a stack of thin slices of beef from a cold roast, lathered one piece of bread with mustard, the other with mayonnaise. She assumed beef, Swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato, chopped olives, and bread into a teetering marvel, pressed it flatter with one hand, quartered it, plated it, added a pickle, and presented it to me in the time it took me to wash my hands at the pot sink.  

The kitchen offers stools here and there at counters, where you can have a cup of coffee or eat without being underfoot. I sought one of these – and came across Rodion Romanovich.   The bearish Russian was working at a long counter on which stood ten sheet cakes in long pans. He was icing them.  

Near him on the granite counter lay the volume about poisons and famous poisoners in history. I noticed a bookmark inserted at about page fifty.  

When he saw me, he glowered and indicated a stool near him.   Because I’m an amiable fellow and loath to insult anyone, I find it awkward to decline an invitation, even if it comes from a possibly homicidal Russian with too much curiosity about my reasons for being a guest of the abbey.  

“How is your spiritual revitalization proceeding?” Romanovich asked.  

“Slow but sure.”  

“Since we do not have cactuses here in the Sierra, Mr. Thomas, what will you be shooting?”  

“Not all fry cooks meditate to gunfire, sir.” I took a bite of the sandwich. Fabulous. “Some prefer to bludgeon things.”  

With his attention devoted to the application of icing to the first of the ten cakes, he said, “I myself find that baking calms the mind and allows for contemplation.”  

“So you made the cakes, not just the icing?”  

“That is correct. This is my best recipe … orange-and-almond cake with dark chocolate frosting.”  

“Sounds delicious. So to date, how many people have you killed with it?”  

“I long ago lost count, Mr. Thomas. But they all died happy.”  

Sister Regina Marie brought a glass of Coca-Cola for me, and I thanked her, and she said she had added two drops of vanilla to the Coke because she knew I preferred it that way.  

When the sister departed, Romanovich said, “You are universally liked.”  

“No, not really, sir. They’re nuns. They have to be nice to everyone.”  

Romanovich’s brow seemed to include a hydraulic mechanism that allowed it to beetle farther over his deep-set eyes when his mood darkened. “I am usually suspicious of people who are universally liked.”  

“In addition to being an imposing figure,” I said, “you’re surprisingly solemn for a Hoosier.”  

“I am Russian by birth. We are sometimes a solemn people.”  

“I keep forgetting your Russian background. You’ve lost so much of your accent, people might think you’re Jamaican.”  

“You may be surprised that I have never been mistaken for one.”  

He finished frosting the first cake, slid it aside, and pulled another pan in front of him.  

I said, “You do know what a Hoosier is, don’t you?”  

“A Hoosier is a person who is a native of or an inhabitant of the state of Indiana.”  

“I’ll bet the definition reads that way word for word in the dictionary.”  

He said nothing. He just frosted.  

“Since you’re a native Russian and not currently an inhabitant of Indiana, you’re not at the moment really a Hoosier.”  

“I am an expatriate Hoosier, Mr. Thomas. When in time I return to Indianapolis, I will once again be a full and complete Hoosier.”  

“Once a Hoosier, always a Hoosier.”  

“That is correct.”  

The pickle had a nice crunch. I wondered if Romanovich had added a few drops of anything lethal to the brine in the pickle jar. Well, too late. I took another bite of the dill.  

“Indianapolis,” I said, “has a robust public library system.”  

“Yes, it does.”  

“As well as eight universities or colleges with libraries of their own.”  

Without looking up from the cake, he said, “You are in your stocking feet, Mr. Thomas.”  

“The better to sneak up on people. With all those libraries, there must be a lot of jobs for librarians in Indianapolis.”  

“The competition for our services is positively cutthroat. If you wear zippered rubber boots and enter by the mud room at the back of the convent, off the kitchen, you make less mess for the sisters.”  

“I was mortified at the mess I made, sir. I’m afraid I didn’t have the foresight to bring a pair of zippered rubber boots.”  

“How peculiar. You strike me as a young man who is usually prepared for anything.”  

“Not really, sir. Mostly I make it up as I go along. So, at which of those many Indianapolis libraries do you work?”  

“The Indiana State Library opposite the Capital, at one-forty North Senate Avenue. The facility houses over thirty-four thousand volumes about Indiana or by Indiana writers. The library and the genealogy department are open Monday through Friday, eight o’clock until four-thirty, eight-thirty until four on Saturday. Closed Sunday, as well as state and federal holidays. Tours are available by appointment.”  

“That’s exactly right, sir. The third Saturday in May,” I said, “at the Shelby County Fairgrounds – I think that’s the most exciting time of the year in Indianapolis. Don’t you agree, sir?”  

“No, I do not agree. The third Saturday in May is the Shelby County Blue River Dulcimer Festival. If you think local and national dulcimer players giving concerts and workshops is exciting, instead of merely charming, then you are an even more peculiar young man than I have heretofore thought.”  

I shut up for a while and finished my sandwich.  

As I was licking my fingers, Rodion Romanovich said, “You do know what a dulcimer is, do you not, Mr. Thomas?”  

“A dulcimer,” I said, “is a trapezoidal zither with metal strings that are struck with light hammers.”  

He seemed amused, in spite of his dour expression. “I will wager the definition reads that way word for word in the dictionary.”  

I said nothing, just licked the rest of my fingers.    


This scene continues for another 56 lines of dialogue before it ends with a chapter break. Here is the end of the chapter:    


A sudden great tolling of bells shook through the old abbey, as though Rodion Romanovich had arranged for this clangorous performance to mock me for being so gullible. The bells were rung for a variety of services in the new abbey, but seldom here and never at this hour.  

Frowning, Sister Regina Marie looked up at the ceiling and then in the direction of the convent church and bell tower.“Oh, dear. Do you think Brother Constantine is back?”  

Brother Constantine, the dead monk, the infamous suicide who lingers stubbornly in this world.  

“Excuse me, Sister,” I said, and I hurried out of the kitchen, digging in a pocket of my jeans for my universal key.  

Chapter ends.

What are some important differences between the first selection, the unnamed author, versus the one by Dean Koontz?

A) Koontz moves into the scene.

Odd Thomas is doing stuff, things happen, and he moves between that scene and this scene. There aren’t a lot of words devoted to the transition, but it is there. In Novel A, the protagonist is in her home and then boom! she is in the restaurant, and there is no transition at all. Nothing. She does not move through space or time to get from one location to another location. The waiter appears from thin air and then exists in a vacuum until the next paragraph.

B) Koontz moves out of the scene.

Odd Thomas has this conversation with the Russian, both of them trying to figure out what the other is doing at this monastery, and then this bell rings when it shouldn’t and this causes Odd to move from this scene to the next scene. That is, the scene ends for a reason and it moves – transitions – to the next scene, with the protagonist moving through time and space, which keeps the reader oriented in the world. In Novel A, the scene just ends. Nothing happens to cause it to end. It doesn’t draw to a conclusion. It just stops.

Let me add that I understand this, because getting out of a conversation can be hard. I’m like, OMG, enough already, how can I shut these characters UP so we can move ON??? But the thing is, just because it’s sometimes difficult to end a conversation and close a scene doesn’t mean that the author should just stop at some random point without actually doing this.

Failures of transitions is a serious failure of writing craft. Also, it’s not a failure that I remember seeing before in, for example, workshop entries. I did not search through Novel A to find this scene, by the way. I flipped through it looking for a longish section of dialogue, of which there are a lot, and this is the first one I came to. I don’t know whether this failure to include a transition was characteristic in this book, but I didn’t notice this problem until I snipped this scene out and thought about where to begin it and also noticed how it ended. I sure noticed it at that point.

The author of Novel A needs to take a good look at how skilled authors open and close scenes, and how skilled authors do transitions between scenes, and realize that these are things that need to work, that not bothering with transitions is a problem.

C) Koontz sets the scene.

Neither author does much with the setting once the dialogue begins, though both authors do keep the reader grounded in the scene. But Koontz provides far more of a sense of place as he sets the scene and then he re-establishes the setting as he moves out of the scene. He also takes a second to remind the reader that Brother Constantine is a ghost because names are tricky and readers forget and that spoils the story, so quick reminders, worked in as smoothly as possible, are a good idea.

But back to setting. The setting in Brother Odd is not only far more present, it is also more interesting. But the more important difference is that the setting is there. Odd Thomas moves toward this scene and then he arrives at this place, and it’s a real place that is really there, and when something happens to end the scene, this thing happens in a real place that is really there and Odd moves through a world that is really there toward the next scene.

There is no real sense of the restaurant in the first snippet. There is basically no real location in which the dialogue is occurring. To me, this is right on the edge of a white room setting. Not quite, but perilously close. Putting in the scenery and putting in the transitions are basically the same thing, or at least they overlap a lot. Although in theory one could draw the setting while largely skipping the transition – think of an author who likes description writing a novel where the protagonist teleports, for example – I do think concentrating on putting in transitions would also require drawing in the setting. Therefore, that’s something Author A ought to concentrate on because it would solve multiple problems at once.

D) Koontz writes far more entertaining dialogue with way more of a sense of character.

In Novel A, a lot of the conversation is banal. The rest provides information to the reader so the plot can move forward. The dialogue isn’t totally wooden, but it’s not particularly clever or fun either.

I will add that there is a lot of handwavy magic biology in Novel A. I do try not to fret when a fiction author doesn’t know what they’re talking about when they start doing handwavy fake biology in a novel, but I admit this is not my favorite thing. I’m therefore biased against Novel A because the handwavy magic biology was epically ridiculous, and it was ridiculous in a way I especially dislike, plus the story was ultra preachy MESSAGE FIC !!!! with all the exclamation points, which I also especially dislike. Plus I hated the message, which I think is based on a wildly wrong idea about the natural world; and I loathed the theme, which can be summed up as “Too bad about the 7.75 billion eggs we just broke, but who really cares about eggs anyway? Here enjoy this nice omelet.”

But none of that is important to the question of whether the dialogue is effective or not really effective. I mean, I’ve seen exactly the same ultra-preachy message fic with the same exact message and theme done by a far more skilled author, and I despised that too, so I’m setting all that aside and trying to separate all these bigger issues from questions about sentence- and scene-level craft.

So, objectively speaking, I do think the dialogue in Novel A is using a lot of fairly boring conversation to do … not much. The dialogue is doing a little bit of characterization, a little bit of building the relationship, but mostly it’s doing plot setup by conveying information to the reader, and even if I loved the information that was being conveyed, this would still be a lot of fairly boring conversation to convey that information.

The use of words in all-caps is fine in social media, fine in blog posts, fine in emails, and really amateurish in novels. It’s as amateurish as putting in !?!!? as punctuation. Did anybody notice the incorrect use of an ellipsis when someone was interrupted? If someone breaks off suddenly, that should be a dash. This is small stuff, I realize.

Koontz does more of an intro, but once the dialogue begins, the proportion of dialogue to everything else is really similar, which is why I picked this selection to contrast with Novel A. I’d been keeping an eye out for a while for a novel with the same basic use of dialogue and saw it in a Dean Koontz novel I read recently, so I thought, keen, here’s a chance to look at what doesn’t work in Novel A compared to a similar use of dialogue in Novel B.

Because there’s so much dialogue with minimal tags and interruptions, this provides a chance to ask: what is Koontz actually doing that makes his scene better? With the dialogue specifically, not with transitions and setting the scene, just with the dialogue?

–It’s a lot more clever. I mean, it just is. A lot of the lines are not just serviceable, but fun.

 When in time I return to Indianapolis, I will once again be a full and complete Hoosier. The dialogue here is funny. It also contributes to characterization, not so much via what the characters are saying, but through their reactions to each other and their style.

–There’s a lot more subtext, with all kinds of verbal sparring that is not spelled out. It’s clear just from this snippet that neither character believes the other one is who he says he is. Neither is trying to hide the fact that they are both sure the other is lying. (And they’re both right, by the way.) This is certainly clear in context, but I think it’s also clear here, with almost all the context missing.

I think those are the two things that make the second selection a lot better than the first. The Odd Thomas selection isn’t doing much to move the plot forward (it’s doing a little, but that’s hard to tell from this snippet.) But it is doing other things, and it’s doing them well.

What can dialogue do? What are the functions of dialogue?

(1) build character, (2) build character relationships, (3) contribute to tension, (4) move the plot forward, (5) contribute to worldbuilding, (6) provide information to the reader, (7) evoke some emotional response from the reader, (8) contribute to mood and tone, and/or (9) be clever, witty, fun, or meaningful. Maybe dialogue can do other things as well; this is what I thought of. I know some of those functions blur together.

In Novel A, what is the dialogue doing? It’s doing a little bit with building character and character relationships, a lot with providing information to the reader. I think tone is basically absent in this selection, and the world is barely there. While the dialogue is not totally wooden, it’s pretty banal and boring.

In the second selection, the dialogue is building character and character relationships, contributing to tension, contributing to mood and tone, and a tiny bit of moving the plot forward, plus it’s witty and fun. Plus there is much more sense of place, mostly done before the dialogue begins. The plot is moved forward before and after the dialogue, as is clear from the ending of the chapter – the bell ringing gets the plot, which had almost paused, moving again.

And what I think went wrong with Novel A was way too much focus on conveying information and moving the plot via dialogue, with almost no attention to anything else. That’s my overall impression. And I think if the main purpose of the dialogue is to move the plot by conveying information to the reader, if the dialogue isn’t doing much else, that could be what makes characters seem like they are actually just facades that go through the motions of being characters so that the author can advance the plot or convey information to the reader via dialogue.

And I guess what I’m therefore suggesting is that dialogue had better do something else important that is not that, or the reader is likely to get bored. I don’t think it matters what information is being conveyed. Even if it’s crucial to the plot and intrinsically interesting, I think the dialogue had better be doing other things in addition, and doing these other things effectively. Usually that’s building characters and relationships, because that’s pretty much always happening at least a little when characters are talking to each other. So I think dialogue had better do that effectively, and I think the first novel, Novel A, was gesturing in that direction but not really doing much effective with that. Or if not that, then the dialogue needs to do something effective with mood, tone, wit, or theme, and I think Novel A didn’t do anything at all with that.

For me personally, dialogue is pretty important, and if the dialogue is witty enough, I can and sometimes do overlook other weaknesses. For Koontz, the dialogue is generally overly witty – I mean unrealistically witty – and it’s witty in the same way for a lot of his books, which is one reason his books will seem like cookie cutter books if you read a bunch of them in a row. But it’s definitely witty and fun.

Maybe for other readers, this isn’t so important … but on the other hand, think of how popular Dean Koontz is! He’s sold millions and millions of copies of his hundred novels. He’s had more than a handful of books hit the NYT bestseller list. Lots of readers love his books, or at least buy and read his books, and what has he got going for him? Fast pace, which is created by lots of fast-to-read dialogue, lots of action, and short chapters with engaging intros and tense endings. Plus Koontz offers good vs evil plots where the good guys win. That’s his basic formula.

His plotting is often pretty stupid (speaking of stupid handwavy science-y nonsense; in all Horror, purely supernatural evil things are likely to be a lot less silly than science-y evil things). Lots of readers overlook silly plot elements, but it helps if the author gives them reasons to overlook those elements, and what reasons does Koontz offer? The fast pace and the good guys winning, and for a really dialogue-heavy style such as Koontz uses, the dialogue is absolutely crucial for his success. That’s what I think, and I think the author of Novel A has a big job ahead of them if they want to improve their writing craft, and they could do a lot worse than look at very popular authors who write very dialogue-heavy novels. Koontz would be ideal.

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Poetry Thursday: It’s Suddenly Summer

June arrived, and boom! Abruptly it is hot. Thanks to Elaine’s Teen because it was nice to have a poem waiting for this moment:

***

An Ode to Summer by Alfred Noyes

Now like a pageant of the Golden Year
In rich memorial pomp the hours go by,
With rose-embroidered flags unfurled
And tasselled bugles calling through the world
Wake, for your hope draws near!
Wake, for in each soft porch of azure sky,
Seen through each arch of pale green leaves, the Gate
Of Eden swings apart for Summer’s royal state.

Ah, when the Spirit of the moving scene
Has entered in, the splendour will be spent!
The flutes will cease, the gates will close;
Only the scattered crimson of the rose,
The wild wood’s hapless queen,
Dis-kingdomed, will declare the way he went;
And, in a little while, her court will go,
Pass like a cloud and leave no trace on earth below.

Tell us no more of Autumn, the slow gold
Of fruitage ripening in a world’s decay,
The falling leaves, the moist rich breath
Of woods that swoon and crumble into death
Over the gorgeous mould:
Give us the flash and scent of keen-edged May
Where wastes that bear no harvest yield their bloom,
Rude crofts of flowering nettle, bents of yellow broom.

The very reeds and sedges of the fen
Open their hearts and blossom to the sky;
The wild thyme on the mountain’s knees
Unrolls its purple market to the bees;
Unharvested of men
The Traveller’s Joy can only smile and die.
Joy, joy alone the throbbing whitethroats bring,
Joy to themselves and heaven! They were but born to sing!

And see, between the northern-scented pines,
The whole sweet summer sharpens to a glow!
See, as the well-spring plashes cool
Over a shadowy green fern-fretted pool
The mystic sunbeam shines
For one mad moment on a breast of snow
A warm white shoulder and a glowing arm
Up-flung, where some swift Undine sinks in shy alarm.

And if she were not all a dream, and lent
Life for a little to your own desire,
Oh, lover in the hawthorn lane,
Dream not you hold her, or you dream in vain!
The violet, spray-besprent
When from that plunge the rainbows flashed like fire,
Will scarce more swiftly lose its happy dew
Than eyes which Undine haunts will cease to shine on you.

What though the throstle pour his heart away,
A happy spendthrift of uncounted gold,
Swinging upon a blossomed briar
With soft throat lifted in a wild desire
To make the world his may.
Ever the pageant through the gates is rolled
Further away; in vain the rich notes throng
Flooding the mellow noon with wave on wave of song.

The feathery meadows like a lilac sea,
Knee-deep, with honeyed clover, red and white,
Roll billowing: the crisp clouds pass
Trailing their soft blue shadows o’er the grass;
The skylark, mad with glee,
Quivers, up, up, to lose himself in light;
And, through the forest, like a fairy dream
Through some dark mind, the ferns in branching beauty stream.

Enough of joy! A little respite lend,
Summer, fair god that hast so little heed
Of these that serve thee but to die,
Mere trappings of thy tragic pageantry!
Show us the end, the end!
We too, with human hearts that break and bleed,
March to the night that rounds their fleeting hour,
And feel we, too, perchance but serve some loftier Power.

O that our hearts might pass away with thee,
Burning and pierced and full of thy sweet pain,
Burst through the gates with thy swift soul,
Hunt thy most white perfection to the goal,
Nor wait, once more to see
Thy chaliced lilies rotting in the rain,
Thy ragged yellowing banners idly hung
In woods that have forgotten all the songs we sung!

Peace! Like a pageant of the Golden Year
In rich memorial pomp the hours go by,
With rose-embroidered flags unfurled
And tasselled bugles calling through the world
Wake, for your hope draws near!
Wake, for in each soft porch of azure sky,
Seen through each arch of pale green leaves, the Gate
Of Eden swings apart for Summer’s royal state.

Not wait! Forgive, forgive that feeble cry
Of blinded passion all unworthy thee!
For here the spirit of man may claim
A loftier vision and a nobler aim
Than e’er was born to die:
Man only, of earth, throned on Eternity,
 From his own sure abiding-place can mark
How earth’s great golden dreams go past into the dark.

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We Don’t Understand Anything, Apparently

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Fun with Punctuation

Here’s a good post: Punctuation Changes Meaning.

This topic is always fun, with examples such as

“Most of the time, travelers worry about their luggage.”

“Most of the time travelers worry about their luggage.”

to illustrate the importance of punctuation. I didn’t come up with the time traveler example, which is too bad, because whoever did deserves credit for the most fun comma usage example I’ve ever seen. But the linked post goes one better and provides a set of two complete paragraphs with the same words but totally opposite meaning because of punctuation. This is just entertaining, so here:

Dear John,
I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we’re apart. I can be forever happy–will you let me be yours?
Jane

and now here:

Dear John,
I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior! You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn! For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we’re apart, I can be happy. Will you let me be?
Jane

I just think that’s wonderful. I’d enjoy using that in a class if I were an English teacher. The first time I mentioned punctuation, up this would go on the board or screen or whatever people are using these days. Then perhaps I might provide a paragraph that has zero punctuation and suggest trying to punctuate it. I see that when I search for “paragraphs without punctuation,” the examples given are pretty boring. If you were going to do this kind of exercise with students, wouldn’t you like to pick a neat paragraph? Fortunately, here’s a blog post that showcases a small number of great paragraphs, including this one, although of course the original version is punctuated, whereas I’m taking the punctuation out to see how it looks:

He was most fifty and he looked it his hair was long and tangled and greasy and hung down and you could see his eyes shining through like he was behind vines it was all black no gray so was his long mixed up whiskers there warnt no color in his face where his face showed it was white not like another mans white but a white to make a body sick a white to make a body’s flesh crawl a tree toad white a fish belly white as for his clothes just rags, that was all he had one ankle resting on tother knee; the boot on that foot was busted and two of his toes stuck through and he worked them now and then His hat was laying on the floor an old black slouch with the top caved in like a lid.

Anybody recognize that? That’s from Huckleberry Finn. I like it because it needs got more than just periods and the occasional comma, but more than that, because it’s lively and vivid.

It would be neat to find or create a paragraph where you could completely change the meaning via the punctuation, but that’s a lot harder. I took a (brief, casual) stab at it, and couldn’t come up with anything nearly as great as that Dear John letter.

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Update: Finished, Whew!

I think I’m closing in on substantive revisions. Over the next day or so, I will fiddle with this and that, but I really think and hope I’m mostly through revising big stuff and therefore it will all truly be fiddly from here on.

I’m not at all sure I will be through the proofing process by the middle of the month — that seems unlikely, sigh — so the release date on my Patreon will probably be at the end of the month, with the release on Amazon set for the middle of July (which I do not like, because there are reasons it’s better to release a new book at the beginning of a month) OR at the beginning of August (which I do not like because, I mean, August is a long way away.)

This uncertainty means I’m hesitating about picking a preorder date for Amazon. By the end of this week, I will bite that bullet and choose a release date and set up the preorder. If I don’t release the whole book at my Patreon by June 17, then I’ll keep going with a chapter a week for a couple more weeks, with the expectation that I’ll be releasing the whole book there by the end of the month.

Meanwhile, just in case any of you wondered, yes, comments from early readers are important, and I rewrote one of the late chapters almost completely. I was having trouble seeing what the problems were there, and this is a big, big thing comments do — not just tell me, “Something seems unclear” but tell me, “Here is exactly what is unclear.” Thus, I hope everything is now clear.

Naturally revision added length, as is typical, and the book is now 230,000 words, which is annoying, and I would absolutely cut it in half and thus justify taking six months to write it, except I REALLY do not want to do that. Therefore, Part I: the journey through the winter country and a lot of relationship stuff. Part II: the starlit country and much more plot stuff. And relationship stuff keeps happening, yes, but there are more exciting events.

I would bet that various readers prefer one part over the other, depending on how important the relationships are to them compared to seeing new lands, meeting new people, and encountering problems. As a relationship reader (and writer), I really enjoyed Part I, though now that I’m through revision, I’m also pretty satisfied with Part II and like the ending a lot better.

The NEXT book will be MUCH easier, as fairly soon I will do stuff to cut the cast of characters down A LOT MORE and then everything will become far easier.

Everyone is also going to want to know the following:

What was happening in the winter country that caused this big thing to happen in the starlit lands?

And the answer is, I don’t know, but a great idea has occurred to me, plus I hope an associated idea, and therefore I suspect we will find that out. This would be Book 11 of the Tuyo series, which I hope will be a lot shorter and MUCH MUCH faster to write, and which will take place concurrently with Hedesa. That’s not a guarantee, but I think this is VERY likely because, I mean, we honestly do need to know what the heck was happening in the winter country while the events in Hedesa were unrolling. It’s a real mystery!

So I think we’ll see a shorter side-novel in the Tuyo world before we pick up where Hedesa leaves off. That’s my best guess right now.

Meanwhile, cute picture of no-longer-tiny Tiny Boy Four, aka Piolo, who will be with me for another couple of weeks before his people return. He clung to this little hedgehog toy for approximately 25 minutes before he let it go.

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Recent Reading: The Good Guy by Dean Koontz

kay, so decades ago I read a lot of books by Koontz. Later, I got rid of most of them, but I kept, I don’t know, half a dozen or so because I liked them enough I thought I’d reread them. (Which I did.) And then later I read one of the Odd Thomas books because I picked it up somewhere, and I liked it well enough to read that whole series. I don’t think the series is flawless, but still, I did like it – I think some of the Odd Thomas books are probably among Koontz’s best.

So then I picked up The Good Guy in a used bookstore or something and put it on my TBR shelves. It came out in 2007, but I just read it now. This reminded me about everything the Koontz does well, plus everything he doesn’t do as well, so I thought I’d write a post about that. With spoilers, just so you know, but after all, the book has been out for 18 years, so most people who were planning to read it probably already have. Anyway, spoilers ahead!

Timothy Carrier is an ordinary guy who enjoys a beer after work. But tonight is no ordinary night. The jittery man sitting beside him has mistaken Tim for someone else – and passes him an envelope stuffed with cash and the photo of a pretty woman. Ten thousand now. The rest when she’s gone.

This is the part of the back cover text that’s accurate. The rest is a lot of vague “everything he thought he knew about himself will be challenged” and “must discover resources within himself” hogwash, because actually, no, Tim is perfectly clear about who he is and what personal resources he’s got to draw on. The line, “I have a certain set of skills” might drift through the reader’s mind at some point, and this is fairly accurate. This is kind of a Reacher scenario, because Tim basically wins every fight and saves everyone he has a reasonable chance of saving.

And this is the first important thing to know about Dean Kootz:

A) The good guys win.

Not just that, but everybody the reader desperately wants to live through the story does, in every novel. Dean Koontz has never, as far as I know, written Horror; he’s written Horror Lite. The reader can relax into a Koontz novel in a way that is impossible with Stephen King or a lot of other Horror authors, because the good guys win; the bad guys lose; the most important innocents are all right at the end; if there is a dog (pretty frequently there is a dog) the dog is fine; and true love prevails – usually true love is an important plot element. So you could also call these Cozy Horror, using various definitions of Cozy that include romance beats, which I think is accurate – though as a rule the protagonist isn’t a quirky female owner of a shop in a small town, so if that’s necessary for your personal definition of Cozy, then these don’t fit.

Oh, I should mention, this particular novel isn’t actually Horror at all, it’s a Thriller. And it’s Thriller Lite, because again, we know the good guys will win and the characters we most want not to die are safe. If you did a Venn diagram for Horror, Thriller, and SF, Koontz would rather often be found in the intersections. Lightning, for example, is a thriller with time travel, so it’s a Thriller/SF – the time travel is clever and well done, by the way, and if someone wanted to read just one Koontz title to see what they thought of it, Lightning would be a good choice. The Good Guy is pure Thriller, and not one of Koontz’s best, though I have to say, with more than a hundred books out, that’s not as strong a statement as it might be.

Regardless, the certainty that the most important innocent characters will be fine makes Koontz a really interesting contrast to Stephen King, because among other things these two authors do differently, at least for a while there, in a King novel, you could absolutely, with total assurance, count on some nice, innocent (female) character dying near the end, despite every possible attempt to save her. This is Tearjerker Girl, whom I have mentioned before, and she is not a character, really. She is a transparent manipulation of the reader, and she is the reason I stopped reading King novels twenty years ago, because she was always present and entirely identifiable from the first second she stepped on stage. So with a King novel, the reader says, “Oh, there’s Doomed Tearjerker Girl,” while with Koontz, the reader says, “I’m so glad I know FOR SURE Tim’s mother won’t be seriously harmed, whew.” So this is a very different reading experience, and obviously I much prefer Koontz even though I think King is objectively a significantly better writer.

B) Koontz leans on dialogue.

While both Dean Koontz and Stephen King are good at dialogue, Koontz really leans hard on snappy dialogue to carry the story. In this case, with a Thriller, the setting is contemporary, so the need for description is much less than if Koontz had been writing Horror and needing to describe grotesque scenery or monsters, and therefore in this book, honestly, the dialogue is often doing almost all the heavy lifting. Koontz is, as I say, good at dialogue, so this is fine. I should do a post about dialogue-heavy scenes that work vs dialogue-heavy scenes that are basically white rooms, because if someone less skilled tried this, I think the white room would be a potential failure mode.

Also, as a side note, something else that is also extremely characteristic – compared to King, Koontz has MUCH less of a potty mouth and MUCH less of an inclination to describe bathroom-related nastiness, and I have to say, I do prefer Koontz for that reason too, though, I mean, it’s a minor point compared to character mortality.

But let’s look at a snippet of dialogue:

After an enjoyable conversation and a satisfying meal, Tim said, “I’m going to need your gun.”

“If you don’t have money, I’ll pay. There’s no need to shoot our way out of here.”

“Well, there might be,” he said.

“You mean the white Chevy sedan in the parking lot.”

Surprised, he said, “I guess writers are pretty observant.”

“Not in my experience. How did he find us? Was the sonofabitch there somewhere when we stopped in the vacant lot? He must have followed us from there.”

“I can’t see the license plate. Maybe this isn’t him. Just a similar car.”

“Yeah right. Maybe it’s Peter, Paul, and Mary.”

Tim said, “I’d like you to leave ahead of me, but by the back door, through the kitchen.”

“That’s what I usually say to a date.”

“There’s an alley behind this place. Turn right, run to the end of the block. I’ll pick you up there.”

And so on, this is a random snippet; I literally just flipped the book open and started typing. How much scenery is there in this snippet? I didn’t want to type this much, but there are 26 lines of dialogue here with just two (short) lines of description. This story is REALLY dialogue heavy, and that’s something I don’t think I really noticed before. I mean, it’s been a long time since I read anything by Koontz, so I think maybe I didn’t notice as much about what he was doing last time I read one of his books. Regardless, this has got to produce a fast-paced feel to the story, and I hereby vote for this as one contributing factor for Koontz’s popularity.

Also, yes, obviously, the characters are way more inclined toward clever quips while in deadly danger than might perhaps be realistic. This is extremely typical, and when you see comments about Koontz characters all being the same, I think it’s because they all, or a huge proportion at least, talk like this, quick and witty. I personally kind of enjoy that even if it’s handled almost exactly the same way in a lot of Koontz books, and I bet I’m not the only reader who does, so I bet this is another reason for Koontz’s popularity.

I’m not saying there’s zero scenery, because that wouldn’t work, of course. The details are clever and eye-catching, which probably reduces the need for all that much description. Once you say the wall between the kitchen and garage has been removed so a classic car is kind of in the kitchen, and you’ve had your protagonist pause in surprise to think about this, then you’ve set a scene so memorably that you probably don’t need to do a lot more with description – as long as you move the action along with dialogue.

C) So, pacing.

Honestly, there’s not a lot to this particular story. It’s thoroughly straightforward. Somebody mistakes Tim for a hitman and passes him the envelope with cash and the photo of the intended victim; Tim heads straight for her – the address is included – and warns her, and the two of them are on the run from then on. They sure don’t get a lot of sleep for a couple days. The bad guy isn’t a single assassin, he’s a single assassin with a support team and he keeps tracking Tim and Linda faster than would seem reasonable, except that Koontz makes it pretty believable.

So it’s basically one narrow escape after another, until the bad guy finds out where Tim’s mother lives and uses her to pull Tim toward him.

This is Koontz raising the stakes, and I think the reason he did that is because the good guys keep winning every encounter without any serious damage, which is fine, and I’m happy this is Thriller Lite, but after this happens enough times, the pattern is also potentially going to let the reader relax too far. I think bringing Tim’s mom into the story worked well to punch up the stakes and make the ending more thrilling, but it was nice to know that Koontz would never do anything horrible to the mom – she’s a great mom and a great character – just as he wouldn’t kill the dog. (There’s a dog, and she is also fine an the end.)

The pacing is also exaggerated by shortening the chapters. Many chapters are about four pages long, and the pages have generous spacing for the text. This is practically a novella, because although it’s 450 pp, the line spacing is so generous that it would really be more like 225 pp – maybe a little more, but this looks close to double-spaced to me.

And, one more thing causes the pacing to seem fast. The assassin is not that big a problem; if there is one assassin after you and you killed him, boom, problem solved. But what we have here is the support team, which means someone wants to kill Linda for some reason that’s unusual. This isn’t a disgruntled ex or anything. This is a mystery. Why why why is someone pouring resources into killing Linda?

And the reason is rather thin, imo, but it basically doesn’t matter, because once the assassin is dead, Koontz kind of handles the big stuff in an epilogue. He doesn’t call it an epilogue, but it acts like that. In this ending, Koontz compresses time and summarizes events and shows just tiny snippets, and as a result, the story is structured like this:

Setup …. Fast Paced Cat And Mouse Game …. Good Guys Win …. Epilogue, The End

And I think that one result of compressing time at the end is that the actual story is the cat-and-mouse game with the assassin and neither the author nor the reader is all that interested in the political stuff that led to all this trouble. This can be described in the vaguest possible way, because all you need is closure. Koontz is using these final epilogue-ish chapters to tell the reader – and I do mean tell rather than show – “Here you go, everyone lives happily ever after, the bad guys who were responsible for all this have also come to justice.” But that isn’t part of the actual story, so he doesn’t dwell on that at all, only just enough to hand that reassurance to the reader.

I think that works rather well, even though a compressed-time report of a happy ending or just resolution could be a real flaw in a different book. This is not, for example, a political thriller, because the political machinations are almost completely elided. This is the sort of thing that pulls the story out of being something other than a quick and clever beach read or airport novel – it’s simplicity and its fast pace.

D) Characters.

This is also a beach read / airport novel because the characters are flat as pancakes.

Tim is a hero. He is the Hero Archetype. We don’t find out his backstory until very close to the end, but nothing about it is surprising when we do find out about it. Linda is actually a bit less flat. As a side note, her tragic backstory involves growing up at the time of the Satanic Panic and her parents were running a daycare at the time, and there you go, that’s a great way to create a tragic backstory.

This particularly struck me because in the first child abuse case that was presented to the grand jury, which I’m still a part of for the next couple months, but the point is, when the assistant prosecutor presented her brief summary of the case, I did raise my hand and ask, “So, all of us over a certain age remember the Satanic Panic era, yes? And I would sort of like to know that current procedures prevent that kind of problem, so can you tell us about that?”

My impression is that no one else on the grand jury actually knew anything about that, which does surprise me, because it wasn’t that long ago. I mean, forty years or so, but a lot of us are easily old enough to remember this clearly, so I’d have thought more people would remember that revolting hysteria and how it destroyed the lives of many innocent people, including, no doubt, many of the children in whose minds false memories were created by clueless or uncaring prosecutors and psychiatrists. Anyway, yes, procedures are now in place that should prevent the creation of false memories in children, and at least in this county, I think that those procedures are followed. I don’t know that for a fact; I just got that strong impression. I would have significantly less faith in that in a big city, probably. I just thought of all this because of the female lead’s backstory. I don’t think backstory alone gives a character any kind of depth, but in this case, it kind of does because of the way Koontz handles her, making her the sort of character who can overcome a lot and recover from deep emotional bitterness.

But she’s still flat. Just not as flat. Tim is the Hero Archetype, Linda is … the plucky woman who overcomes tragedy without losing hope, let’s say, which is not as archetypal, but not rare. The cop friend is The Good Cop, his boss is The Boss Who Cooperates With Bad Guys, the feds are Bad Feds.

Also, this is a story with villain pov scenes, though Koontz handles this in a way that isn’t too intensely disagreeable. The bad guy assassin is just soooooo weird and crazy. Also – this is interesting – the assassin has no memory of his childhood, and this is the exact opposite of trying to get the reader to sympathize with a bad guy because of his Tragic Backstory. This is super interesting in light of my recent post about does-understanding-the-villain-force-reader-sympathy, because it’s sort of like Koontz thought, “How can I make SURE the reader does not sympathize with my villain?” and then stripped out any hint of a backstory. So this is one reason the villain pov didn’t bother me here – this villain is weird, while the kind of villain who bothers me most is petty, selfish, self-righteously stupid, cowardly, cruel, and also more realistic. Also, we see the assassin kill people, but we don’t see him torture anybody, which reduces the awfulness of his pov scenes. Also, those scenes are short. This is a book with really short chapters, remember.

Tim’s mom is a very minor character who appears just toward the end, and she is fantastic. We barely see her, but we get a very clear impression of her. I hereby recommend her as an example of a minor secondary character who is drawn quickly and clearly. Also, when we first see her, she is making an apple pie. Raise your hand if you think that’s pure chance. Anybody? I think this is Koontz saying, “This is a great family, a family with old-fashioned virtues, look, she is making an apple pie.” This is also a way of setting up quintessential, archetypical normal life, which is then disrupted by the intrusion of evil.

E) Coherence.

So, speaking of evil, I think Koontz is an fine example of an author who has deep convictions and puts those into his novels, usually integrated into the story enough that he doesn’t come across as preaching a message, but certainly there are obvious moments where the Message comes through pretty clearly. I mostly agree with him – the Satanic Panic was inexcusable on several levels, so when Koontz indicates he believes this, I nod: Yes, Author, you’re right, that was a disgraceful episode that showcases a serious moral and cognitive failure at every level of society. Yes, I agree that society is still at risk of this exact kind of failure because human nature includes a strong tendency toward stupid, vicious mob hysteria. But it’s a pretty clear Message, and one reason I think Koontz can get away with this is that the Message bits are brief. He’s keeping the pace so fast, it’s a couple lines now and then, not a monologue. AND because he is good at pointing to the Message in a way that the reader is probably going to agree with. The Satanic Panic was utterly disgraceful; it’s hard not to agree with that, because it was.

My impression – if I were writing a thesis about Koontz as an author, I would read books published at ten-year intervals and look for this – but my impression is that Koontz, like Mark Twain and Terry Pratchett, has become far more angry about institutionalized stupidity, corruption, and injustice over time. I think this comes through clearly in his later books, and I just don’t remember it from his early works – but I was younger, so I might have missed it.

Koontz also has deep religious beliefs. I mean, I don’t know that for a fact, I’m just sure of it from reading his books. All right, Google, tell me about Dean Koontz … yes, he converted to Catholicism way back when. Well, I think that shows quite clearly, though even when the story metaphysics is explicit, it’s often thoroughly divergent from real-world Catholicism, while more often story metaphysics isn’t explicit at all. But I think his own beliefs structure the themes underlying at least his later books and provide a deeper level of thematic coherence that would otherwise be lacking. I’m not sure this is as true of his early books, but I think it’s very clear in his later books. AND, one of those beliefs is that good should triumph over evil – not only should, but will, in the end.

So I don’t think he handles his stories the way he does because he’s deliberately trying to give readers what they want and hit plot points that will make his books popular – which evidently is how Lee Child, the author of the Reacher books, did it. I think Koontz really believes this is how the world should work, and on the deepest level how it does work. I think that’s why in his novels the good guys always win and innocence is always protected and the dog always lives through the story. And I think that’s one reason I prefer his later books to his earlier ones, and why I massively prefer his books to King’s, even though I do think King is the better writer in a lot of ways. Not in every way, because as I said above, I think King is much more transparently manipulative of the reader than he should be, more so than Koontz, or maybe just in ways I particularly detest. But if I were picking one or the other as “better,” then I’d say King is better, even though I like Koontz much more.

King is better at description, does far more characterization, and is massively better at creating distinct worlds. I think actually all of that boils down to: Stephen King is not all about pacing and because he can and does slow down, he can pour more depth of description and characterization into his novels. A lot more, generally speaking. And then he does something like having Roland let the kid fall to his death in the Dark Tower series because gosh, one must have priorities, and I recoil in revulsion and stop reading the series. Koontz would never in a million years have his protagonist make that decision. That right there is a big, big reason I prefer Koontz.

Overall, I think a novice writer could do worse than read a handful of Koontz novels and think hard about story setup, pacing, and the use of dialogue as the primary vehicle for everything else in the story. I wouldn’t necessarily pick The Good Guy for that. I’d pick a couple of the famous ones, such as Watchers, and also Lightning, and definitely at least a couple of the Odd Thomas series.

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