Writer’s Desk: Clancy’s Rules

The late and arguably great Tom Clancy—born this past week in 1947—was never going to be remembered as a stylist. The characters in his techno-thrillers like The Hunt for Red Octoberand Patriot Gamesgenerally talked alike (unless they were villains) and he was never good at setting a scene.

However, before bestseller bloat started turning his ever-denser plots into 1,000-page bores, he could crank out a perfectly good wargame scenario for the kind of readers who liked theorizing over who wou...