November 21, 2005
Years back, I read 4 or 5 novels by Dean Koontz. I recognized that he was a good writer. By good I mean that he was effective. He was engrossing. His ideas were interesting. He has a smooth, commercial style and he knows how to tell a good story.

But he didn't punch my buttons. I remember "Lightning" as being particularly good, and "The Watchers" was undoubtedly some sort of breakthrough book, but I haven't read Koontz in a long time.

People love Koontz, even with his current flap over his storytelling at "Men of Mystery" and the purported racism of his jokes. That's besides the point here and I don't want to get into it. I wasn't there. I don't know what he said. But the fact is, the guy's sold something like 300,000,000 of his books.

And by and large, his work doesn't work well enough for me to bother reading him, let alone buy his books.

As authors, there is not, as far as I can tell, a damn thing we can do about this. As a book reviewer, I occasionally read books that are terribly well written, very well executed, with interesting characters, a terrific plot and a real page-turning quality and yet... and yet, though they receive a good review from me, they did not appeal that much. And it's not always clear why.

This is probably that X Factor. It's everything. It's what isn't said as much as what is said. It's that extra "oomph" that puts books on the bestseller list. It's that same thing that makes the difference between a movie star and a character actor, or a has-been. Maybe it's charisma. Maybe it's personality. Maybe it's "presence." Whatever it is, some authors have it and some don't.

And people respond to different actors--and authors--different ways. Obviously I have a different response to Koontz than most. Many people don't respond to Stephen King that way.

Stephen King once commented something about being unable to see in his own writing, whether in the line or between the lines, whatever magic it was that his readers were finding. But it's there, clearly.

I have a suspicion that it's the author's personality and it's kind of inescapable. It's not just the word by word, line by line work, but all the things that go into "style" and "voice" and word choice and pacing.

Why does Paul Levine's work punch my buttons and John Grisham's doesn't? They both write legal thrillers, though Levine's are funny. Why do I like John Sandford so much, but although I can recognize Ed McBain's genius, he's not the author I turn to to fill my cop story fix?

It's a mystery. And I think that although we as writers can hone our craft and work and work and work, that X Factor, whatever it is, isn't something we can cultivate. We might acquire it somewhere along the way. And I suspect we can be successful at some level without it, but this strange thing that turns some writers into stars--and long-term stars at that, not flashes in the darkness--isn't something we can find. It has to find us. Or we're (and I don't include myself here) born with it.

Best,
Mark Terry