July 24, 2006
Although "Get a life!" is good advice, what I'm actually thinking about is the proportions an author uses in writing fiction. I'm currently reading Janet Evanovich's "11 On Top," and it's fun, although I find myself reading it with a tad bit of weariness. This is a problem, I think, with books built less on plot and more on schitck and seems to strike funny books harder--the jokes have a sameness to them. Janet does a great job with this book...

Anyway, staying focused. The point being, if you took the plot of this book, at least the MYSTERY plot, you'd go about 2 pages. The other 300+ pages are devoted to Stephanie Plum's family, her love life, her jobs (in this case not being a bounty hunter), her friends, her hair, her diet... you get the drift. In my upcoming novel, THE DEVIL'S PITCHFORK (never let it be said that I miss an opportunity to plug my title), if you took everything devoted specifically to Derek Stillwater's personal life, it would probably be about 2 pages and the plot would take up the rest.

Which of us is right?

Neither or both. I'm writing flat-out thrillers with very tight timeframes. Derek's first appearance is when he's kayaking on the Chesapeake Bay and is picked up by a Coast Guard helicopter. Pretty much after that, any personal life is done in extremely brief flashbacks or backstory. Hopefully there's enough to whet the appetite of the reader for more, to give a good strong sense of the character and his quirks, to give a sense of what makes him tick. But much of what Derek's about is his job, and his job is to prevent and/or investigate bioterrorism and chemical tererorism.

Janet, on the other hand, is selling something very different than I am. She's selling the comedy of Stephanie Plum's life. The fact that she's also a goofy bounty hunter is the rod the hangers and clothing of her life are hung on, but the people buying the books presumably don't buy them for the mysteries, exactly, but to watch Stephanie muddle through her life.

A character's life and backstory is important. But how much time you spend on various things has as much to do with pace and plot and characterization--what it is you're trying to do. Critics often hammer thrillers for not enough character development. The problem, often, is that thrillers are often about fast pace and a moving plot, and if you slow things down for character development, you're no longer writing a thriller.

This all gets into a touchy area for me, actually. Last week I was listening to NPR in the car and listening to one author and two book critics on Diane Riehm's show talk about a recent bestseller, an award winning literary writer who wrote a mystery. None of them liked the book. But in talking about it, you got a sense of critics--not just these, but others who had reviewed the book--saying things along the lines of, "Her approach to the mystery expands the mystery beyond the confines of..."

The gist being, mysteries suck and she's so much better than that, she made it a better book. I often think these reviewers haven't read a mystery in 40 years, because there are tons of amazing mysteries and thrillers and crime novels that don't read like category mysteries of the 1940s and '50s.

What was interesting to me was all of the critics felt she had failed at what she was apparently trying to do--write a mystery. That the best part of the book was what she had built her earlier career on--character development and mainstream books--and the mystery aspect wasn't very good or very successful. One of them even suggested she should have jettisoned the mystery completely and the book wouldn't have been hurt at all.

I admit to a bias when I read a book that to me seems to have been written primarily so a so-called literary writer can be classified as something else. That's my problem and my tastes and reading are just eclectic enough that although I like plotted books within fairly recognizable genre categories, when an author successfully does something different, I can really enjoy it.

Ah well. It really is all about proportion and taste, isn't it?

Best,
Mark Terry