I want to follow up on what I wrote yesterday about the contrast between Dean Koontz’ early books and his later ones. I’m lukewarm about most of the early books, and I loathe at least one of them. But his more recent books are magnificent, and they get better and better, in my opinion.

This is a lesson (and an encouragement) for all aspiring writers.

When I was a kid, I meant to be an artist when I grew up. I wanted to draw or paint, or something. Be a cartoonist, or an illustrator or a commercial artist.

I drew incessantly. I drew behind my books during lectures in school (an 8 ½ by 11 sheet folded in half was my preferred canvas. It was easily hidden, and just about as much space as I could handle conceptually). I drew while watching TV in the evening.

But I was always frustrated with my drawing. I compared what I produced to what real artists did, and I knew mine fell short. And I never seemed to progress beyond certain limits. I never quite mastered proportion or perspective. I never learned to do hands well.

Then I started writing. And somehow that was different. I didn’t think I was as good as the published writers, but I never felt like I hit that wall. I felt as if I had control over words, in a way I didn’t have control over my pencil. Something told me I could pretty much go as far as I wanted with this thing.

The improvement in Dean Koontz’ books should be (it seems to me) an encouragement to everyone who wants to be a writer. There are doubtless others, but I personally don’t know of another author whose work exhibits such a clear upward learning curve…. Continue reading The learning curve →

Writer Lara Vapnyar teaches at City College in New York, and this NY Times article reports that “her students often turned in work filled with sex and gore. One assignment she gave them was to write about food and how characters responded to it, to teach them how preferences, memories and quirks could make up a personality on the page.

“‘Beginning writers often don’t give their characters enough particulars,’ she said. ‘Food is something that readers can understand.'”

Doesn’t this sound like a good assignment? I’ve wanted food in my stories ever since I read something about the rich diets found in French fairy tales. Take “La Belle et la Bête” or “Beauty and the Beast.” Belle is trapped in the castle and does not see her ugly suitor except over a meal. Of course, he’s so pathetic she finally gives in to him, and voila, a happy ending. What a great story.

I just finished Dean Koontz’ Icebound. This isn’t a review (it’s not my favorite of his work—it’s an early attempt to do an Alistair MacLean sort of book, originally published under a pseudonym. As a MacLean-type story, it’s long on action and suspense, short on characterization, making it not my sort of thing, overall), but it seemed to me an excellent example of plot-building in a sort of purified form.

You take a group of scientists and put them on the polar ice cap. They’re involved in an experimental project to blow a big chunk off the ice cap, creating an iceberg in order to study the feasibility of towing it southward, so as to provide fresh water for agriculture. In order to do this, they’ve just finished burying sixty shaped explosive charges deep in the ice. The next step, obviously, is to retreat as fast as possible to their base camp, miles away, and wait for the boom.

But just as they finish burying the last charge, there’s a huge earthquake. The area where they’re working becomes detached from the main ice cap, and our characters are trapped on a brand new iceberg with all those timed charges.

And then the worst ice storm in decades hits, making it impossible for ships or helicopters to evacuate them.

And then they discover they have a psychotic murderer in their midst.

That, friends, is how you raise the stakes in a story.

That’s plot in its rawest form. Put your characters in a horrible situation, then make it worse. And then make it worse again.

As I said, this is very pure plotting, very simple, done in primary colors. Your own story may deal with threats and struggles of much more subtle or internal nature. The conflict in your story may be an interpersonal struggle between business rivals or even friends. It might be the struggle of star-crossed lovers to overcome obstacles to their marriage. The conflict could even be within one character’s mind and soul.

But the principle remains the same. Some Hollywood mogul once gave his formula for an epic movie—“Start with an earthquake, then build from there.” You can call it escalation. You can call it, “Being mean to your characters.”

But it’s what plot is. It’s what keeps the reader interested.

For those of you waiting for word on my health, I got a report today. I do have an iron deficiency, for which I’ll have to take a supplement. And they’re going to schedule some charming tests in the near future to find out if I have an ulcer, or what.

Mark Steyn, in an article for MacLean’s, takes a filet knife to the “commissar” of the Canadian Human Rights commission (who is prosecuting him for hate speech), pointing out in wonderful style that she knows no more about history than she knows about liberty.



More on how not to write, below the fold: Continue reading When writers talk too much →