Roy Hunt's Blog
June 12, 2018
'Next' versus 'The Godfather'.
Another way to write the above title would be 'Character or Issue driven fiction: which do you prefer?' As a reader which do you prefer to read, or want to write, as an author/writer?
It took me a while to work this out; it took me a while to even spot the difference. When I say 'a while', think decades. The problem was, I stopped reading novels for almost twenty years.
It was the late Michael Crichton who got me going again, with 'Congo'.
But something puzzled me, on a subconscious level, like it wasn't at the surface, just something underneath that I was too lazy to drag out into the light of day, until I started writing myself. Why didn't I feel more sympathy for the characters? He was obviously a brilliant, massive writer with a brain like a Michelangelo or a Da Vinci. But still, something was wrong. I read 'Congo', 'State of Fear', 'Next' and the last one 'Micro' (He wrote way more than that though, about 17 and more under other names when he started out in college) found on his computer and published posthumously, but when one of the characters died in Micro, I felt nothing, but still the story line fascinated me. What was wrong with me? Well, nothing, it turns out, I was just, as that guy in the American government said, unaware of the things 'that I didn't even know that I didn't know'. As opposed to the 'known unknowns'.
I was a fan of Van Lustbader as well; Nicholas Linnear, the ninja, martial arts expert. I had massive sympathy for his wife Justine when she got stuck in Japan; he had his life, but what about hers?
And then there was Mario Puzo's 'The Godfather'. I defy you sit in that New York courtroom with Amerigo Bonasera, the undertaker, with his wife and not feel sympathy for him and outrage with the way those guys were going to walk free, after what they did to his daughter.
'What's after happening?' his wife asked.
'They have made fools of us', he replied, 'For justice we must go on our knees to Don Corleone'. (Not exact quote, I'm going from memory).
The thing is, it was character portrayal made the difference. Crichton spent so much time and energy on the issues, the environment in 'State of Fear', the evolution of genetics in 'Next' and the advances in nano-technology in 'Micro', that he had no time left, in my view, for character. His characters were cardboard portrayals of a type. The lab rat, the corporate CEO, the harassed detective, the journalist; but they didn't come across as real blood and flesh people. But Puzo's characters did and so largely, did Lustbader's. And that was it: issue driven stories or character driven.
Can you do both in the same novel? I'm not sure. But I know what I want, I want to focus on character driven, I want to front character and have issues in the background. I want readers to feel for my characters, like they could walk into a bar and talk with them.
That's why my second novel (ready for the editor by June), set in the 1980s, is so different to the first. I sat back and remembered I was almost a sixty year old man and asked myself, what drives me to read and write, why do I care? And the answer came back: pain, lust, want, greed, bravery, cowardice, sadness: all can be summed up in one word, Character; the human condition.
It took me a while to work this out; it took me a while to even spot the difference. When I say 'a while', think decades. The problem was, I stopped reading novels for almost twenty years.
It was the late Michael Crichton who got me going again, with 'Congo'.
But something puzzled me, on a subconscious level, like it wasn't at the surface, just something underneath that I was too lazy to drag out into the light of day, until I started writing myself. Why didn't I feel more sympathy for the characters? He was obviously a brilliant, massive writer with a brain like a Michelangelo or a Da Vinci. But still, something was wrong. I read 'Congo', 'State of Fear', 'Next' and the last one 'Micro' (He wrote way more than that though, about 17 and more under other names when he started out in college) found on his computer and published posthumously, but when one of the characters died in Micro, I felt nothing, but still the story line fascinated me. What was wrong with me? Well, nothing, it turns out, I was just, as that guy in the American government said, unaware of the things 'that I didn't even know that I didn't know'. As opposed to the 'known unknowns'.
I was a fan of Van Lustbader as well; Nicholas Linnear, the ninja, martial arts expert. I had massive sympathy for his wife Justine when she got stuck in Japan; he had his life, but what about hers?
And then there was Mario Puzo's 'The Godfather'. I defy you sit in that New York courtroom with Amerigo Bonasera, the undertaker, with his wife and not feel sympathy for him and outrage with the way those guys were going to walk free, after what they did to his daughter.
'What's after happening?' his wife asked.
'They have made fools of us', he replied, 'For justice we must go on our knees to Don Corleone'. (Not exact quote, I'm going from memory).
The thing is, it was character portrayal made the difference. Crichton spent so much time and energy on the issues, the environment in 'State of Fear', the evolution of genetics in 'Next' and the advances in nano-technology in 'Micro', that he had no time left, in my view, for character. His characters were cardboard portrayals of a type. The lab rat, the corporate CEO, the harassed detective, the journalist; but they didn't come across as real blood and flesh people. But Puzo's characters did and so largely, did Lustbader's. And that was it: issue driven stories or character driven.
Can you do both in the same novel? I'm not sure. But I know what I want, I want to focus on character driven, I want to front character and have issues in the background. I want readers to feel for my characters, like they could walk into a bar and talk with them.
That's why my second novel (ready for the editor by June), set in the 1980s, is so different to the first. I sat back and remembered I was almost a sixty year old man and asked myself, what drives me to read and write, why do I care? And the answer came back: pain, lust, want, greed, bravery, cowardice, sadness: all can be summed up in one word, Character; the human condition.
May 2, 2018
Francis Benedict's 'To Cure!'
A pharma thriller set in Africa. What lengths will a drug company go to, to bring a drug for a new strain of meningitis to market? Neighbouring states are crying out for a cure as their children die. But the company take terrible liberties with their experiments including kidnapping children. A conscientious doctor working on the site finds out and the company has to decide how far will they go to stop her getting what they've done into the public domain. A good read and well paced.
