obstacles, high concept and all that crap ...

[Mbwana Ngori]

any old article, book or well-meant writing-tip nowadays seems to say: build bigger obstacles for your characters, make the stakes higher and if you write action (novel, movie, whatever), include a little romance !

i just made the interesting experience of reading two dan brown novels in a row. i like them very much: they've got suspense, you actually learn a lot about art, history, science and so on.
but i get really tired of a dozen life-threatening events within 48 hours of the story. the protagonists get shot at, are thrown from icebergs, hang from tower windows and [insert dangerous event here].
and if they don't have to save the world, they got to take care of the continuity of the western civilization ...

is suspense really only possible when (at least !) a human life is at stake ?

and if there are two nice protagonists of different gender, do they really HAVE TO end up falling in love by the end of the book ?

[veingloree]

Clearly not, I think. In action/romance genre you have to feed these expectations but these genres have margins and there is territory beyond!

[maestrowork]

if you want to make millions and have six movies made of your book....

:grin

[vstrauss]

Don't think you're learning real history, art or otherwise, by reading Dan Brown. I just finished The da Vinci Code and there's a large amount of error--whether deliberate or inadvertent I don't know, but he's sure got early Christian history howlingly wrong.

- Victoria

[macalicious731]

Here I'm going to argue that it's not Brown's plot/writing that makes his work a success. It's the information that's inclusive with his plot - all that controversy. First of all, I found _Angels and Demons_ a better book overall than _da Vinci_, but who had heard of that one before _da Vinci_ broke?

and if there are two nice protagonists of different gender, do they really HAVE TO end up falling in love by the end of the book ?

Sigh. I really hate this. I blame the movie industry more than the book. I mean, take a look at _Troy_. Not to mention how horribly the movie got _The Illiad_ wrong, they also included the "hollywood romance" plotline between Achilles and Briseis. IMO, _Troy_ lost a lot of points for that screwup alone. The writers already had the built-in romance of Paris and Helen, but they had to give Brad Pitt something, too. Because of this addition, the ending was completely shot and hey, Achilles may have been a homosexual too.

Something just isn't right!

[maestrowork]

Yeah, Hollywood has a way of twisting history and literature to cater to the "mainstream." That's why I enjoy indies and to a greater extent foreign films better because they seems to be truer. Which is an ironic thing since I write mainstream... oh well.

At least Oliver Stone has the guts to "not shy" away the homosexuality in the upcoming Alexander (compared to Leo DiCarprio's version, which would make Alexander totally straight).

[Jamesaritchie]

Shoot, haven't you heard. Every male who lived more than twenty years ago was a homosexual, evidence or not, knowledge of history or not. Even Batman and Robin were homosexual. So was Bugs Bunny. Half a dozen articles have been written proclaiming Bugs Bunny a homosexual.

But if you were male, and famous, forget about it.

As for life and death, it's pretty difficult to have much suspense unless something extremely important is on the line. What's more important than life and death?

This doesn't mean life ha sto be threatened every five pages, but if the suspense involves a situation the protagonist can walk away from still breathing, who cares?

[Writing Again]

You set your own standards. One of these standards is the amount of income and prestege you are willing to live with.

I was listening to an interview of a country and western singer. He said he did a song where his agents came to him and told him, "You need to take this swear word out if you want this to be a number one hit."

He asked, "How big a drop are you talking about?"

They told him if he didn't take out the cuss word he would hit four or five on the top ten charts.

In the interview he said, "If you are in the top ten you are in the top ten. The rest is just ego so I told them to leave it in."


Ed McBain wrote under many pen names and wrote many different styles, some best sellers. You could say he reduced his potential income by writing things that were not as hot a sellers. You could say he augmented his income by writing flashier, more profit oriented books. Either way he generated a solid income and did what he wanted to do.

As a writer your own options are pretty near infinite. Better to concern yourself with your own choices than with the choices of others.

Hollywood takes a lot of flack. But a twenty million dollar budget for a film is not a lot of money nowadays. Five million for a low budget indie flick.

And the theater goer no longer goes to the movies to spend a quite afternoon the way they did when the cost was twenty-five cents a ticket. Now it is fifteen dollars a pop and they want more than what they would get spending a quite afternoon watching TV.

With those kinds of stakes Hollywood cannot afford to do anything other than aim for the biggest audience and the biggest bucks.

Be glad you are not Hollywood. As a novelist your investment is less, your audience is more flexible, and you have more control.

In fact people make decent money right today writing "cozies" which are mysteries with little action, low concept, little or no romance, or any of the other "hype" items that are the mainstays of Hollywood.


Frankly I like the Ed McBain approach. That is one of the things pen names were made for.