About Richard Bowker

Author of the Portal series, the Last P.I. series, and other novels

Backstory

Posted on July 20, 2013 by Richard Bowker

One of the hardest parts of writing a novel is dealing with backstory. How much of each character’s past should you put into your story? When should you put it in? Backstory adds texture and depth and motivation to a novel, but you don’t want to stop the momentum of your story with endless flashbacks to someone’s childhood.

I’m dealing with two additional layers of backstory complexity in the novel I’m working on now, which is set in the world of Dover Beach.

First, as a sequel, the novel is dealing with characters and situations that have already been introduced in the first two novels in the series. I can’t reintroduce the history of the characters and the plots of the first two novels without annoying readers of those novels. On the other hand, I’ve got to say something about the stuff, or else new readers will be baffled; and I can’t assume everyone will start with Dover Beach and continue with The Distance Beacons before beginning Novel to be Named Later. I’m not sure there is a good solution to this problem; at least, I haven’t found it.

The other backstory issue I have is the familiar science fiction problem — if your story doesn’t take place in the real world, then you have to somehow fill in sufficient history about the world you have created to satisfy your reader — again, without slowing down the story. Your characters know this history, but your readers don’t. The crude way of solving this problem is the jokey “As We All Know” approach — have a character deliver a speech that says, for example, “As we all know, faster than light travel was invented in 2050…”

I have made a conscious decision to dribble out only a small amount of backstory about the world in which The Last Private Eye novels take place. After two novels we know there was some kind of nuclear war, but we don’t know who the combatants were, why the war was fought, who won . . . We don’t know any of this stuff because it’s not relevant to the characters and their story. They don’t really care; they’re just stuck in this world and trying to get by. So the backstory is irrelevant. Also, it would slow the story down. But I can guarantee that you’ll know more of this backstory at the end of TNTBNL than you did at the end of Dover Beach.

I know what you’re thinking about now. What about renowned author Dan Brown? How does Dan Brown handle the backstory in Inferno? The answer is clunkily. He feels the need to tell us a lot about Dante, so he has Robert Langdon recall a lecture about Dante he gave to some famous people at some famous place. (Of course, he’s suffering from amnesia at the time he recalls this.) The villain doesn’t like overpopulation, so he kidnaps the head of the World Health Organization and gives her a lecture about it, complete with graphs. The name Thomas Malthus comes up in some communication from the villain, so a flunky who apparently skipped college Googles the name and prints out a bunch of information about Malthus and his theory. Talk about slowing the story down…

Indulgences

Posted on July 18, 2013 by Richard Bowker

When I was a lad I had a missal that I very much liked. At the back of the missal were prayers you could say, presumably during the boring parts of Mass. Next to each prayer was the indulgence you would get for saying the prayer–that is, the number of days that would be reduced from the time you’d have to spend in purgatory for your sins. (Here is way more than you want to know about indulgences.)

I could never figure out the rating system — why was one prayer worth more than another? And some prayers gave you a plenary indulgence — full time off. Why would you bother saying a prayer that only gave you 100 days off, if you could say one that would get you out of purgatory for good? I was a very literal-minded kid.

Now we hear that you can get a plenary indulgence for following Pope Francis’s Twitter feed. This has generated snark from the usual suspects. And I can’t really disagree with the snark. Shouldn’t indulgences have disappeared like 500 years ago? The Wikipedia article shows that, as with most theological issues, the modern Catholic church has tried to become more sophisticated, which is to say, vaguer, with respect to the meaning of indulgences. But it can’t seem to quit them.

What I tend to focus on, though, are the people whose job it is to come up with the rules for indulgences. The classification of prayers by years and days has been done away with, but somebody has to figure out exactly what the rules are for indulgences. For example, Wikipedia says reading Sacred Scripture for half an hour can get you a plenary indulgence on any day, but only once a day. Who came up with half an hour, as opposed to, I dunno, an hour? Who decided you could only get a plenary indulgence once a day, as opposed to once a week? As with the Vatican office that determines who is suitable for canonization, smart people are spending their lives going to work each day and figuring this stuff out. Such a waste.

But that would be too easy: Dan Brown’s “I could kill you now, Mr. Bond” problem

Posted on July 14, 2013 by Richard Bowker

The Heat is a hilarious movie that doesn’t bother much with plausibility. Towards the end Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy track down the bad guys to a warehouse, kill a few of them, but then get captured by the #2 bad guy. He could simply shoot them, of course, but he decides to tie them up and torture them first. Oh, no! The torture is about to begin when he is called upstairs to a meeting with the #1 bad guy. So Sandra and Melissa get to exchange some snappy dialog, figure out how to untie themselves, and carry on with the plot.

This is a standard action movie sequence. The hero doesn’t get killed as the climax approaches; he gets tied up. My friend Craig Gardner calls this the “I could kill you now, Mr. Bond” moment. The evil mastermind has Bond in his clutches, but his hubris makes him say something like: “I could kill you now, Mr. Bond. But that would be too easy. Instead, I will let you watch as I carry out my plan for world domination. And then you will die a slow, horrible death.”

The evil mastermind’s hubris always leads to his downfall in these movies, of course. And in the meantime we get to see the hero extricate himself from a difficult situation just in the nick of time to save the world.

Dan Brown’s Inferno is an action novel that features a standard evil mastermind with plenty of hubris. Stripped of its endless lessons about art and literature and history and geography, it’s a James Bond novel. Except that Brown makes a lot of odd plotting decisions that, for me at least, screw up this basic plot structure completely and fundamentally ruin the novel. Spoiler alert: don’t read on if you are going to care about this plot:

First and foremost, the entire plot is predicated on the evil mastermind’s hubris, not just the climactic scene where he decides to keep the hero alive. Nothing that happens in the book has to happen, except that this guy decides to leave some clever clues behind, mainly because he can. He could simply have carried out his evil plan without telling anyone.
Second, and almost as bad, all the hero’s running around trying to stop the evil plan doesn’t amount to anything whatsoever because the evil plan has already successfully taken place by the time the novel starts. We just don’t find out until page 400 or so. So the action is doubly pointless. Robert Langdon has raced around Florence and Venice and Istanbul for absolutely no reason.
Next, the evil mastermind is dead by the time the plot starts. So there is no opportunity for a climactic confrontation, and his explanations for what he is doing all take place in flashback.
Finally–and I find this deeply weird–Brown seems to agree with the evil mastermind. Well, Brown seems to be saying, his methods may not have been the best, but his analysis of the overpopulation problem was accurate, and obviously something more needs to be done . . . He never allows any of the good guys to offer a convincing rebuttal to that analysis, although surely one exists (I could do a better job than the good guys, frankly).

So we spend the novel rooting for Langdon to succeed, but ultimately we find out that he couldn’t have succeeded, and we probably wouldn’t have wanted him to succeed. What a letdown.

Know what Dan Brown needs?! The interrobang!!!!

Posted on July 13, 2013 by Richard Bowker

The interrobang is almost a real thing, and Dan Brown is successful enough to demand that his publisher give him a font that includes one, like so:

His breathless, italics-laden style is what the interrobang was designed for. Here are some random examples from Inferno:

What the hell do they think I did? Why is my own government hunting me?!

Here he needs interrobangs in consecutive sentences:

Has the speech been canceled?! The city is in near shutdown due to the weather . . . has it kept Zobrist from coming tonight?!

This example is in Italian, although the translation apparently doesn’t require one:

“Lei è Robert Langdon, vero?!” You’re Robert Langdon, aren’t you?”

Here Brown reverses the order of the punctuation marks, for some reason that is too subtle for me to make out. Perhaps we need a banginterro for this usage:

He turned to the woman. “How do we get up there!?”

Somewhere I learned the rule that a writer should avoid exclamation points: your prose should convey the excitement, not your punctuation. But Dan Brown doesn’t need such lessons; he needs the interrobang.

By the way, let’s not confuse the punctuation mark with this local band that I’ve actually heard play (and some of whose members have hung out at my house). Or this other band with almost the same name. With so many great names for bands floating around the universe, why is this happening?

Apple loses its e-book antitrust suit

Posted on July 10, 2013 by Richard Bowker

The judge has ruled against Apple in the suit that the Justice Department brought against it. Now there’ll be another trial for damages. And Apple has vowed to appeal. So nothing is really decided. But hey, we all know Apple is guilty!

Here is the graphical evidence of what happened to e-book prices when the major publishers, in collusion with Apple, forced Amazon to go to the agency model, thereby ending price competition among e-book vendors:

Prices went up two dollars or more per book overnight. The exceptions were Random House and all the little publishers; none of them were party to the collusion. Thanks, Apple!

What’s the best book you couldn’t finish?

Posted on July 10, 2013 by Richard Bowker

Goodreads has a list of the top five books that people couldn’t finish:

Hmm. I’ve already posted about my inability to finish Atlas Shrugged. Its popularity makes me realize there is a limit to my ability to understand human nature. I re-read Moby Dick a couple of years ago; I finished it, but I have to admit it was a struggle — too much stuff about whaling! Ulysses is not a book you’re going to get through without a large commitment of time and effort; plus, you’re going to need some help. But it surely repays the effort. I have no idea why anyone would have any difficulty finishing Lord of the Rings or Catch-22.

I suppose the most important book I haven’t been able to finish is Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past (if you consider that a single novel). I forced myself to read Swann’s Way a few years ago, but I hated every minute of it. I also couldn’t make it through anything by Thomas Mann except Death in Venice; I only finished that one because it was so short.

There are plenty of lesser novels that I haven’t finished, and I get more impatient as I grow older. I did manage to finish Dan Brown’s Inferno, though, and I’ll blog about that when I gather up my courage.

Another Fourth of July in my little town

Posted on July 5, 2013 by Richard Bowker

Even better than this one!

Two thousand-plus people got up at the crack of dawn to run four and a half miles down Main Street in the blistering heat. Here are four of them:

Here’s one of them being congratulated at the finish line:

Then we all take a shower and go to the parade. Uncle Sam starts things off:

We have bands:

And muskets:

And cute hockey players (did you know there was such a thing as cute hockey players?):

And a guy on stilts:

And a reminder to never forget:

And cute spectators staying hydrated:

And of course our world-famous marching kazoo band:

Don’t you wish you had a world-famous marching kazoo band?

Afterwards it’s time for cute kids to get cool in the back yard before the cookout:

Summit will now cost you money

Posted on July 2, 2013 by Richard Bowker

I told you to download Summit from Amazon when it was free, but you didn’t listen to me. You never listen to me. Now you have to pay $2.84 for it. Why $2.84? I don’t know. But it’s worth it! Probably worth even $2.99, now that I think about it.

The purpose of making the book free was to generate some nice reviews, and I got some! Here’s a sampling:

This is a well written, well -rounded, exciting book. I loved it and will be looking for all books by Mr Richard Bowker. I do NOT give five stars often or lightly, but I am impressed Summit. So if you like thrillers, this is a great one to read. And Mr Bowker, if you ever need a beta reader, I would be thrilled to do it.

And:

The author has a way of bringing you right into the story; the characters are believable and flawed. The sprinkle of romance is fun and the Mr Bowker’s knowledge of classical music and the ability to identify the problems of a classical music prodigy are amazing.
Above all the plot twists and turns were extremely suspenseful.
I also appreciated the author not painting the Russians as all evil and U.S. as all good.
I wish Bill Sullivan had a better ending, but such is life. More importantly, Fulton and Valentina (more than) survive.
A great read, thanks !

I wish Sullivan had a better ending, too! And:

Richard Bowker manages to give lots of credibility to the subject of psychics. What is there not to agree in the end? Psychics do exist, even if their lives are depicted more in the dark forces type of books than in a thriller.
Deep thoughtful take on American and Russian ideals, the perceptions and beliefs ingrained in their nationals to infuse a patriotic love, which makes us explore our own psyche and rattles perhaps our own confidence in our righteousness. The same political corruption and power greed exists at all levels, in all countries- and is perfectly delineated in the pages of this book. It is difficult not to love the heroes, and the insertion of a love story makes the read even more enjoyable for female readership. I did enjoy this book till the (perfect) end.

And, as a reminder,here’s the exciting new cover:

Dan Brown’s Inferno: Round 1

Posted on June 29, 2013 by Richard Bowker

I have finally gotten up my nerve and started reading a Dan Brown novel. I’m 40 pages into Inferno, and I haven’t thrown the book across the room yet. So that’s good.

On the plus side, Brown clearly knows how to write a plot-driven thriller. The action is standard superhero stuff, involving amnesia and a nameless villain and a shadowy organization known only as The Consortium, but it’s not so ridiculous that I don’t want to find out what’s going on. And his style is OK: he still has to tell us the exact size of Brunelleschi’s Dome in Florence, but the “index-card” writing isn’t as blatant as in the sample chapter I read of one of his earlier books.

On the minus side, the one thing I know something about so far, Brown didn’t get right. And that makes me wary about Brown’s mastery of detail. He has his Harvard professor hero, Robert Langton, wake up in a hospital with amnesia. The doctor asks him where he thinks he is. The last thing he can remember is walking across the Harvard campus, so he guesses: “Massachusetts General Hospital?” There are two things wrong with that answer. First, if you’re from around here, you’d simply say “Mass General.” No one says “Massachusetts General Hospital.” Second, he’d know if he had a medical problem at Harvard he’d end up at Mount Auburn Hospital, just down the road in Cambridge. But of course that’s a much less interesting answer than the world-famous hospital a few miles further away.

And then there is the doctor. OK, she’s beautiful, and also lissome (which is a dopey word), and she drops everything to save Langton’s life when the spiky-haired female assassin (who was probably also lissome) starts shooting the place up. That’s pretty standard. But does she also have to have an IQ of 208? Did she also have to play Puck in Midsummer Night’s Dream at the age of five? Realism clearly isn’t what Brown is after here (although he index-cards a couple of real child prodigies that Langton happens to know about). At that point you have to decide you’re just going to go with the flow. Or you throw the book across the room.

What this senate race needed was a good murder mystery

Posted on June 25, 2013 by Richard Bowker

Like, er, this one.

Democrat Ed Markey has defeated Republican Gabriel Gomez for the right to represent Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate for the next 18 months or so. My affluent little town, which is a couple of towns over from where Gomez lives, went 55-45 for Gomez, but turnout in the high school gym wasn’t that great:

This was like a TV show that has lasted a season too long, and the replacement actors just don’t have the sizzle of the people they replaced: Markey came across as a standard-issue Democrat who has been in Washington too long, and Gomez came across as a standard rich Massachusetts Republican who has nothing to offer but vague promises about bridging the partisan divide.

Also, the Bruins lost, so who cares? We’ll have to do this again next year, when John Kerry’s term is up, and maybe the Republicans will find a better candidate. Maybe Scott Brown will have had enough of making easy money as a lobbyist and Fox News commentator. Markey should be vulnerable, but other than Brown, Massachusetts Republicans don’t have much to offer.

Maybe the governor’s race will have a murder mystery.