A Review of Deadly Faux, by Larry Brooks, Writing Coach By Theodora O’Brien Copy Editor, Developmental Editor, Writing Coach Larry Brooks has been a writing coach since the mid-1980s. He has published two books about writing novels that are ground-breaking in concept: Story Engineering, and Story Physics, both published by Writers Digest Books. I often buy books by writing coaches, best-selling authors, agents, other editors, etc., so I know what writers are learning in the great wide world of writing and, as he was offering a point-by-point show-and-tell on how he applied his story physics to his newest novel (his sixth), Deadly Faux, I bought that as well as Story Physics to study. I’ve read Story Engineering. I might have liked Deadly Faux, were I not an editor and writing coach. There are about three dozen reviews available on Amazon, Goodreads, and individual blogs, mostly four and five stars, so I concentrated on the reviews with one to three stars. I was hoping these reviewers were going to note that Mr. Brooks makes five writing mistakes in this story, but only two of the one-to-three-star complainers got close to the real reasons they had trouble with the book. The most important mistake: Brooks mixes first-person POV with third-person omniscient/objective POV. The most stringent rule of first-person POV is the protagonist cannot know what anyone else is doing or thinking (the unspoken rule is that the audience doesn’t, either), but in the end puts all the pieces together and solves the problem. The readers expect the “I” character to be the hero (with notable exceptions like the Goodwin/Wolfe team). Readers should get the clues at the same time as the lead character. The author’s job is to make sure the readers know when the protagonist is going wrong and missing the clues, or closing in on the antagonist, or is just about to get his clueless head knocked upside the wall. Readers figure it out as the protagonist does, but are supposed to be mystified; it’s the fun of first-person POV. Strictly speaking, Brooks removes his protagonist, Wolfgang Schmitt, from the action and he knows nothing about what’s going on, but the readers have access to data they shouldn’t. Brooks needed to figure out how Schmitt could be where he needed to be, to see, hear, and/or read whatever was necessary to solve this mystery himself, not mix the POVs. My guess is he couldn’t, so he decided he’d use two POV conventions in one book. It was a continual brain-yank in a book that had too many brain-yanks. Some of that comes from the paragraphing structure of not hooking dialogue to the speaker’s actions. Time after time, he would have a speaker say something, finish speaking, make a new paragraph for some thought or action by that same speaker, then along comes a third paragraph by the same speaker that finishes the thought in the first paragraph. Brooks is very spare with tag lines, which I like, but his story is ruined when I have to go back up and reread paragraphs to figure out who’s speaking. Brooks assumes you can follow from the context. I couldn’t. Two examples [Schmitt’s thoughts open. Two voices here]: It’s just that I had a better idea how to get it done. And I knew he hadn’t taken Caitlin at all. She tried to brush past me, but again I blocked her way. “I don’t lie. You know that about me.” “Unless someone’s paying you.” This is how it should have read: It’s just that I had a better idea how to get it done. And I knew he hadn’t taken Caitlin at all. She tried to brush past me, but again I blocked her way. “I don’t lie. You know that about me.” [All Schmitt.] “Unless someone’s paying you.” [Second character in scene.] Second example: [Schmitt’s thoughts open. Two players in the scene.] You could see the color bleed from her face. “Mancuso did this,” I said. “And now they want you.” I let this one sink in. It didn’t take long. “You’re all liars and manipulators. What I do know is that you’re dead if you go.” The “You’re all liars and manipulators” line was the brain-yank. It’s clear after rereading this that only Schmitt is speaking, but there are two people in the scene and conversation, so I didn’t know. It should read this way: You could see the color bleed from her face. “Mancuso did this. And now they want you.” I let this one sink in. It didn’t take long. “You’re all liars and manipulators. What I do know is that you’re dead if you go.” The constant “Who’s talking?” question on every second or third page just added to the following confusion: Brooks’ plot is convoluted in the extreme. I think he widened or added a new point (back story or character) to the plot in every chapter up to the middle of the book. Then he began rearranging the data and came up with new possible outcomes within each succeeding chapter after the halfway point. He switched to a new trail for that chapter and in each chapter until chapter 55, of 61. He included one clunker ingredient that was so out of character for the character I couldn’t believe it. Rather than chucking the book, I kept reading to find out if Brooks had put this unbelievable twist in because of who he had deliver the information; the deliveree was quite crucial to the plot. Maybe Brooks meant it to be obvious and wanted the readers not to believe it; but, if he had, he wouldn’t have needed the long ending, nor the dips into third-person POV. This type of maze-writing might be considered fantastic thinking, but it wasn’t, to me. Because of another couple layers of thickness: Wolfgang Schmitt is the ultimate in cool. He has the perfect witty bon mot for every situation, the perfect dry description of every character he meets. Every character gets a description, even very minor ones: “. . . so the look he gave me was about as cordial as a father greeting the guy who got his daughter pregnant over spring break.” This fellow has a bit part. Imagine how Schmitt went on about the regulars. Overwriting was endemic: “The collective expressions on their face[s missing] [and where else would an expression be?] would have kept Norman Rockwell busy for the rest of the century. This is what George Dub-ya must have looked like when someone told him the CIA had gotten their wires crossed.” Just those two examples add 70 words to the pages. If one figures there are one to two of those kind of throwaway lines on each page of this 333-page book, the book has at least 25K too many words. “Less is more” is a maxim I believe Mr. Brooks would do well to learn. Brooks was out-channeling Raymond Chandler. I believe Mr. Chandler had just the right mix. At one point when Wolf was about as low as he could get, he’s thrown a figurative lifeline, as it were, by a character who says, “I’ve got something,” and almost spiritually dead Wolf has to be the smartass and dazzle us with his quick wits with “Is it contagious?” It was so inappropriate to the story, I groaned. Brooks later had Schmitt explain to us: “I am my funniest when I’m terrified.” Better Brooks had shown us that than thrown it at us. Brooks is in fact always telling us what’s going on, right up to the ending. Brooks is clearly a pop culture aficionado, and has studied all the literature greats. So, therefore, is and has Mr. Schmitt. And every bit of it is on display in Schmitt’s dialogue and thought processes throughout the story. The book drowned in these references. I did a count of the vehicles, books, famous writers, movies/movie stars, politicians, common entertainment (“T-shirt contest” for instance), fictional characters (“Mr. Clean”), major industry practices, street talk, sports chatter/moves/players, etc., that are mentioned in the last 42 pages of the story; there were 31. That’s a whopping 74% of the pages of 13% of the book. I believe that percentage holds true for the entire novel. Schmitt loves his mother, can make love with drop-dead finesse (because he says so) but chooses not to, doesn’t drink or smoke, is a softie at heart and has a stomach that sizzles acid every time he is afraid. Which is more often than you’d think, considering that somewhere along the line he also built up his body to peak perfection and could cold-cock a refrigerator — of which there were plenty of the human kind in this hard-boiled Las Vegas throwback to film noir Mafioso-type story. Wolf is an unemployed ex-ad agency copy writer. Hm. His character is the same from the beginning to the end; Brooks tells you what it is when we meet him and again at the end (yes, he does). There is no character arc in the story. I’m not too bothered with that, but it is more evidence of writing rules ignored. I reviewed this book because Larry Brooks is a writing coach, which puts him into my professional world, and he disappointed me; I don’t like being disappointed by my peers. His Story Engineering and Story Physics theories could well be brilliant, but he blew the basics: Don’t mix POVs. Get your simple paragraphing structure/flow correct. Don’t bloody overwrite. Don’t put yourself in the book (read his “About the Author” and you’ll meet Wolfgang Schmitt there). Get a good editor. Ah, well, I don’t know but what he thought he did. Maybe he didn’t listen. That is a mistake no writer should ever make. About the Author | Theodora OBrien I once had an author who wrote a delightful book that centered around a case that involved the pitfalls of working with voodoo. He sent me a question after we’d finished his book: “How do you do that hoodoo you do?” I had no real answer for him and don’t to this day. Editing is as much a gift as writing is. You can do it or you can’t. Most editing-minded people can train themselves to fix commas, semicolons, and sentence structure, but the hoodoo in knowing what a story needs to make it right, to make it whole, to make it sensible, well, that’s hoodoo that can’t be explained. It helps that I’ve had twenty-plus years of experience (which means I’ve edited hundreds of manuscripts and seen dozens of them become books on shelves) to hone the gift, and that I like doing it, but that doesn’t make it explainable, it just makes it great for you, the writer, that you’re going to be the beneficiary of all that ability when you hire me. It’s also a benefit to you the writer that I owned a publishing company for about ten years, because I know what editors and agents look for in manuscripts (and query letters and synopses), but you probably know that the publishing world has changed mightily since I closed up shop about the time of the advent of the Kindles and Nooks. E-pubbing is here to stay and has pushed traditional publishing out the transom, as it were. Last but not least, I work with my authors as partners, and I expect the same in return. I don’t know any other way to work this relationship, because the creative process is, as I said above, unexplainable, and spontaneous. Each author brings a different skill set, view, level of experience, and personality to it; I have to be ready (and am) to do the fast switch-up to work with all of you with your individual needs—every writer is different, believe me, and each unique. I have to tell you, though, I’m certainly not just an advisor, I’m a hands-on kind of editor, so if you don’t want me to touch your work, pass me by and keep on looking for that kind of editor. I love to get into the words and I’m not shy about it in the content-editing portion of the job, with slashing, cutting, rearranging, and adding—sometimes. Big rewrites are your job; I just do some of the little stuff. We’ll settle into a rhythm that works for us, you’ll see. Looking forward to hearing from you. editing-writing/theodora-obrien/
Posted on: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 20:00:02 +0000
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