On with the show...
In the not-so long ago past, an author could write a
thriller about a lone assassin who is targeting the leader of a country and
there would be plenty of action and thrills: Would the assassin succeed? Would
the leader live or die? That was enough structure to build a thriller around:
one bullet.
Today, it would never be enough. Readers want their plots
big, their characters – both villains and heroes -- oversize, and their payoffs even bigger. If
the entire world isn’t threatened, don’t even bother.
So in today’s lesson, (which has grown too large and unruly,
so will thus be split into two segments) TG will attempt to answer that
all-important question: How do you
destroy the world? What’cha got for me Mr. Thriller Writer? An earth-destroying
machine? An army of cyborgs? Mutants? A virus? Nukes? Aliens? Earthquakes? Fire? Floods?
Yawn. Really, is that the best you can do? Hasn’t TG already
seen all of these, most of them many times?
First of all, TG would like to excoriate all the recent
books being penned by celebrity weathermen and women. These books are almost
always written with the aid of veteran thriller writers and usually include a
gushing note from the publisher declaring the book “could only be written by an
author with insider knowledge.” Cue the hurricane, tsunami, flood, tornado and
global warming machines, crank those babies up from your island hideaway
laboratory, or undersea laboratory, or deep in a massive cave laboratory, and
sit back to reap the benefits of a destroyed world. (Whatever those may be.) TG
has written several times about these “Insider” failures, but he is reserving a
special place in hell for the weathermen. The writing is usually terrible,
particularly if the weatherfolk decide to write the book themselves. Even when
they have help, the ghosts and co-authors write like they know the cause is
doomed, but they’re going to soldier on because everyone needs a paycheck. And
yet publishers continue to clutch at this thin straw, hoping for a payday
fueled by a celebrity author. Here’s a tip for these publishers: No one gives a shit about weathermen! So
unless they can come up with something new, stop shoveling them giant advances
that would more deservedly go to TG and his pals. And readers, stop buying
these boring copy-cat second-rate thrillers. You deserve better.
How did we come to this pass, where only the most massive,
literally earth-shaking threat can titillate our jaded psyches? TG feels it was
a two-step process. First, the escalation of the villains to super status, and then
the tools of destruction had to grow to earth-shattering proportions to match
the villains. Fortunately, nuclear physics came along just in time to achieve
weapons of the proper magnitude.
Consider, Ian Fleming and his creation, James Bond. I’m sure
that TG will get mail from thriller aficionados pointing to earlier examples of
earlier super villains, but TG thinks that in Fleming’s second novel, Live and Let Die (can’t you hear the theme
music just when you read the title?) the introduction of the arch villain, Mr.
Big, who, of course, lives on an island in the Caribbean, was the beginning of a
long line of hugely evil and destructive villains. Big is an agent of the
Russian secret agency, SMERSH, whose goal is to destroy America and thereby
Rule the World. There are as yet no super weapons, but the first nuclear ICBM
appears in the next novel. Moonraker.
First the villains became outsize, then
writers had to manufacture weapons and means of destruction that equaled the villains
wielding them.
Sidebar: TG
believes that most of this came about because of the Bond films rather than the
novels, and in fact some of the novels were actually novelizations of film
scripts. Because the films demanded bigger payoffs and bigger action scenes,
the novels had to reflect that need. And you can trust TG on this, it’s a lot
easier to write bigger explosions than it is to write more compelling
characters or come up with more original situations. This fact has not been
lost on many of the thriller writers working the genre today.
Just a list of the
Bond villains reminds us of their virtual and fictional size: Mr. Big, Dr. No
(6 feet six inches tall with steel flippers for hands), Goldfinger, Oddjob, and
Blofeld, just to name a few. And we can't forget Jaws as pictured at the top of the blog. In Thunderball, SPECTRA, Blofeld’s crime
organization, has stolen two nuclear bombs and intends to destroy two British
cities, in On Her Majesty’s Secret
Service, Blofeld threatens England with biological agents. Big plots and
big weapons.
Since the escalation by the Bond books, perhaps the most
influential perpetrator of World-Threatening Destruction is Clive Cussler. TG has
reviewed many Cussler books, and while he doesn’t think they are all stellar,
they do all have a certain, well, bigness that deserves admiration if nothing
else. Of the recent series penned with co-authors (TG is not going to get into
a discussion of who writes what on a Cussler book) the Dirk Pitt series remains
strong, as do the Numa Files. The Oregon Files, about a supership, The Oregon, disguised to look like a
tramp steamer, is solidly right in familiar Cussler territory and each new
entry goes down easily enough. TG finds one of the newer series, The Isaac Bell books about an early 20th century private investigator, to be kind
of boring, but even that series has gotten better over time. TG’s favorite
Cussler books are the latest, the Fargo books, about a couple who do
archeological work and always get embroiled in dangerous situations. A quick
look at some of the plots of most of these books in any of the series will show
you the vast breadth of the ideas Cussler (or someone) comes up with. Because
these books are so outrageous and complex, TG will only mention a few and a
brief outline of their premises:
Pacific Vortex… A
sunken fortress has been a lair of evildoers who have been preying on ships,
(think Bermuda Triangle) for 30 years.
Deep Six… The president of the US is
kidnapped and brainwashed in the Soviet Union. He is returned to the White
House where he begins a program of billion dollar loans to the USSR and turning
over our secrets to them.
Cyclops… A group
of wealthy industrialists have formed a secret colony on the moon. An upcoming
war with the Soviets threatens to destroy the earth.
Dragon… A third
nuclear bomb being sent to bomb Japan at the end of WWII is shot down. Modern
day Japanese want to destroy the US economy through the use of nuclear weapons.
Sahara… Lincoln is
kidnapped at the end of the Civil War and ends up in the Sahara desert in a
Confederate ironclad buried in the sand. A red tide threatens to destroy the
oceans of the world and thus, the earth itself.
Shock Wave… An
intense soundwave is being used to destroy the island of Oahu.
Atlantis Found…
Bad guys are using nanotechnology to separate the Ross Ice Shelf from the
Antarctic mainland in order to unbalance the planet and flood the world. The evildoers
intend to ride out the disaster in their superships and then recreate
civilization in the Nazi image.
You get the point. If you want a complete description of the
dastardly plots in all their complexity go to the Clive Cussler page on Wikipedia
and read the plot summaries of scores of these books.
Here’s the takeaway, Thriller Writers. Unless your writing
is so good you can seize readers with your dazzling ability, or if your story
is so original that readers will gasp in amazement at your brilliance, you’re
going to have to come up with a fairly novel method of mayhem, or a unique
twist on an existing global threat. To do that, TG is gonna give you the same
piece of advice he’s given you before: read the classics, know what’s gone
before. You can’t come up with a twist on
something if you don’t know what that something is.
And enough with the damn suitcase nukes.
And no more weathermen, ever.
Next up: TG discusses
Dan Brown and his imitators and shows that it is possible to come up with Something New.
