“I’m disappointed, and I just can’t hide it!” I whisper/shout to the author of the book I’m reading. “You had me. You really had me, and it’s almost painful hanging here.”

Hi, I’m whatever his name is, but you can call me what’s his face, and I love a great story. Some love money and power, some love their family, and some love a really good cheeseburger. I love the great story. I love them big and small, on a device, in a book, and in a mall. I love the story you told me last week about that big, hairy guy you saw in a tank top last Tuesday at Walmart who shouted something about the price of a 3-pack of Fun Pops. If it’s unique, funny, and complete, you might have me on the edge of my seat. I might ask you so many question that you’ll “Just let me tell the story for God’s sakes” me, because I love your details. I love them so much that you will probably joke that I focus on parts of your story no one ever has ever considered before. That’s just kind of what I do. I might ask you to repeat that word you just used to describe that 3-pack of Fun Pops fella, and I might even use it later. I want to be there with you, in your story. I want to love it, enhance it, and make it my own. My leading questions might even help make your story better. I’ve done it before, without intending to do so, and I’m sure I’ll do it again. 

I might be phony in a number of ways, but my love of a great story is authentic and organic. I’m not saying my passion is greater than anyone else’s. I’m saying, we all love spending some time in the hands of a great storyteller. We used to go to the town square to hear a great story, before that the amphitheater, and the rock opposite the storyteller. No matter where or when we heard, saw, or experienced the great story, the elements have not changed. That great, classic intro led us to that rock, and the perfect climactic ending almost made us forget the fascinating information in between. Some stories entertain, some educate, but the greatest storytellers of all time find a way to meld the two in an unforgettable tome. Some of us, most of us, don’t particularly care what we are at the end, as long we’re something. Which is why when I have the finished product of a master craftsman in my hands, and they drop the ball, it’s tantamount to an ugly divorce.

They can get me. I’ll give them that. These skilled wordsmiths, who are far better at their craft than I will ever be, can have me flipping pages rapidly, flopping around at night, hours after I’ve put the book down, wondering what they’re going to do to me next, and I’ll probably be talking about those progressions the next day. When the novel is that good, I become so obsessed that I’m thinking about the possibilities throughout the day, into the night, and in my dreams. Then, boom! Nothing.

What? Why is that bookmark rotting in the place it’s been in for six months? After the flurried pace, why do I not care what happened to these characters now? It’s often so relative why we lose interest that it can be tough to pinpoint, but at some point, the author and the reader part ways on the best way to conclude this buildup.

I am a lot more patient with the author of a niche book that happened to cover a topic of particular interest to me. This book they wrote might be the only book they ever write, partake in, or have ghost written for them based on an interview. If that’s the case, my maniacal mind ask theirs, “Aren’t you afraid of losing the reader?” I try to frame my internal question in a very generous scope. They’re obviously not writers, but this product that they’re putting out has their name on it. I cut them an enormous amount of slack, in other words, but I searched for the topic of their book, so I’m obviously an eager customer. I read through the summary of the book, and it fit so well with what I was searching for that I decided to download a sample of it. Depending on the book, the sample is either the first tenth of the book. A song on the radio is a sample of an album in much the same way, the first tenth of a book is a sample of that book, right? It should contain the best writing that book has to offer. If I can barely make it through your sample, on a topic I’m inordinately interested in, the author’s writing must be terrible.

“You had me with the topic, and the summary, but your writing reads like that teacher from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” My favorite writers can make the history of grills in Mattel’s Barbie fascinating. I don’t expect that level of mastery of powerful, provocative prose from every author, but in this particular case, they have a topic that I am dying to learn more about, and they can’t even write a decent enough sample to get me to purchase their book? The author, or ghost writer, just gets lost in the description of the inanity, but even inanities can come to life with powerful prose. I’ll admit, I’m a little bitter in the sense that I can’t get published, and this guy has, but that doesn’t affect my reading selections. I might be hyper-critical when it comes to writing, but it’s only because I know I can do better. It’s not because I think I’m more intelligent, talented, or gifted in anyway. I’m just more demanding of myself. I read through what I’ve written with the fear that with any given sentence or paragraph, I can lose the reader. I’m probably more paranoid than most writers.

With master storytellers, I fall head over heels in love with their characters. I admire some from afar, embodied others, and sympathize and empathize with the rest. My favorite authors know how to create and substantiate characters, and some of them know how to juggle them in a gargantuan tome. 

In the introductory phase of the huge novel, the author’s juggling skills mesmerize, as the author introduces the MacGuffin to each character in a variety of unique ways. (The MacGuffin is a term for the literary device authors use in their plot to motivate the characters to act. The MacGuffin can be the monster in a horror story, a ring in Lord of the Rings, a glowing object in Pulp Fiction, and as filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock said, “What everybody on the screen is looking for but the audience doesn’t care about.”) The MacGuffin provides the conflict, the goal, and the theme of the interactions between the characters. Yet, even in the best novels, the MacGuffin is almost irrelevant, and we see this at the end when the MacGuffin is finally defeated in an anticlimactic and unceremonious manner.

The MacGuffin doesn’t need too many details, as the best authors allow us to paint their MacGuffin in our mind’s eye. We also see need for a simplified MacGuffin in those stories that involve intricate detail that might play well in the author’s mind, and some detail-oriented readers, but for the rest of us a simple tale of good vs. evil will do. I’ve witnessed the opposite, where a MacGuffin received painstaking detail. The author was/is a painter also, so he provided intricate detail of the visual elements of the monster, and rich details regarding their lives, values, and goals. It was so much that it was too much, and my bookmark remains in the 2/3rds of that description to this day.

I stressed the word defeated, because most modern authors try to avoid having their MacGuffin defeated. Modern authors don’t enjoy having their readers think in terms of good vs. evil or triumph vs. failure. Winning and losing is not a part of their equation, as it’s too simplistic or something, and they fear that it paints their narrative as a game or sporting event. Some authors even introduce the delusional elements of victory by having the characters defeat the MacGuffin, only to have it rise again in the midst of their celebration. When this happens, we know the author is mocking the simple-minded notion of victory, as we are only three-fourths the way through the novel. We also know to prepare for a complicated, winding effort the characters will employ to form a collusive effort that helps them overcome whatever personal, inner demons they may have had that caused them to be susceptible to their fears of the MacGuffin, or the unknown in general. In Stephen King’s It, for example, Pennywise mocks the groups’ efforts to defeat It. In It’s mockery, it actually instructs one of the individual members on the best way to defeat It. I don’t know if King struggled with the best way to convey the information necessary to kill It, but I have to think it would be better that this information comes from anyone else but the MacGuffin. It just seemed odd that It, or anything else would aid in their own destruction. If they’re evil, perhaps they should lie to the good guys, but telling them how they should approach an attack next time kind of dispels the notion that they’re truly evil. It’s complicated and deep and some of the times, readers wonder if it might be more fun if the author dropped all the pretentious efforts to please their peers and the critics and just wrote a simple novel of good defeating evil. 

In the early stages, the characters encounter the MacGuffin individually, and they’re overwhelmed by it. “We obviously cannot do this alone,” the characters say throughout the narrative in individual ways. One important trait of the typical monster story is that the meager human cannot do it alone … if at all. The methods of warfare we’ve developed are inferior to the ways of the MacGuffin, and the creativity of the human being is incredibly primitive in reference to its power. For these reasons and others, many, many others, I could not write a compelling monster narrative, for my tale would be far more interested in the human ability to overcome. My tale would be less interested in the power of the monster and more in the resolve most humans find when they’re backed into a corner. A theme of my tale would be, you think the badger is deadly when backed into corner, try a human. We might not think much of our fellow humans on most days, but while we don’t have the claws of the badger, the jaws of the alligator, or the ferocious strength of the bear, there’s a reason we sit atop the animal kingdom, the human brain. The best you’ll ever see of a human happens just after they’re backed into a corner. When they’re so desperate that they think their lives will end, they will find some levels of ingenious resolve they didn’t even know existed. My characters want to live, and they will do whatever is necessary to see one more day. If the gun doesn’t work, and it doesn’t in an overwhelming majority of most monster stories, they’ll try something else, and then something else to help them survive. Such a theme would not play well in most monster movies, because at all points in between, and with very specific characters, it’s not about them, and they usually do nothing but lay there in the spot the director designated for the death scene. If they fight or thrash about a bit, it’s often a minimal fight. More often than not, all they do is scream.  

After they experience nothing but failure in the face of the MacGuffin, they seek others who’ve experienced similar, but different, failures in their respective interactions with it. They learn a lot about it and themselves in the process, and they bring that knowledge to the other group, who have uncovered their own truths. They then use that combined knowledge to carve out some temporary peace for themselves. In doing so, the author effortlessly funnels these characters together in a quest to defeat, uncover, or discover a truth about the MacGuffin. The ebb and flow of this part of the narrative is often the most engaging and provocative part. If it wasn’t so engaging, I would consider dropping most novels at this point, because the buildup, for me, is the part that builds the obsession. 

At some point, the author needs to make an initial reveal, a tease, and a summation of what the author has spent hundreds of pages foreshadowing. The reveal involves a progressed, unexplained truth about the MacGuffin. The quality author teases this out, and they leave us in some doubt about whether or not it is in fact a truth. There are relative truths each character discovers and even though the author depicts their characters as weak, the narrative is still about them, and their perspective. It is about the MacGuffin, but it’s not.  

In this reveal, we’re not entirely sure what happened, but we know that one of the novel’s most beloved, but expendable side characters, (the proverbial red-shirted Ensign from Star Trek), is dead. Some believe the guy in the red shirt did something ill-advised, and they place much of the blame for his death on him. This permits them to continue to believe the MacGuffin is benevolent, as they continue to argue with those who view the MacGuffin as vindictive and vengeful (a hint at various interpretations of God, Satan, or some confusing hybrid of both). This scene also permits the author to reveal the powers of the MacGuffin, a power that will cause the reader to fear it, but the power will later be diminished by whatever the group of characters chose to define it.

One character, often the militaristic lunatic, steps forward to demand revenge or retribution. He wants to eradicate the MacGuffin from the Earth as a result of the beloved side character’s death. The militaristic side character also seeks to disguise his bloodlust as a form of protection, under the proviso that he could be next, or we could, and he believes in the tooth for a tooth response to what he perceives to be the MacGuffin’s deadly aggression. The majority disagree and side with the saner main character who suggests the group needs a more complex, less violent resolution. 

The characters have obeyed the rules, based on the nature of the MacGuffin they’ve collectively discovered thus far, but they’ve also found some loopholes. If they do this, while doing that, there will be no ramifications from the MacGuffin. There are rise and fall and fall and rise, a rise, fall, rise, or a fall, rise, fall arcs throughout to build the tension. The characters learn from their mistakes. 

The various arcs appeal to just about everyone, as we try to keep an open mind. At some point, we begin to identify with the problem-resolution ideas of one character over the others. We also enjoy the love-interest angle two of the leaders developed, how the sick child became sick, and if it can be attributed to the MacGuffin in some way, but we keep coming back to the ultimate resolution. 

For those of us who have read a number of modern books, and watched such storylines play out on current TV shows and movies, we pretty much know where 99% of them are headed. We might disagree with the angle the characters choose, but more that, we know that eventually the author will have to choose sides in this dilemma, and we always know what side the more modern authors are going to take. The only drama left, is how is they are going to get there.

They often lead us into “their” position with numerous, failed efforts by the lunatic, military type to wipe the MacGuffin off the face of the planet with some drastic overreach that will affect life on Earth. We are to side with the intellectual pacifist, normally employed as a scientist, a professor, or a reporter in most modern stories. This is where the gist of the story becomes clear. The MacGuffin is not bad, or evil in the simplistic terms we use to define good vs. evil. Is the white shark bad, the bear, or the tiger? No, they just want to eat, but in our cartoonish narratives, we often depict them as mean, and they always have an otherworldly growl that shakes us to our bones. Plus, there is a now a complex, rational explanation for the death of the beloved side character, and any related activities that follow. The whole idea that the MacGuffin was a bad entity, was a relative term defined by the obnoxious, military man who just wants to blow stuff up. The more rational scientist, professor, or reporter finds another way that turns out to be correct. They find a way to communicate with the MacGuffin. This narrative often dismisses the fact that some MacGuffins we encounter in life are bad, and  in real life we shouldn’t be so naïve as to believe every MacGuffin is misunderstood. We might meet a real bad guy in life, our MacGuffin, and if we choose to try to talk to them, or advise counseling, they’ll be back to do what they did to us, to someone else. This part of the narrative is often the whole purpose of the artist starting this project, to have the author’s side win. Logic often prevails, but the conflicted logician may employ some violent tendencies, as a subtle ode to those who enjoy some level of violence in every storyline, or to display the main character’s progressed desperation, but it’s often directed at the the real bad guys of this narrative, the irrational, militaristic bad guys who won’t listen to her.

Again, I could not write a modern monster story, because my problem solving techniques would be too simplistic, anti-climactic, and a little boring. My resolution would probably involve a gun. One of my characters would pull out a gun and shoot the MacGuffin dead. If that didn’t work, my character would shoot it again, multiple times, until it is dead. If that didn’t work, the character would try something else. This resolution would probably bore most modern monster book readers, because they prefer conflict resolutions that are deep, complicated, and multidimensional. My methodology is if one thing doesn’t work, try another. Gather all of the most brilliant minds, militaristic and otherwise, and try to develop a master plan of attack. In the modern monster movie, nothing works. I understand that leads to some compelling drama that defines their desperation, but this cliché often leads the authors to fall prey to some formulaic storytelling. 

It’s not that I want the author to write a story that employs my fundamentals, or that I want my side to win, it’s the eventual formula of these stories I find so deflating. Most modern authors play it safe with a formula loaded with so many clichés, tropes, and stereotypical characterizations that I eventually put the book out of its misery. I empathize with the difficulty of adding it all up to a fiery crescendo, but how many endings just crush? I’d say very few. I don’t know if some authors write too many books, or if they overcome blocks by just writing what amounts to the same endings every time out, but their formulas often leave me wanting. 

“What would you have done different?” defenders of the modern author might ask. It’s not my project, and I’m not the skilled author that brought the reader, almost effortlessly to point ‘R’, in the ‘A’ to ‘Z’ progression. They fumbled the ball three-fourths the way through is what I’m saying, and they had such a healthy drive going. “Do you think you could’ve done better?” No, but I would’ve done it different. I’ve given up on the big ‘O’, originality, because it’s almost impossible to be original nowadays, and an artist could go mad in the effort. Doing different is not always original, but the author could vie for unique. Every modern author, it seems, travels from ‘R’ to ‘Z’ in almost the exact same way. Why wouldn’t you take a right at ‘T’ or a left at ‘V’ to surprise me with something different? There’s just so much same-same going on in most novels that I can predict where they’re headed.

I still love the great story, and I probably always will. I might ‘X’ some authors out for the predictability of their formula, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve given up on the art of storytelling. I’m always on the lookout for the next great story from the next great author who shocks me with their innovative approach, unique techniques, their style, and a crushing crescendo, but I’ve been beat down by those who fall back on the tried and true.