Whether you write novellas about fierce mermaids, magazine stories for Cosmo (insert your own joke here) or speeches about the Austrian school of economics for the IMF — whatever sort of writer you are, two things matter most.
Not correct grammar and spelling. Those things are assumed.
Not pretty paragraphs and sentences that sing. That’s word gravy, while we’re talking about the main course.
What matters most: making your readers curious, then surprising them.
Surprise Kitteh is surprised.
This is why the inverted pyramid is a terrible structure for any writer. (Click with your mousity mouse to read Why the Inverted Pyramid must DIE.)
The inverted pyramid grabs a heavy rock and smashes the skull of curiosity. Then it takes that same bloody rock and crushes all hope for any surprises.
How does it achieve this epic level of failure? By giving you the answers before you even know the questions. The payoffs have no setups.
Ways to make your audience curious
Create setups by raising interesting questions (a) about real people where there are (b) high public stakes or (c) high private stakes and (d) serious conflict.
WHAT happened? (mystery)
Debates about the past are about facts, and assigning blame.
This is often more interesting than the question of who did it.THE BUTLER ALWAYS DOES IT, so tell us why instead.
How do you CHOOSE between two goods or two evils?
Debates about the present are value choices.
Choosing between good and evil is simple and cartoonish. That’s why its for kids. Truly tough choices are between two good or two evils. Does believing in true justice mean setting a killer free? That sort of stuff. These things are deep. They’ll exercise your head.
What WILL happen? (thriller)
Evil cats are planning on taking over the world. Can they be stopped? Nah.
Can we stop these evil cats from taking over the earth BEFORE a giant comet destroys it?
What might happen if you brought dinosaurs back to life?
Will 5.93 gazillion pounds of TNT make a dead whale disappear from a beach — or will something else happen instead?
WHO will get together — or split up? (romance)
Will Matthew McConaughy get together with Kate Hudson already or do we have to suffer through all 120 minutes of this stinker?
What specific drugs were involved when Hollywood executives decided that Sarah Jessica Parker was some kind of sex symbol? (I’m cheating here and inserting a mystery question about the past into a romance setup, and I should be punished by the Storytelling Gods but, to be completely honest, and to use more commas, which is usually against my religion, I JUST DON’T CARE)
What should you do about the FUTURE?
Debates about the future involve costs versus benefits.
As a promising high school athlete, should you let your studies suffer to chase the dream of playing in Major League Baseball, when there’s a greater chance of being hit by a logging truck than being drafted?
Should we try to go back to the gold standard, to make Ron Paul all happy as he shuffles off into retirement, or does destroying the global economy kinda put a damper on that whole idea?
Next year, should you sell all your possessions to build a zombie-proof bunker in Montana for a zombpocalypse that will never come but is fun to think about — or should you focus on that whole “driving to work and paying the bills” thing?
Ways to surprise your audience
It’s unfair to have things happen for no reason, like Anne Hathaway getting smooshed by a truck in ONE DAY.
Also cheating: letting people off the hook via deus ex machina, which is fancy Latin for “the sidekick shows up at the last minute to shoot the bad guy, right before the hero dies” (every action movie known to man) or “it was all a dream!” (an entire season of DALLAS) or “let’s bring in something we never told you about, then run away” (every sci-fi movie you’ve ever seen on cable).
Surprises shatter expectations and stereotypes. Did you expect the scientist handling the landing of Curiosity on Mars to be a young man rocking a mohawk? No. You expected a stereotypical nerdy McNerd, and bam, that little surprise turned Mohawk NASA man into a national phenom.
Didn’t expect a NASA scientist to be cool enough to rock this mohawk, did you? SURPRISE.
A good surprise must reveal something:
a secret you hinted at before
how a person has changed after suffering and sacrificing
a subtle setup that they may have noticed, but will remember (PRESUMED INNOCENT does this better than Anything in the History of Stories)
how society has changed after suffering and sacrificing
a shocking decision (the hero gets what he wants but rejects it, an unhappy ending to a Hollywood movie OR a happy ending to a French existentialist movie, a romantic comedy that doesn’t feature an put-together and ambitious heroine with a loser man she fixes up)
The library in my secret lair contains Every Thriller Known to Man, including every Lee Childthriller, so reviewing his novels is like riding a bicycle for me.
A bicycle with two seats and training wheels. And a chauffeur.
So let’s make one thing clear, right off: Lee Child is the best thriller writer alive.
Also, Lee is British, though he lives in NYC these days, so he’s got this killer accent to go along with the killer books about Reacher.
ONE SHOT is one of his better books. It’s not THE ENEMY, which is his best. But it’s not one of his worst, and his worst are still good.
Here’s the setup: Reacher is a loner. Six-foot-five. Two-fifty. A giant. He’s some kind of hotshot ex-Army major from the military police, and when you’re investigating bad guys for doing bad things and every suspect is a trained killer, you’ve got to be tougher than they are.
Reacher is plenty tough. And smart. He’s like putting the brain of Sherlock Holmes into the body of Dolph Lundgren, and then giving Dolph another twenty pounds of muscle.
It’s almost unfair to the bad guys. But that’s a post for another day.
When was the last time you went to a movie and wanted to stay behind and watch it again?
What was the last political stump speech that made you laugh and cry and want to go knock on the doors of your neighbors to make sure they voted? When was the last time you read a newspaper story that built up to an amazing climax instead of petering off into boring little details?
More people are writing more things than ever before. Movies and TV shows, blogs and newspapers, hardcover novels and digital e-books. Yet most of it is forgettable. Trite. Boring.
It used to be, blockbuster movies were the ones that had amazing special effects.
STAR WARS showed us things we’d never seen before, like lightsabers. Who doesn’t want a lightsaber?
JURASSIC PARK gave us dinosaurs that weren’t claymation or puppets. Today, though, any old TV show can afford to have great special effects.
And with the written word — novels, speeches, non-fiction and poetry — every author has the same unlimited special effects budget. You can do whatever you want for free. So what’s the problem?
In college, wise men with Einstein hair stood in front of lecture halls to tell you literature isn’t really about verbs, adverbs and dangling modifiers. No. Beneath the surface, lit-rah-sure asks a fundamental question that some believe is just as important as religion or science.
That question is this: “What’s worth living for, and what’s worth dying for?”
Nine words.
But I’m not banging in the keyboard late at night, powered by industrial amounts of coffee, to channel that old man with Einstein hair and a corduroy jacket with patches on the elbows. No. I not some ancient professor, and my closet contains no corduroy whatsoever.
I’m here to talk about those nine words, and why it leads me to one inescapable conclusion: that I do, in fact, know how to spell “inescapable.” Bit surprising. Thought I’d muff that one.
Also: every man must read a romance — and every woman must read a thriller.
Why every man MUST read a romance
Not to pick up girls. And not, if you’re married, to improve your odds of staying out of the dog house.
Every man should read a romance — and think about these things — for an entirely different reason. It’s the first part of the question, the “What’s worth living for?” part.
See, I could walk into (1) a cubicle farm, (2) factory break room or (3) sports bar and show any random 10 single men a photo from the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, and if I asked them — drunk or not — whether they would marry this swimsuit model. I’m only half kidding when I say nine of those men would shrug and say, “Sure.”
Because we men are stupid that way.
HOWEVER: We need to get over it, and start thinking about these sorts of things. And yes, a damn fine first step would be to read a romance novel.
Watching a rom-com starring Matthew McConaughey, who’s last name is impossible to spell, does not count. Neither does firing up Netflix for SEX AND THE CITY 3: SARA JESSICA PARKER SHOPS FOR PURSES IN PARIS.
You must read an actual romance novel, with words and sentences, though I’ll leave it up to you whether it involves Men in Kilts.
I’ve written a few things about romances. (See below.) And my thinking has evolved quite a bit, not just because I’ve met 5,092 romance authors and talked to them, using this thing I like to call the Series of Tubes.
On the surface, sure, romances are about relationships. How two people meet, how they fall in love, all that.
Beneath that, romances are often about a massively important choice: who do you commit to, and marry? Classics like PRIDE AND PREJUDICE feature a lot of talking, thinking and scheming about who should get matched up with who.
At first I thought this was a lot of gossipy gossip nonsense. But it’s not. These choices are hard, and they mirrored real life. Back then, who a woman married meant everything. It wasn’t like folks had a lot of career choices and birth control options. Could this man be a good provider for oh, eight or ten kids? You’re damn straight if I were a woman back then, I’d want to marry a handsome prince. Tell me that story. Let me live that dream, not the one where I die in squalor giving birth to child No. 9.
High stakes back then. High stakes now, and a big deal for everyone involved. Who should you marry and have kids with? Oh, that’s massive, especially before the invention of The Pill and no-fault divorce. Can’t think of a bigger decision, and it’s definitely worth thinking about, if not agonizing over at least as much as the average man obsesses about his fantasy football picks.
Most men I know are generally horrible at this. We tend not to talk about love and relationships with our buddies, our sisters, with anybody. A lot of us tend have the attitude, “What happens, happens.” Then two years later, they’re married to somebody they’ve either (a) dated since ninth grade or (b) met last Thursday and flew down to Vegas to get hitched.
Four years later, they have two kids. Seven years later, they’re divorced. Not cool. Not smart. I know a lot of good, educated people who made bad choices and wound up like this. I feel lucky. Also, my beautiful and brilliant wife devours novels like candy, including not just lit-rah-sure but romances of all shapes and sizes. So I know enough to be dangerous.
I know that there are romances which really dive into the struggle to choose between two different partners. I know that it’s cheating to make one a villain and one a hero. Both choices must have merits and demerits. Thought I hate the stupid movies and books, TWILIGHT highlights this choice: the sparkly vampire or the hot werewolf? THE HUNGER GAMES — great book, great movie — also features this tough choice, and does it well. BRIDGET JONES’S DIARY makes you think twice about the handsome bad boy and take a second look at Colin the Firth and his ugly Christmas sweater.
There’s a long list of stories diving into that decision. They’re worth reading, and watching, and talking about.
Because in the end, a lot of people figure out “What’s worth living for?” isn’t about money, fame or spending more time at the office. Life’s about your wife and kids and family.
Pick wisely, men. Get all the help you can get, and not from your buddies, because they’ll say things like “Dude, the choice is obvious: Kelly the waitress with the sweet Mustang, unless you want to cruise around town in Sarah the lawyer and her hand-me-down minivan.”
Why every woman MUST read a thriller
Thrillers answer the second half of the question: “What’s worth dying for?”
If you answer the call to serve — as a firefighter or homicide detective, a Marine or a smokejumper, a coal miner or logger — there’s a chance you’ll die on the job. And if somebody breaks into your home and threatens your wife and kids with a gun, it’s your job to take a bullet and take the guy out while you’re family gets away safe.
This is how men think, and it is something that we talk about. It’s also why we tend to be obsessed with violent sports like football, MMA and hockey. (WWE, however, is fake and lame.) These things are practice for real life.
The question is, how often do you roll the dice? You can’t run around pretending to be Superman, spending your nights cruising dark alleys looking for muggers and rapists to duel to the death. (That’s because Superman is kind of a dipstick, invincible and annoying. Batman, now, is the man. You can go ahead and pretend to be him.) Yet you can’t be a complete nancypants, either, running from every fight and challenge.
When do you decide something is worth dying for?
Thrillers answer that question in a visceral way, with the stakes raised as high as they go.
Should you answer the call of your country and fight a war, taking the lives of other young men with families of their own, and possibly coming home in a body bag yourself — even if you suspect the war is wrong?
If a serial killer kidnaps your daughter, do you put your faith in the cops — or turn your CIA training loose and go after the whackjob yourself, despite the risk? Liam Neeson votes for hunting down whackjob kidnappers.
Should your family suffer under the oppressive fist of a planet-destroying dictatorship, or will you risk your freedom and life by joining the rebellion, which probably has the same chance of victory as the Mariner’s have of winning the World Series?
When the only hope to save the world is to get on an armored space shuttle with Bruce Willis, fly to an asteroid, drill deep inside and set off a nuclear explosion, will you go on that suicide mission, knowing that you probably won’t come back, or will you stay behind to enjoy one last week of picnics and bottles of Riesling with Liv Tyler before the world goes kaboom?
Just as betrayal is a common theme in romances, it’s also a huge element to thrillers. Because there’s nothing worse than doing dangerous, deadly work for a boss who is secretly an evil jerk. Not only did you get duped, but you did dangerous things, maybe violent and murderous things, for the wrong reason. That tends to piss men off.
Even though it’s a cliche, there’s truth to the typical action movie nonsense about a lone wolf detective / Green Beret / assassin who’s weary and retired from the game. It takes a lot to convince him that he should return to work, because he doesn’t fully believe that all the suffering and sacrifice is worth it. He’s seen too many good people die already.
Often, the story proves him right. He’s a cog in the machine, a machine that will use him up and throw him away. Is that worth dying for? Probably not.
Action movies and thrillers are about the need to make that choice decisively and wisely. There’s no “I’ll go halfway with you on this assault the Death Star thing, OK?” You only die once, except in Bond movies, thought I’m not exactly sure why Bond gets to die twice. I do know this: Bond has terrible taste in women. Are they beautiful? Sure. But after they sleep with him, they all turn up dead. EVERY TIME.
Not your usual sitcom nonsense
All this is why romances and thrillers can be epic. The stakes are high. The emotions are visceral. It’s not the usual nonsense you see in a sitcom every night, where Bart Simpson shoplifts for the first time and in 30 minutes learns the important life lesson that stealing is wrong, wrong, wrong. Roll credits.
Harry Potter is really one big long thriller about whether Harry will get Voldemort — a serial killer who happens to be a wizard — before Voldemort gets him.
STAR WARS takes an unexpected twist, with a father sacrificing his life to save his son and free a galaxy from oppression. I expected the new Death Star to simply get blown up in an even fancier explosion than the first time. I did not expect Darth the Vader to toss Emperor Wrinkly Face of the Lightning Fingers down an endless shaft. A father’s love turned out to be the biggest deal in the end. Interesting.
There’s a reason why many thrillers start out with a family being slaughtered and the lone survivor setting out to avenge them. You’re taking away what’s worth living for, and that leads the hero answer the question of what’s worth dying for.Your wife and kids mattered. You can’t let that slide. And you won’t.
Thrillers aren’t as compelling when the hero is aloof and the mission has nothing to do with his emotions, family or country, when it’s just a job where the hero is busy looking cool while wearing sunglasses and shooting guns. There’s nothing behind it. It’s flat and empty.
Everybody wants something worth living for, to dedicate themselves wholly and completely to something, because otherwise, what’s the point of waking up, fighting traffic and slaving away in a cubicle for thirty years until you die, right? People get that. It’s why people become obsessive fans of the Green Bay Packers or STAR TREK, why people dedicate themselves to politics, religion or a cause. Some folks divert this urge into collecting every Beanie Baby every made. Don’t.
Great stories — in movies and novels — speak to this need to matter, to belong, to put a stamp on life, to give your all, even if it’s bonkers.
And truly great stories take us deeper.
Harry the Hedonist will argue that lovers leave you, husbands divorce you, kids randomly get leukemia, and in the end, we all die, so pass the wine and live it up.
Isaac the Idealist says you should dedicate yourself to great ideas and institutions, which are the only things that last.
Ned the Nihilist trumps THAT with “Nothing truly lasts. Institutions don’t care about you and even a killer asteroid, nuclear war or homicidal robots from the future fail to destroy us, the sun will eventually turn into a red giant, doing a burnt-toast number on earth before ruining THE ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOOD by going supernova.”
Do I have video? Yes I do.
But if nothing truly lasts, there’s no point in sacrificing friends and family for an institution or an idea. Be good to others. Do the right thing. Love with all your heart. Or use two cows on a silly blog to explain all of politics and philosophy. (The world explained by TWO COWS)
These questions are tough, interesting and complicated — and every tough, complicated problem has an easy, simple to understand wrong answer.
You can get into these kinds of questions with romances and thrillers in a way that Philosophy 402 classes simply can’t touch. Because if you put human faces and names behind the ideas, and real emotions, the neat logic about the deontological notion of equal treatment versus the greatest good for the greatest number — all that abstraction turns to dust.
Also, take it from Plato and every dictatorship on the planet: literature and stories are the most powerful, and dangerous, way to talk about ideas. That’s why evil governments burn books and censor movies.
So men, read a romance.
Pick something that won an award, or one with Fabio on the cover. But grab one. And don’t buy one at Barnes and Noble, because I know you won’t do it. Ask your women friends for their favorites, read the back covers and pick your favorite of the bunch. Also, hear me know and believe me later in the week: romance novels are more interesting, and useful, than reading Cosmo when you’re waiting in the doctor’s office, despite all the tempting headlines. (Secret truth: every edition of Cosmo is actually the same. They swap out the covers, change the headlines of the stories and NOBODY NOTICES.)
Women, find a thriller. Hopefully one by Barry Eisler or Lee Child, who should be sending me kickbacks.
Then start a literary knife fight in the comment section about Men in Kilts versus Haunted Homicide Detectives Who Are Allergic to Razors.
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Guy – Photo by Suhyoon Cho
Reformed journalist. Scribbler of speeches and whatnot. Wrote a thriller that was a finalist for some award.
Who’s the toughest of the literary tough guys? I put eight master detectives vs. eight spies, assassins and anti-heroes in a fight to the death. But first they have to find the other…
Eight master detectives
1) Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
2) Jack Reacher by Lee Child
3) Philip Marlowe by Raymond Chandler
4) Dave Robicheaux by James Lee Burke
5) Spenser by Robert B. Parker
6) Easy Rawlins by Walter Mosley
7) Harry Bosch by Michael Connelly
8) Mike Hammer by Mickey Spillane
Sherlock the Holmes, dean of the master detectives
Eight spies, assassins and anti-heroes
1) James Bond by Ian Fleming
2) Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
3) John Rain by Barry Eisler
4) Quiller by Elleston Trevor
5) Jack Ryan by Tom Clancy
6) Skink by Carl Hiaasen
7) Hannibal Lecter by Thomas Harris
8) George Smiley by John Le Carré
So I wrote a little parody of talking cat cozies — yes, there is a genre of mystery novels where talking cats help little old ladies solve mysteries. TALKING CATS.
Evil Cat can wait. Oh yes. He can wait a very long time.
Now, click with your mousity mouse to read page two of A BOWL OF WARM MILK AND MURDER.
Darth Kitty finds your lack of faith disturbing.
So I come to a difficult decision. A fork in the road of writerdom.
Door No 1.: Abandon the Evil Cat and his adventures in midstride, which would be sad.
Door No. 2: Drop everything else and write 300-whatever pages of A BOWL OF WARM MILK AND MURDER.
Door No 3: Let the scientists clone me and do both.
Door No. 4: Do like some famous authors and put my name in BIG LETTERS while the schmuck who “co-wrote” the book has his name in agate type.
Time is precious, as in I don’t have any right now. Later in the year, sure.
Not now.
And I have things to do.
But it nagged at me. Even in the midst of writing other things at work, or writing things for fun at midnight, Evil Cat scratched at me with his sharp claws and whispered to me.
Rambo? Rambo is a nancypants.
I told him to go away, that I’m trying to write a Serious Novel, and by serious I mean somewhere in between pretentious literary nancypants nonsense (FREEDOM) and sci-fi trash involving trolls, elves or armored dragons in spaceships. (Sadly, I am not making that up. Those novels exist.)
Evil Cat cut the brake lines of my car.
So: I picked Door No. 5: Write random passages of A BOWL OF WARM MILK OF MURDER with choice photos of evil cats, stolen from the series of tubes.
Page 184 of A BOWL OF WARM MILK AND MURDER
(from a funeral scene, with Evil Cat peering in from a window to the Eastside Methodist Church)
The Woman and the Boy have water on their face for the girl in the wooden box.
They sing songs from the black book. They hug each other.
I have not read the black book, though it seems important. I do know that they sing songs to the Bearded Man, who lives in the sky, and give him pieces of paper. Then when the snow and frozen water comes, the Bearded Man comes down from the sky in his box, pulled by the deer with horns, to give children the toys made by tiny slaves with pointed ears.
Vampire Cat eats angsty sparkly vampires for brunch.
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Guy – Photo by Suhyoon Cho
Reformed journalist. Scribbler of speeches and whatnot. Wrote a thriller that was a finalist for some award.
I was floored to learn there’s an entire flipping genre of novels featuring talking cats who help old British ladies solve murders.
They even have a name for this genre: Talking Cat Cozies, apparently a subgenre of the Cozy Mystery shebang, which are the natural enemy of Uncomfortable Mysteries — which I imagine has its own subgenre of Scratchy Wool Sweater Mysteries.
So I did the natural thing and wrote the first page of a parody.
Before we get to page 2 of the Adventures of Murderous Mr. Whiskers, here are two videos packed full of proof that (1) cats are evil criminals and (2) maybe they can talk a little.
First: the world’s best cat burglar is actually a cat.
Second, this cat seems to talk up a storm, though our evil cat, Mr. Whiskers, technically only knows Words and plans on taking over a small town. He believes in starting small, in proof of concept. Taking over the world is Step 3.
A BOWL OF WARM MILK AND MURDER
Page 2
The Man knows that I have watched him. That I have seen him do bad things.
Riding inside his metal horse, he tried to smash into me. Not because he thinks I know words, or saw what he did in the cave beneath his house. The Man does not like cats. He shoots the birds that sing. He likes to smash and kill, and he does not eat what he kills.
I have seen how he looks at me, and at dogs without owners. He sees prey.
If I could tell the Woman about him, I would. But knowing words and talking are two different things. She wears the clothes of a Person Catcher, with a belt full of tools, and I have sat on her lap as she looked at words and photos of the wounded and the dead.
The Man, though, is the Boss of the Person Catchers, so even if I could talk, and tell her, she would not believe me. She would call the people of science and they would take me away and poke me with needles.
So I watch the Man, and I spend much time thinking.
Because killing a man will not be like killing a mouse or a bird or a mole.
I was shocked — SHOCKED — to learn that there are mystery novels featuring talking cats, cats who help old British ladies solve murders and whatnot.
Then my mind was blown to itty bitty pieces when I heard THIS IS NOT A FLUKE.
There isn’t a solo author who did this and was magically successful at it. Many, many authors write Talking Cat Cozy Mysteries, and many people hand over pieces of paper decorated with dead presidents to buy these novels, and read them.
So much so that Talking Cat Cozies are an entire flipping sub-genre now, just like Sparkly Vampires and the Angsty Teenagers Who Love Them.
Everybody knows cats can’t talk. Porcupines, now, talk up a storm.
This made me think, which is always dangerous.
What if somebody wrote a Talking Cat Mystery where the cat … is secretly the killer?
Oh, yes.
Evil Cat says, "Cujo is a slobbery nancypants. Bring me another warm bowl of milk, human."
So I wrote the first chapter of an evil talking cat mystery.
Act I: A wealthy, disfigured foreigner toils late into the night; also, HE MAKES SNACKS
Wealthy? Check. Disfigured? Check. Foreigner? Check. OK, you've got yourself a Villain of the Week.
1. The Villain of the Week is a wealthy, disfigured foreigner who (a) steals a nuclear warhead, (b) plans to kidnap the president or (c) discovers a lock of Hitler’s hair and is busy cloning the Führer.
2. The Standard Hero is tall, dark and deadly. He used to work for the government, wears anything as long as it’s black — wet suit, tuxedo or cat-burglar outfit — and solves every problem by beating it up, blowing it up or sleeping with it.
3. The Villain of the Week has an endless army of faceless minions except for two people: (a) the femme fatale, who has a special bond with our hero because her wardrobe is also exclusively black, just tighter, and (b) a giant, impossibly strong thug who never speaks and has a signature way of killing people.
Act II: The Standard Hero wakes from his slumber to BLOW THINGS UP
You know she's the good Bond girl, because she wears a white bikini.
4. The hero is out of the business and cares nothing for money, but the state appeals to his patriotism — or the villain kills his wife/girlfriend.
5. Although our hero is a lone wolf, he must now work with a team, including (a) one beautiful young sidekick who knows kung fu almost as well as the Kama Sutra and (b) a science nerd who provides exploding pens and tech support. He will also have (c) a Bureaucratic Boss, who will suspend our hero, then turn out to be a mole working for the Villain of the Week.
6. If the president isn’t involved, the prime minister of Britain shows up, plus a politician involved in the conspiracy, who will either be a slick, greedy senator with a southern accent or an ancient and decadent member of the House of Lords.
7. Between car chases and explosions, the femme fatale tries to kill the hero, who bests her, making her decide to sleep with him. This is how you know she is doomed.
Act III: The Big Showdown ends in a fist fight; never mind ALL THE GUNS
7. The hero infiltrates the villains lair with the help of the femme fatale, who betrays him. The villain doesn’t kill him right off. He delegates death-by-torture to the femme fatale, who sets the hero free, then turns bad again at the last minute so she can have a long catfight with the beautiful sidekick.
8. After our hero kills countless minions, he faces the invincible giant. The hero uses the invincible giant’s signature killing move against him.
The life expectancy of a villain's henchman is not impressive. To hell with building up your 401(k) -- live it up. SPEND IT NOW.
9. Despite the carpet of dead thugs clutching AK-47s, the Villain of the Week decides to fight the hero bare handed as the lair self-destructs. The Standard Hero dispatches the villain by (a) tossing him down an endless chasm, (b) impaling him on a massive spike or (c) throwing him down a chasm that ends in a massive spike.
10. Nothing changes. Our hero doesn’t change or grow — he’ll be back for more in the sequel. The world doesn’t change. The average person in Cleveland has no idea anything happened at all.
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Guy – Photo by Suhyoon Cho
Reformed journalist. Scribbler of speeches and whatnot. Wrote a thriller that was a finalist for some award.
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