Some of the girls and I watched Vanity Fair tonight. I told them as we watched that the movie reminded me of Gone With the Wind. There’s a good girl and a bad girl. The bad girl is willing to do whatever she must to survive and to thrive. Of course, there’s a war to get through, and a fallen hero who’s not really much of a hero at all–just as Melanie’s precious Ashley, although he survives the war, isn’t much of a hero either. The scene where the two pregnant women are fleeing Brussells as the enemy invades was quite reminiscent of the burning of Atlanta. Scarlett and Rhett, Becky and Rawdon, both couples deserve each other. And the men both finally see that reforming their respective spouses is hopeless. I thought about all this as I enjoyed a very well made movie.

Lo and behold, the girls watched some extra material that was on the DVD, and someone said that Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone WIth the Wind, read Thackeray’s Vanity Fair and was inspired to copy many character and plot elements from his book written a century before. Am I good or what?

I wonder if Edith Wharton also read Thackeray before she wrote House of Mirth?

I’ve read two recently published novels in the last few days, and as I was reading the second one, I realized something. Books nowadays are written in the form of movies. Either that or I read them that way, and I don’t think that’s it because I don’t see this movie formula in older books. Let me describe what I mean, and you see if you recognize it in the next novel you read.

1. Scene changes: The author writes a page or two or three about one set of characters in one setting; then he leaves some extra space or inserts a line or few dingbats and switches to another character or characters in another locale. The reader knows that all these separate stories and characters are going to come together by the end of the movie, er … novel, but no one except the scriptwriter himself knows exactly how they are related or how they will resolve into a satisfying ending. Older writers don’t switch scenes nearly so quickly. Tolkien has long sections about one set of characters before he moves to another set; Dickens has different sets of characters in different settings, but he follows David Copperfield, for instance, as he goes from one setting to another. David is the thread that ties everyone together.

2. Plot and action: Every short scene has to have some sort of physical action. Even when the characters are just talking or thinking at first, they’re almost always interrupted by some Event or Important Pronouncement. Someone jumps out the window; shots are fired; secrets are revealed; at the very least the love interest falls into the hero’s arms–or slaps him.

3. Romance: No modern movie or book is complete without at least one romance. Moby Dick would never make it these days. Where’s Ishmael’s love interest? No Huck Finn or Red Badge of Courage either. In fact one of the books I read is set during WWII, but the author can’t decide whether he’s writing a war novel or a romance. I guess it’s both at the same time. At least Henry V (Shakespeare) waits until the battle part is all over before he woos his lady love.

I’m not saying these rules don’t work to produce a readable story, but when did these become the rules? Do publishers or editors tell writers to write according to this formula? I’m really curious. Maybe there’s name for this kind of writing or a set of rules written down somewhere in Publishing Land, and I’m way behind because I just noticed the phenomenon. I so, go ahead and tell me. I’m used to being behind the times.

The first book I read, Improbable by Adam Fawer, was an absorbing thriller. It worked. I could have done without some of the more graphic violence, but I guess that’s part of the formula, too, so that your movie book will get at least a PG-13 or an R rating. (Actually, if I had to watch some of the stuff described in this book, I’d give it an X rating.) Lots of violence, plot twists galore, and little or no sex (but the obligatory love interest is there).

The other book is The Keeper’s Son by Homer Hickam, author of Rocket Boys which was made into a very successful movie, October Sky. This one, as I said, is set during WWII off the coast of North Carolina. Maybe Mr. Hickam writes movie-style because he’s already had one of his books made into a movie. However, the romantic interludes were just a distraction in the middle of a German submarine vs. US Coast Guard war novel. The novel focuses on Josh Thurlow, the captain of the Coast Guard boat, and on Krebs, commander of the German submarine that is sinking freighters with impunity just off the coast of Killakeet Island where Josh’s patrol and rescue boat is stationed. The duel between these two men and the details about life on a German submarine are interesting, but we keep on having other subplots and supporting characters stuck in the middle of it all whose presence is unnecessary. There’s a Preacher who’s lost his faith, a German who may be Josh’s long lost brother, a crazed-by-grief Navy commander who shanghais one of Thurlow’s sailors, etc.

I really read this book only because it comes before Hickam’s newest book, The Ambassador’s Son, which also features Josh Thurlow and is set in the South Pacific. I guess Thurlow got a transfer after the first book. I thought that The Ambassadot’s Son sounded interesting because it also has two fictional characters named “Shafty” and “Nick” who turn out to be none other than JFK and Richard Nixon, in their younger war years. I don’t know if I’ll read this sequel or not, though; as I read the blurbs it seems to me that again there’s altogether too much romance worked into the mix. Maybe I’ll just wait for the movie.

First of all, I like fantasy. I’m a Tolkien fanatic, and I’ve read and enjoyed Anne McCaffrey, Lloyd Alexander, C.S. Lewis, Ursula LeGuin, Stephen Lawhead, Carol Kendall, and John Christopher, to name a few favorites. However, I don’t like fantasy that gets too New Age-y or heretical. It doesn’t have to have Christian themes, but I prefer that it not be blatantly anti-Christian. (I will admit that I’ve never read Harry Potter nor have I read the Dark Materials books by Pullman because I was afraid both series would be just “off” enough to annoy me. Please don’t beat me up (figuratively) for not reading these. I know I may be wrong about either or both series.) So when I heard about Eragon,, a very popular fantasy novel mostly about dragons, I adopted a wait-and-see attitude. Dragons can be used to glorify evil in the wrong author’s hands.

Well, I was pleasantly surprised by Eragon. I wouldn’t say that the novel was profound or made me think deep thoughts, but it was a really good story, as advertised. I can see Tolkien influences in it as well as some resemblance to Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series, but Eragon is not a cheap copy of anyone else’s fantasy as far as I can tell. Christopher Paolini, a homeschooled teenager when he wrote the book, knows how to tell an absorbing story that kept me reading until after midnight last night just to see what would happen to Eragon and his dragon friend Saphira.

Maybe you already know the story of the writing and publication of Eragon: Christopher Paolini finished homeschool high school at age fifteen. He could have gone to college, but he decided to wait a while and write a book instead. He read books about writing, wrote his own book, and then showed it to his parents who owned a small publishing company. Christopher’s parents published the novel, and Christopher himself went on an author tour in the Northwest where his family lives to promote the book. Someone with connections in the publishing world read the book and liked it, and Knopf (Random House) re-published the book. It became a best-seller in 2003-4.

Eragon is the first book in a projected trilogy called the Inheritance trilogy. I will be getting the other two books in the series when they’re published in order to find out what happens next in the land of Alagaesia. I will also suggest that Computer Guru Son read this book. He’s been reading Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in anticipation of the release of the much-hyped movie version. He really should like Eragon. (By the way, Eragon is also supposed to be made into a movie to be released this year some time.)