If you imagine distracting events as the axe-men Luke Cage is busting on this cover —
— then unlike last week, the third axe-man did me in. Almost nothing got done this week.
I knew it wouldn’t be a stellar week because TYG had an out-of-town trip which left me with all the dog care (not a criticism of her — she does the same when I go out of town). Still it wouldn’t have been too bad, except early Sunday morning Trixie’s UTI returned. Peeing on the bed does tend to rob one of sleep. Monday I had to take her in; the vet confirmed it’s a different bacterial soup inside her from last time. This could mean some bacteria got antibiotic resistance or that her equipment is looser and weaker., leading to incontinence. Either way it’s treatable.
Happily the UTI doesn’t seem to affect anything else. She’s lively, up for walks, eats, snuggles. No small thing.
In the short term, however, I got minimal sleep Saturday and Sunday night (she got up early Monday morning too). Then Monday night I was too stressed with worry to sleep well and felt half-dead Tuesday. Need I say I didn’t get much done? Wednesday was better but not much better. TYG returned and I got more sleep Wednesday night. However Thursday I was still tired and we had a recheck for Trixie to go to.
Result? Almost nothing done. Some work on Savage Adventures and a final review of my two stories for Become the Sky. We’re shooting to get it done next month so that has to be a priority.
However, as I’ve blogged about several times over the years, some bad weeks are inevitable. Sooner or later you hit a week where everything goes wrong. This ain’t the first. Won’t be the last. The solution is to do better next week. This will be a little challenging — three different medical appointments for various things — but I shall do my best to rise to the challenge.
To end on a plus note, I sold several copies of various books so as always, thank you buyers! Hope you enjoyed them.
Cover by Billy Graham. All rights to image remain with current holders.
As I’ve mentioned before, Let No Man Put Asunder is a rewrite of my second novel. I rewrote it in the 1990s and improved it with no better result getting publisher or agent attention. I tried a third rewrite which never got a finished draft, and now this version, which is much stronger. Maybe not stronger yet than version two — that one was really good — but I think it will be by the time I finish.
Last week I discussed one of the changes from the previous versions: a much larger cast. Going over the manuscript this week and thinking about Paul and Mandy’s character arcs, I saw another problem. To wit, that I’ve given them similar character arcs to their earlier incarnations, Neil and Adrienne, and they’re not the same people.
Neil and Adrienne were in a good place when their adventures began. Adrienne, an archeology/history buff, daydreams of uncovering lost cities; Neil fantasizes about being a hardboiled PI. That’s as far as their discomfort goes. I wanted to make them ordinary people, happy in their lives, when they’re dragged into a crazy world of adventure against their will.
Paul and Mandy aren’t in a good place. Paul’s dispute with his parents over his academic future has ended with them cutting off support; he’s now busing tables at a greasy spoon to support himself. Mandy, after years caring for her invalid father and raising her five siblings (Mom decided Dad’s terminal illness was too much to deal with so she split). Now her dad is dead, her brothers and sisters are out of the house, she’s ready to start living her own life … and yet she has no idea what to do next (there are reasons).
I have a rough idea of their emotional state when the book starts but going over it made me see I need a much stronger grasp. Paul in particular. Mandy could keep going the way she is for a while; Paul’s feeling a lot more stress. Does he want to resume his academic life? Make a clean break? Reconcile with his parents? Build a life without them?
As I’ve blogged about several times, Orson Scott Card breaks down four types of stories. They can center on the milieu, a question, the character arc or the plot. Maria in Southern Discomfort starts in crisis and ends with the crisis resolved. Her experiences in Pharisee Ga. stem partly out of her own decisions. Paul and Mandy, on the other hand, didn’t do anything. Other hands pulled strings and brought on the crisis in which they find themselves, hunted by mercenaries through the streets of Bluestone, Pa. It’s more plot-driven than character driven
Nevertheless, the first chapter is heavily focused on their personal problems and their discomfort with their lives. The ending chapter, at least in the second draft deals with them wrapping up their personal conflicts or at any rate making a start on fixing them. Their character arc is just as important as the plot arc. I have to know where they are at the start and how the adventure changes them. Unlike Neil, Paul doesn’t fantasize about being Sam Spade or Mike Hammer and he’s not getting a thrill off being plunged into danger. And the revelations about how he got involved in this will be way more unsettling than what Neil discovered.
Neil’s arc also involved him meeting his dream woman — not necessarily eternal love, but way more than the casual affairs he’s experienced. As I wrote in the previous post, Cordelia/Paul doesn’t seem to work the same way, so maybe not. For Mandy, I have a clearer idea of her ending arc and ideally sex is part of it — but again, the guy she sleeps with doesn’t seem to fit the book at all. Different lover? Change the arc? I’m not sure.
While there’s clearly a lot of work ahead, all of this is fixable. Hopefully without taking as long as I usually do.
You know, these axemen. I’ve posted this Billy Graham cover before because it sums up the way life keeps bushwhacking us just when we think we’re out from under. There were more axemen this week than expected but like the first week of September, the work got done.
A lot of the distractions were paperwork, like submitting for our dogs various recent vet visits, ordering fresh dog drugs, etc. There was also tiredness due to Trixie’s drug regimen keeping up up late to get the last ones in. Her UTI and her GI issues have resolved themselves, though, and the drugs are done. However she developed a slightly shaky left rear leg so we have an appointment this Saturday. It’s nothing serious but it’s definitely not normal — I don’t want to wait for serious discomfort like we did with the GI bleed.
Despite the leg, she’s 100 percent better from last weekend. Hungry, bouncy, eager to play, willing to walk and just more her usual self. Dudley too is in good shape. We had his rehab recheck Monday and the vet gushed over the great shape he’s in for nearly 16. Yay Dudders, yay vet, yay us for taking good care.
Overall life was nowhere near as intense as last week. However it was intense enough I didn’t really get to draw breath, either.
So, walk. As one of my October articles for The Local Reporter is a listicle of Carrboro nonprofits I spent Monday researching them. There’s quite a lot for a small town so it’s a good thing I started. I imagine I’ll break them down into different groupings (kid-related, sports, arts, charity, etc.) when I write it next week.
I’ve proofed The Savage Adventures through 1937 which is about 45 percent of the book done. Having reread the second draft of Let No Man Put Asunderlast week, I began planning Draft Three. That meant reading a lot of articles about rewriting, developing character arcs, etc., then starting work on Paul and Mandy’s character arcs (details next week). That was very productive; hopefully the work will translate into a smooth, faster-than-usual draft.
My two stories for the Become the Sky anthology have gotten two rounds of editing so I made changes Thursday. This took longer than expected so I didn’t write anything further. However the critiques were really good and the stories are stronger for it. So yay. If all goes well we’ll have this out before year’s end so you can decide for yourself.
Oh, and my sensitive teeth appear to be getting back to normal so maybe a crown won’t be necessary. Hurray! Second hurray, I sold another copy of Southern Discomfort. Whoever you were, thank you — I hope you enjoy it.
After I wrote the first draft of this post, I realized something else about this week: I’m waaaaay more focused than I have been in a while. I’m having no trouble concentrating on my work and only wandering off to check BlueSky (or whatever) occasionally. That hasn’t been the case in … a while? I’m not sure what changed but hopefully I can keep it up next week (much chaotic stuff to deal with, details next Friday). Because it feels good.
Not that I spent the whole time struggling to create my novel. During that period I had various income-generating writing gigs, I wrote three movie books, I had other fiction projects. Still, I’d prefer to finish Let No Man Put Asunder much more quickly. I am, after all, getting older and with less time left, I feel the need to use it effectively.
Routinely at some point in the creative process I take my most recent draft and shift from repeated pantsing to plotting. With novels, this hasn’t ever worked well. This time, I’m determined it will. I’ve read over the second draft, taken lengthy notes, taken more based on how-to writing books and articles … now the replotting begins.
What have I learned from the reread? For one thing, my book’s gotten way too crowded.
In the previous version (this is a rewrite of an earlier novel) the supporting cast for Neil and Adrienne (now Paul and Mandy) included the telekinetic tween Plutarch; his robot sidekick Talos; chief antagonists Celathion and Grainge; Cordelia Winters, Neil’s swashbuckling love interest; Renador, high-tech thief; and Peacock and Mountebank who show up in the last quarter along with a couple more bit players. Plus Mircalla Karnstein, the vampire from J. Sheridan LeFanu’s “Carmilla,” who appears off-and-on.
In this version, the big change was setting everything in Mandy’s hometown, Bluestone, rather than having Mandy and Paul cast out into the multiverse. I think it’s the right move but an unanticipated side effect is that it’s expanded the cast. Mandy’s siblings. Hillier and Oriel, two Bluestone police detectives investigating the goings on. Plus Renador (now Raga) and Cordelia. Plus Peacock and Mountebank appearing a lot more. Plus Flavia (the former Plutarch) and Talos. And because I made Flavia black, she needs to have more of her own arc than Plutarch did, so she doesn’t end up a helpful Magical Negro.
The book is overstuffed. I think the villains can be worked out without too much trouble but the heroes? Cordelia feels awkward; the romance arc doesn’t work. I’m not sure if she’s become the wrong character as Paul develops, or there’s simply not space to develop it. Raga feels completely tacked on, like he no longer fits the narrative. A shame as I wound up with him and Mandy sleeping together, which fits her character arc (I’ll get into that later). My scene with Countess Karnstein feels awkward too. In the previous draft they stumbled smoothly into her lair, and the fight is intense; here it’s lacking. As I have one of her vampire lackeys taking point to hunt Paul and Mandy, I’m wondering if I shouldn’t leave Karnstein in the background or drop her completely.
Quite simply, there’s not enough space for everyone to develop. It’s not just about them having character arcs — various characters drop out of the plot when it feels like they should stick around. I fixed some of that in this last draft, but not enough. One option is to write bigger and give them all a role. Another, probably the more practical choice, is to trim the cast and develop the rest more.
Which to cut? Raga and the countess most obviously, but beyond that? Well, there’s Mandy’s family: four out of her five siblings show up but it might be better if one of them was out of town.
I’m a fan of the late 1970s Flash Gordon animated TV series but somehow I never got around to the 1982 feature-length version, FLASH GORDON: The Greatest Adventure of All. Before blogging about it, a bit of comic-strip history.
The Flash Gordon comic strip debuted in 1934 and blew the people reading the Sundaycomics pages away. In the opening story arc, Dr. Zarkov kidnaps Flash — a champion polo player — and beautiful Dale Arden to come with him to Mongo, a rogue planet hurtling towards Earth. On Mongo they become the resistance leaders against the tyrannical Ming the Merciless and criss-crossing the man cultures of Mongo: the winged Hawkmen, Prince Barin’s foresters, and multiple others.
It’s basic sword-and-planet stuff, the kind the pulps had been doing for more than 20 years by then. However reading it wasn’t the same as seeing it and in those days you didn’t see it. Nothing like it at the movies, no TV, no comic books. Flash Gordon became a star and Alex Raymond a legend. It would become three hit movie serials, a 1950s TV show, then the 1980 film, then the cartoon. And since then various appearances in comic books, the Defenders of Earth cartoon, comic books and more TV. I watched the first episode of the most recent TV show. Not good.
And then there’s The Greatest Adventure ofAll, which was much more enjoyable. We open in 1939 Warsaw as Olympic athlete turned US diplomat Flash Gordon struggles to help people during the Nazi invasion of Poland. He can’t but he gets a message from a brilliant Polish scientist to deliver to Dr. Zarkov — “One word … Mongo.” Flash and reporter Dale Arden reach Zarkov but the disruptions unleashed by Mongo’s approach force them to escape Zarkov’s isolated laboratory by rocket ship. Destination: Mongo. Can they stop Ming when he wields the terrifying power of atomic fission to fuel his technology? Can Flash unite Mongo’s warring factions into an organized opposition? Will Ming force Dale into marriage? Will his daughter Aura seduce Flash?
It’s action packed and fun … but it got me thinking whether there’s any point to continued revivals. Flash Gordon back when this came out was still a famous name, at least to nerds like me; now I’m not so sure. Certainly sword-and-planet remains popular but when Star Wars films and TV spinoffs fill more or less the same spot in pop culture, does Flash bring anything to the table?
Even the animated film, though it only came out in ’82, looks a little dated. The voice cast, except for Ted Cassidy as the lion man Thun, is forgettable; these days I’d expect a much stronger acting team. And the women’s roles, while true to the original series, are dreadful (making me appreciate John Carter for doing so well with Dejah Thoris). Dale spends the entire film a captive; Aura gets more agency — bad girls often do — but she still winds up facing a forced marriage to Vultan, the king of the Hawkmen (and forced marriage clearly means marital rape). I think it’s possible to do that and still be true to Raymond — but I’m not sure it would sell even so. Of course, it only takes one clever filmmaker to prove me wrong …
Art by Alex Raymond. All rights to images remain with current holders.
Which is to say that much like last week there were constant calls on my time but I still got good work done. Not as much as last week —Thursday there was too much stuff going on, including the housecleaners coming in (having to watch over four pets in a small room to keep them out of the way does not lead to productive results). Even so.
First, the medical stuff. Plushie’s eye ulcer is gone; once again his robustness shines through and his problems cleared up. Trixie, by contrast, followed up last week’s gastro-intestinal bleed with a UTI. Fortunately the vet has handled both and she’s on the road to recovery. In hindsight I was right a couple of weeks back to think something was wrong — her body language and behavior were “off” — but it was such a vibes-based thing I wasn’t sure it was quantifiable enough for the vet. Looking at her now, when she’s back to her usual cheery self, I can see I should have acted sooner.
Oh, and I had my own medical issue. A couple of weeks back I made a Scandinavian flatbrod, which the book described as a cracker-like flatbread. Turns out while it’s hard like a cracker it isn’t brittle; I hurt my gums biting hard on it (this may have been my baking rather than something innate in the recipe). Got an appointment with the dentist this week; she recommended waiting three weeks to see if the pain subsides. If not, I need a crown. Fingers crossed the pain goes away.
Like I said, work got done despite that. More work on my Doc Savage history, Savage Adventures. Two days going over the second draft of Let No Man Put Asunder. It helped clarify some of what I vaguely sensed wasn’t working with this last draft; now I’ll try to override my pantsing instincts and plot the next draft out thoroughly. I’ll discuss what lies ahead in one of next week’s posts.
I’m tired, sure. The timing of Trixie’s drug regimen means we usually wind up going to sleep later than usual and it’s taking its toll. But the work got done. I’m pleased.
Panels from Blue Beetle #5 drawn and written by Steve Ditko. All rights to image remain with current holders.
I haven’t done a writing-links post in a while, so …
For anyone pushing creative stuff nobody seems to get, Rod Serling did too. When The Twilight Zone was approaching its first season, one interviewer asked Serling, “For the time being and for the foreseeable future, you’ve given up on writing anything important for television, right?”
So your beta-reader missed something you clearly explained in the manuscript? Maybe you’re not as clear as you thought.
“As nearly anyone who has graded a paper that was generated by ChatGPT can attest to, AI does not produce good writing. Not only does it hallucinate citations, but it fails to offer any originality or a clear point of view. It produces vague generalities without real insights. It offers a reminder that proper syntax and good writing are not the same, and as a professor I would certainly rather point out how an engaged student can refine their writing to improve their argument than grade another banal paper that is the product of intellectual laziness. What’s more, this excessive reliance on AI leads me to the inescapable question: Why are you in this field?”
I’ve read multiple complaints in recent years that a non-super supporting cast is becoming a rare thing in comics. Here’s some arguments for bringing them back.
“One thing that frustrates me quite a bit about modern opinion-writing is that hardly anyone tries to argue with a particular person or a specific argument. it’s all gesturing towards people saying something … i think writers would be well served by finding actual people of influence who hold the views they want to contest, and then contest them head on.” — Jamelle Bouie.
“Blackburn notes that there’s a lot of control relinquished to a chatbot as to what the definition of pornography or conservative values is. The definition is whatever the AI model has defined it as.” — a look at how rightwingers are using chatbots to find passages they think justify book banning.
The creators of the classic Elfquest say they’d sooner have no animated version than an unfaithful adaptation — which is why they’ve now accepted there will never be an Elfquest movie. Here’s a more detailed look at some of the bad proposals.
“Publishing.com LLC and its two principals will pay $1.5 million and be required to substantiate earnings claims in the future to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that the company and its operators misled consumers about how much money they were likely to earn using their products.”
In a discussion of Doctor Who: Wish World at his Blue Towel Productions blog, Ben McClure says that when writing about an alternate reality version of a popular show, you can “make the new world incredibly interesting, often by raising all sorts of questions about how the world works or even how the world came into being at all … the other way to make an alternate-reality story interesting, and by far the preferred one, is to make the alternate-version of the character meaningful.”
I’ll be blogging about this in another context but it captures part of why I was disappointed in SUMMONED: The Free Judge Reborn, Book 1 by Michael Anderle. The book takes place in the 2080s, the history is very alternate but none of that seems to matter.
(This has nothing to do with the book, I’m just using random photographs to provide some visuals).
Kara Greims is a crusading attorney, constantly frustrated that money and connections allow so many of the people who wronged her clients to walk away without paying a price. When gets news her brother has been murdered in Los Angeles, she heads west and discovers he was a Free Judge, part of a secret, supernatural justice system devoted to providing justice when the secular, mortal system fails. As the skull of Jacob Grimm, her brother’s mentor, explains to Kara, the True Court prefers it if the True Judges bring justice via quasi-legal means — intimidate someone into confessing to law enforcement says — but if that doesn’t work, executing malefactors is acceptable. Kara’s first target (I’m assuming the family will turn out to be descendants of Jacob or his brother): the corrupt corporation that killed her brother.
This leads to the novel approach for an urban fantasy of having Kara work within the system: she digs up documents via public information requests, puts together a case that the company has been violating the law, gets it to the right regulators. It is not, however, novel outside urban fantasy; as she herself points out, it’s not that far from a Leverage episode. Or similar, earlier TV creations: Mission: Impossible‘s organized crime episodes, the TV movie Institute for Revenge and others.
Lack of novelty is not a problem. Bringing justice to those the law cannot touch is a popular premise and like the legend of Robin Hood, there’s always a need for someone to do it. What doesn’t work is that the bad guys fall too easily. Kara puts in a lot of effort to make her case — it’s not a cakewalk — but her legal moves invariably work. Where is the Hamilton Burger to her Perry Mason? Why are the bad guys’ lawyers not throwing up counter-moves? For all the work Kara performs, it’s too easy. Likewise, her repeated beating of the thugs they send after her makes me wonder why they don’t change tactics — a bomb in her car or something like that.
The final problem is the worldbuilding. In Kara’s timeline, Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s motorcade took a different route in 1914 and he was never assassinated. No WW I, no treaty of Versailles imposing crushing burdens on Germany. No fascism. No WW II. Also no stock market crash, no Depression. On the downside, with no Cold War there was less pressure on the federal government to support civil rights, segregation continued unabated until the 1980s. At this point there was a horrifying fire in the Japanese neighborhoods of Los Angeles; assuming it was fueled by race, imperial Japan invaded and won. Kara’s story takes place a century later.
That’s a good premise for a timeline, though not always convincing (why would the stock market crash and the Depression not happen?). I don’t see any signs of it in the story, though. Other than zeppelins being the primary form of air transport, there’s nothing that feels different from 2026 in the real world. No sign of Japanese control. No sign the law is different. Hell, Leverage is a TV show in both worlds so apparently their history ain’t that different. To go back to that quote from Blue Towel Productions, it isn’t an interesting alternate world because there’s so little alternative about it.
The old saying is that if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. I planned to get a lot done this week; God said “ha!” meaning there were a ton of obstacles. Despite which, to my pleasant surprise, I did get a lot done.
First the obstacles. We were still dealing with Plushie’s ulcer (diagnosed last week) but as of his Thursday appointment, it’s cured. Once again our dog has beaten a health problem despite his nearly 16 years of age! That’s always nice. He’s still on an antibiotic for the ulcer but that’s more a precaution than a necessity. We’re taking it though.
Trixie didn’t do so well. Last week she was becoming weirdly picky about food and reluctant to eat her meds. She also felt … off, in a way I can sense but couldn’t define. Sunday she began not eating at all so we took her into the vet Monday, followed by the emergency vet (they could do a couple of tests Park Vet couldn’t). At first the news was horrifying: anemic, blood count up, white blood cells up, which could indicate an infection, or possibly internal bleeding. At the end of the day, by virtue of eliminating the alternatives, they settled on probably some bleeding in the GI tract (I will skip the technical details).
We came home with directions to switch some of her meds and to have her drink a protective slurry an hour before her meals. It’s working: we took her in for a recheck Wednesday and all her signs have improved, though not by a lot (but the vet said that’s expected). She’s livelier, though also sleepier — she’s on Gabapentin now and it knocks her out. But she’s clearly happier and more interested in eating so this is a definite win. A demanding one — the need to time the slurry and her food and some of her meds makes our schedules that much more complicated.
Oh, and I also had to take our car in for an oil change and checkup. That took up a couple of hours too.
Despite which, work went well. I got two articles in for The Local Reporter, both out next week. Might get a third one done but I think that’s where the dog drama will leave me too wiped. I also got three posts up at Atomic Junk Shop, one about iron-on shirt decals in the 1970s, one on a really weird 1971 cover (above, by Murphy Anderson) and one about the path to (IMHO) the definitive Phantom Stranger run by Jim Aparo and Len Wein which kicked off with the cover at left by Aparo.
I worked through another year of Doc Savage’s history for Savage Adventures, and polished the bibliography. And then, on Let No Man Put Asunder, I really got some good stuff done. First I went through the writing guide Writing the Breakout Novel, taking notes on stuff that might be useful to think about (give your villains goals. Your supporting characters too). Maybe not — while I’ve read the book a lot, I’m not sure I use it’s techniques not. But I think I’m using it early enough in the rewrite process that might be different.
Then I started rereading, taking notes along the way. Insights or phrases someone offers more than once (“making the beast with two backs” is not going to appear more than once). Thin characterization or motivation. Implausible plotting. Places where it needs more tension. I got a third of the way through the book; that’s pretty good.
I also received by McFarland second-half-of-the-year royalty check. Small, but my books are still selling, which is cool; if you bought one of them, thanks!
And I now have three stories in the “made the first cut” category. No guarantee any of them will sell — I’m quite used to “This was a really tough decision, but …” emails — but they’re all possibilities. More disappointingly, I won’t get an author table to sell my books at Retcon next year. It was quite lucrative this year because it’s set up so all the con-goers go past the sale area frequently, probably why table requests have quadrupled. I’m on the waiting list so fingers crossed.
Fingers crossed too for more weeks like this.
Below, a typical Len Wein opening to a Phantom Stranger story. Aparo art.
When I watched The Exorcista couple of years back, I was struck by how slowly the story opens, showing us the details of everyday life. It was a carefully calculated decision to ground the film in the “real” world before the spookery gets going.
I think the source novel, William Peter Blatty’s THE EXORCIST, does the same thing, but less successfully. It’s a hundred pages of mundane detail about Chris and Regan’s lives (and some about the priests) before anything happens; sure, there’s some odd noises in the attic, but that’s as creepy as it gets. Even after the supernatural happens, the resistance to accepting it gets comical: sure, someone fell down the steps with his head completely twisted around on his neck but that could certainly happen naturally! No, not it couldn’t.
I presume this reflects that Blatty was writing in an era when mainstream horror novels weren’t a thing — this was three years before Stephen King broke in with Carrie. So perhaps grounding it in reality was necessary — and the book’s blockbuster success clearly shows it didn’t hurt. Nevertheless I couldn’t get into it; Blatty’s oddly jerky prose style didn’t help. I do think a little more tension in the everyday stuff would have been a good idea — if you’re going to spend more than a quarter of the book in the mundane world, find some way to make it interesting.
This is, of course, a challenge lots of speculative fiction writers face when they’re setting stories in our world. Some plunge right in: the opening page of Storm Front informs us that Harry Dresden is a wizard helping people out with supernatural problems. My short story “The Savage Year” (in 19-Infinity) opens with mage Artemis West getting ready to perform magic on a job for the Secret Service. “The Glory That Was” in the same book has a robot minotaur break in on a political luncheon.
Other stories take time to build. Southern Discomfort, as I’ve mentioned before, starts with little overt magic. We have Maria’s sense of something wrong, hints that Pharisee Georgia is, shall we see, eccentric (no stop signs allowed — traffic circles instead), freakish rainstorms. Until the ravens attack as Maria’s getting off the bus, there’s nothing that seems strongly supernatural. However Chapter Two spells out that this is a town run by elves, and the person who murdered Aubric McAlister is not of mortal clay. Not a long wait.
That puts me in mind of Orson Scott Card’s old rule that the opening and ending of your story should mirror each other. Mine starts out with Maria in a bad place: on the run from the cops, emotionally closed, desperate. The final scene is all about resolving that. Likewise Let No Man Put Asunder starts with Mandy and Paul waiting for their life to begin, and ends accordingly. Maybe that’s what bugged me about The Exorcist: it starts with Chris but it’s not really a character-centered story where her personal arc is resolved at the end. Instead it switches to horror midway through and stays there.
Then again we have the priest supporting character who does indeed get a character arc. Unlike the movie, he’s not quite interesting enough to be the spine of the story, at least for me — like I said, the success of Blatty’s book certainly speaks for itself. But like I said, I didn’t find it terribly compelling, and I think I’ve identified why.
All rights to images remain with current holders. Covers top to bottom by Lee Macleod, Kemp Ward and Sam Collins.
