With all the hype about Ian Fleming’s 100th birthday, and Sebastian Faulks’ new Bond novel, Devil May Care, which I showcased in one of screenwriting news articles, I thought I’d pick up a copy.It failed to live up to my 100-page rule, that is, if a writer can’t get his act together by page 100, I put the novel down. This stab at Bond was, frankly, amateurish at best and brings up an important point, I believe, about protagonists, one of my biggest pet peeves.
One of the worst signs of amateurish writing is when you have a protag that coasts through the story without lifting one finger, without doing one ounce of work, without making one solitary decision, and over the course of 3 acts has EVERYTHING handed to him/her on a silver flippin’ platter. If your protag is, say, a detective, he must do detective work. If your protag is say, I don’t know, A SPY, he should do some SPYING and figure things about for himself. And he should go through hell!
What did we have? Bond on a sabbatical at first trying to decide if he wants to retire. He decides he will. M calls him to return immediately for an important mission, which he has no choice but to accept. So what was the point? It was a setup to a conflict that never happened. As soon as Bond arrives at the appropriate location, a sexy woman by the name of Scarlett is OH-SO-CONVENIENTLY conveniently sitting in his hotel room and OH-SO-CONVENIENTLY sets up a tennis match with the villain, Julius Gorner. They go to this exclusive club. She makes ALL the arrangements for him. He plays tennis, beats him, and then he’s off to have drinks with Scarlett where she OH-SO-CONVENIENTLY explains to Bond Gorner’s entire backstory. Since when does James Bond need to be hand-held through a story? Are you kidding me?
Shouldn’t Bond – JAMES BOND – be DOING something, like, I don’t know, figuring this out for himself? Or establishing a relationship with Gorner over tennis? Try to get information out of him? Couldn’t they at the least make it to the club, and Bond figures out a way to get a match with Gorner, perhaps even engaging Gorner himself and talking his way into a match, thereby, establishing a combative relationship?
SOMETHING?
The most basic element of writing - a detective should detect. A doctor should doctor people. A spy should, well, SPY. They should be DOING THEIR JOBS, which is what pushes the story forward.
