Chapter One
My wife and I have been reading books together during the pandemic.
Many of them have been James Patterson novels.
The books are time killers with short, punchy sentences, like the ones I’m writing here.
They also are mostly written not by James Patterson, but by his co-authors. Otherwise, he would have to work around the clock to write four books at once while dictating a fifth in his sleep.
Patterson’s co-authors are the people whose names are written in small print on the bottom of the covers. His name goes, really big, on the top.
Chapter Two
Most of these books have very short chapters.
Chapter Three
These short chapters mean you can say, “Just one more before bedtime” for an hour before you actually go to bed.
Because “just one more” is only a page or two, maybe three.
And before you know it, you’ve read another 50 pages.
Chapter Four
The paragraphs are also short, and about every third sentence is a fragment. Like this one.
Chapter Five
The characters follow a certain pattern. The protagonist is usually a loner with a tragic backstory.
A murdered family is a good motivator.
The protagonist swims against the current, career-wise. Maybe she is an FBI profiler who detects crimes nobody else does. Or a police officer fighting terrorists and moonlighting as a celebrity chef. Or a midwife exposing the Russian mafia.
It also helps if the hero has a tortured love life. If these people were happier at home, they wouldn’t be out fighting crime.
Chapter Six
My favorite Patterson novel so far has been “The Summer House.” Holly’s favorite is “Invisible.”
Chapter Seven
It may seem like I’m making fun of these books, but I’m not. They give us something to do besides binge-watch TV.
Plus, they’re the literary equivalent of chocolate donuts with sprinkles. Not healthy, but they go down easy.
About four months and 20 Patterson books into the pandemic, we changed it up.
We’ve now read some Harlan Coben. And some David Baldacci. And some Sandra Brown. By order of author, I’ve preferred “The Stranger,” “One Good Deed,” and “Lethal.”
Chapter Eight
I’ve read all these books aloud because I’m a bad listener. Plus, Holly bakes me cookies while I read.
It has helped me to absorb the sentence patterns and story structures. (The reading aloud, not the cookies. That’s a different type of absorption.)
After such concentrated exposure, I feel like these writers’ styles are part of my DNA. Especially Patterson's style. To the point that I’m contemplating a contemporary thriller of my own.
Maybe one about a high school teacher and his wife, stuck inside during a pandemic, reading and reading and reading. While the former writes shorter and shorter sentences.
Stop me if you’ve read that one before.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
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