I’ve been getting back into the reading habit lately, partially for fun and partially to look at the prose of the authors whose books I am reading. I just finished The Oath by Frank Peretti. It’s solid. It seems to meander a bit for chunks, but the ending achieved a decent state of kinetic, and the concept is fun. Plus, Peretti deserves some credit for writing under a handicap — namely his brand of fiction (Christian) is hard to do without being didactic. He walks the line the best he can, but it’s a tricky row to hoe.

Let’s look at his prose. Here is the opening to The Oath:

She ran, tree limbs and brambles scratching, grabbing, tripping, and slapping her as if they were bony hands, reaching for her out of the darkness. The mountainside dropped steeply, and she ran pell-mell, her feet unsure on pine needles and loose stones. She beat at the limbs with flailing arms, looking for the trail, falling over logs, getting up and darting to the left, then the light. A fallen limb caught her ankle, and she fell again. Where was the trail?

Blood. She reeked of it. It was hot and sticky between her fingers. It had soaked through her shirt and splattered on her khaki pants so her clothes clung to her. In her right hand she held a hunting knife in an iron grip, unaware that the tip of the blade was broken off.
She had to make it out of these hills. She knew which way she and Cliff had come and where they’d parked the camper. All she had to do was backtrack.

She was crying, praying, and babbling, “Let him go, let him go. Oh, Jesus save us … Go away, let him go,” as she groped her way along, stooping under limbs, clambering over more logs, and pushing her way through tangled thickets in the dark.

At last she found the trail, a narrow, hoof-trodden route of dirt and stone descending steeply along the hillside, switch-backing through the tall firs and pines. She followed it carefully, not wanting to get lost again.

“Oh, Jesus,” she said. “Oh, Jesus, help me . . .”

The prose is workman-like. It trips along itself the way the character is tripping headlong through the forest. It is effectively done, clean and efficient. We know what is happening. The character is in a desperate situation, fleeing some sort of fight that involved blood, knives and someone else, likely Cliff. The only thing I’d maybe consider removing is “save us.” See how that works? The intent is still there, but any didactic feeling her dialogue might contain is gone. But that is just me finding something to critique to munch on as food for thought. It is not a deal breaker.

After The Oath, I moved on to some Dean Koontz. I have not read him for a while and decided to reread Watchers. I have not read it since I was in junior high. After I finished the book back then, I remembered a part of the book’s ending moved me so much that I sat down at the computer with the book, copied the relevant passage, printed it and kept it in a box for a number of years. Kids…

Here is the opening to Watchers:

On his thirty-sixth birthday, May 18, Travis Cornell rose at five o’clock in the morning. He dressed in sturdy hiking boots, jeans, and a long-sleeved, blue-plaid cotton shirt. He drove his pickup south from his home in Santa Barbara all the way to rural Santiago Canyon on the eastern edge of Orange County, south of Los Angeles. He took only a package of Oreo cookies, a large canteen full of orange-flavored Kool-Aid, and a fully loaded Smith & Wesson .38 Chief’s Special.

During the two-and-a-half-hour trip, he never switched on the radio. He never hummed, whistled, or sang to himself as men alone frequently do. For part of the drive, the Pacific lay on his right. The morning sea was broodingly dark toward the horizon, as hard and cold as slate, but nearer shore it was brightly spangled with early light the colors of pennies and rose petals. Travis did not once glance appreciatively at the sun-sequined water.

He was a lean, sinewy man with deep-set eyes the same dark brown as his hair. His face was narrow, with a patrician nose, high cheekbones, and a slightly pointed chin. It was an ascetic face that would have suited a monk in some holy order that still believed in self-flagellation, in the purification of the soul through suffering. God knows, he’d had his share of suffering. But it could be a pleasant face, too, warm and open. His smile had once charmed women, though not recently. He had not smiled in a long time.

The Oreos, the canteen, and the revolver were in a small green nylon backpack with black nylon straps, which lay on the seat beside him. Occasionally, he glanced at the pack, and it seemed as if he could see straight through the fabric to the loaded Chiefs Special.

It is interesting to compare the opening of Watchers to the opening of The Oath. It is two very different styles of writing. While Peretti went for confusion and action in his prose, Koontz is going for atmosphere and character. The purpose of this style of writing is much more meticulous. While Peretti told us nothing about his character’s appearance, beyond her panic and bloody clothes, which serve the situation (like her, we are in a rush and can’t take in a lot of details), Koontz is giving us a ton of details because the character is in a contemplative frame of mind. Koontz is telling us what the character is wearing, what they look like, where they are located, what they have with them, their mood and even hints of their backstory.

It all depends what the author is going for in their story-telling. Peretti is throwing the reader right into the action. Koontz is inviting them in, grounding them before he introduces the weird. Neither style is better than the other. The style simply serves the story the writer is telling.

What could we critique in Koontz’s writing? Again, not because it needs it but just as food for thought. Perhaps the line “he had not smiled in a long time” is a tad too on-the-nose. Again, such a thing is not a deal breaker at all. It is just something to think about. We are dealing with two writers who write pretty solid prose, so there is not much here to question in either passage. Good on them.

I will keep what I learned in mind as I presently work on a short story.