{"id":6268,"date":"2016-12-13T07:18:54","date_gmt":"2016-12-13T12:18:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6268"},"modified":"2016-12-13T07:18:54","modified_gmt":"2016-12-13T12:18:54","slug":"lee-child-is-a-pantser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6268","title":{"rendered":"Lee Child is a Pantser"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Superman\"<\/a>

graphic: Kooroshication, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

Someday I hope I inspire a reader as enthusiastic and indulgent as Lee Child has in John Lanchester. Lanchester\u2019s fanboy article<\/a> in the 14 November New Yorker<\/em> delves into both the form and process used by Child to create his literary child, Jack Reacher. I\u2019ve read only the first one in this long-running series, The Killing Floor<\/em>, and didn\u2019t see what the fuss was all about<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lanchester\u2014a contributing editor at The London Review of Books<\/em>\u2014was untroubled by my big gripe: I just couldn\u2019t believe in the character. First of all, Childs\u2019s hero, he says, \u201cisn\u2019t just tough; he\u2019s supertough. He is exceptionally good with all manner of weapons. His expertise as a sniper is regularly called upon . . . He routinely gets into fights with multiple opponents\u201d and in a climactic combat, Reacher will be pitted \u201csometimes against vastly superior numbers, sometimes against an opponent of superhuman size or strength of inability to feel pain, sometimes against all of the above.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Lanchester has devised a clever test for whether a novel exceeds his ability to suspend disbelief. He calls it the Superman test: \u201cIs what I\u2019m being asked to believe less likely than the character\u2019s being able to fly?\u201d Everyone has a set-point for their own personal Superman test, and mine must be lower than Lanchester\u2019s.<\/p>\n

He likes Reacher, even when he skates perilously close to Superman territory. He says it\u2019s because Child balances Reacher\u2019s extraordinary skills with realism. The fighting seems \u201crealistic within its implausibility\u201d; Reacher fights for the good guys, but he\u2019s a realist, he\u2019ll fight dirty.<\/p>\n

Reacher\u2019s given up everything and travels around the country, righting wrongs, carrying no more than a folding toothbrush. To every cube warrior who longs to get out from under, this sounds pretty good. Even if such a life isn\u2019t really possible, \u201cThe alienated possessionless freedom of Reacher has a core of emotional truth,\u201d Lanchester says.<\/p>\n

Another seductive aspect of the books for Lanchester is Reacher\u2019s thought process as he tries to decipher what\u2019s going on, who the bad guys are. Turns out, Child is a pantser! He doesn\u2019t write the books with the whole plot worked out in advance; he writes by the seat of his pants. He captures Reacher\u2019s figuring-out activity so well, because he\u2019s figuring it out at the exact same time.<\/p>\n

This way of working was revealed when author Andy Martin\u2014another Jack Reacher devotee\u2014literally sat with Child as he worked on his recent book Make Me<\/em>. Martin turned his observations into Reacher Said Nothing<\/em> (2015), a \u201cgenuinely enlightening\u201d literary biography that\u2019s one of a kind.<\/p>\n

Reacher\u2019s work-it-out-as-you-go method is the way I write, too. Although some writers storyboard each scene and conversation ahead of time, that would take all the fun out of writing\u2014the thrill of discovery\u2014for me. This faint kinship is why I\u2019ll give old Jack another go. I think I\u2019ll read Persuader<\/em>. Lanchester says it\u2019s Reacher at his best.
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