Greenleaf Literary Services

Note: This is an actual evaluation prepared for a client.

Dear Richard:

Thanks for sending me Fighting Back. The concept of this novel is intriguing. If you can strengthen some of the story’s elements, it should prove to be commercially viable as a mainstream novel. Let’s talk about the components of the novel.

Opening Scenes: The story opens with a good conflict between Allen and the rest of the world, as experienced with the cab drivers and his team members. You do a great job dramatizing the scenes with the cab drivers and with Thomas as Allen shows his disapproval of their friendliness. It soon becomes apparent that Allen is an obnoxious, difficult person to deal with.

What’s missing in the first part of the book is a sense of where the novel is headed. What is the main conflict? What problem does Allen have to resolve at the end? At first, it appears that Allen’s main challenge with his government job is to develop the ability to reverse the aging process. However, as the story progresses, Allen’s real struggle is his loneliness and the mistakes that he made with his marriage years ago. This is shown as he secretly watches his son’s highschool football games on the government satellite equipment. By the end of the book, Allen achieves his goal of becoming part of a family again in a round-about way.

Somewhere in the first scene, the reader should have an indication of Allen’s ultimate goal of belonging to a family, even reuniting with his son and ex-wife. This will help to lay the foundation for the main problem that drives the story forward, creates some interesting twists and turns, and then is satisfactorily resolved at the end. The beginning of the book should point directly to the end, and vice versa. You can accomplish this at the beginning with some subtle clues through Allen’s thoughts and feelings.

Central Conflict: The central conflict of the novel is Allen’s desire to be a part of his estranged family. This is a good conflict for this book because it creates a lot of complications for Allen in trying to achieve this goal. He has isolated himself from the world by throwing himself into research and experimentations. His genius with genetic studies has won him a prestigious job with the government, but Allen finds the demands by the Pentagon and president intrusive and annoying. Allen’s unwillingness to share his research adds conflict for the other parties. When Allen makes a breakthrough with DNA and goes off to meet his son instead of handing over the research to the Pentagon, you build some good suspense.

Characterization: The characters are strong and colorful. You do a good job with descriptions, personality traits, motivations, and backgrounds. Characters like Thomas, Lois, Paul, Wallace, and Jamie come alive on the page.

The fact that Allen is a disgruntled protagonist makes for some good humor. Even though he is disliked by the other characters, the reader will have more sympathy for him if they know early on that he suffers from depression over his fantasies to belong to a family again.

As the protagonist, Allen should have more involvement at the end of the story. Because he is unconscious, Jamie and Thomas take over, but it would be better to let the reader know more firmly that Allen chooses to give up his bone marrow for his son and that he is just as anxious as the others that the surgery begins before he dies and it is too late.

Dialogue: There is a lot of good dialogue, often confrontational in nature. A little more dialogue could be developed in some of the earlier scenes, but for the most part, the dialogue is handled very well.

Viewpoint: The viewpoint often moves between characters in scenes. Your scenes will be more vivid if you use one character per scene so that the reader has time to get to know that character. Also, scenes should be told through the experiences, insights, and biases of the characters, not through an omniscient viewpoint, which is as though someone outside the story is telling what is happening. This is particularly true of the early scenes where the reader is told about Allen, rather than experiencing each moment with Allen on a personal level.

Temporary characters like the cabbies, guards, and strippers should not have viewpoint roles of their own. These characters should be observed and described through the viewpoint of Allen or one of the other main viewpoint characters. By building scenes through the viewpoints of minor characters, you mislead the reader about who is important in the plot.

For example, you do a great job with Lois’s character and her dislike of Allen, but by creating her viewpoint in the second scene, the reader will think that the story is going to be about how Lois and Allen interact and come to terms. However, after Allen leaves the strip bar, there is no more mention of Lois or the other stripper Angela. These women just play a short role in the story to show who Allen is, but the story is not about their problems or their interaction with Allen. The relationship between Allen and the women should be handled through Allen’s viewpoint, giving clues to the reader about how these women feel about him by their words and reactions.

Scene Development: Most of the scenes are well developed. There could be a little more clarity about some of the details in a few of the scenes, maybe a little added description about the reactions of the characters, but in general, the scenes are nicely played out in dialogue and action. Both the pathos and the humor come across as the characters interact and struggle to achieve their goals.

I like how you somewhat alternate the scenes between what is going on with Allen and what is going on between General Elder and Dr. Gentry. The general has no compassion for Allen’s reclusive nature and demands answers and research information. Gentry is a good mediator and manages to keep the general and the president at bay while Allen continues his research. This leads to some increasingly serious problems when Allen disappears and the government wants him back.

Background Events: The overall background events fall into place smoothly, especially in regard to Allen’s desire to go back to his past and recreate the opportunities that he missed when he was too young to appreciate them.

In the opening scene, the background information on Allen’s late career, education, and hiring by the government should come after his current problem has been established. For example, he could be leaving the building at the end of a hard day, thinking about how he wished that he could travel to his estranged son’s football game and see what his ex-wife now looks like. Then, as he is waiting for the cab driver, or sitting in the cab, or sitting at home alone later, it might run through his head where he got his recent education and how he was approached for the government job. Starting the first chapter in the middle of a problem will throw the reader right into the action without it being delayed by the background.

Physical Setting: You have a knack for creating strong settings for the events that take place in the story. The research lab, the stereos of Boston, the barren walls of the house where Allen lives, etc., all make vivid pictures in the reader’s mind. Also, you bring in smells and sounds to add to the overall sense of a physical reality.

Mechanics: There are quite a few typos and misspelled words. Also, the story should be divided into chapters.

Marketability: Because of the focus on theme and character, Fighting Back would be considered a mainstream novel by most publishers. If the story were focused more on the technical aspects of Allen’s work and the conflict between him and the government, it’s possible that the story could be turned into a medical thriller. In its present form, however, it works better as a mainstream novel.