Why Analyze Books, and Where Does an Author Start?

A friend of mine asked me a couple questions she has been struggling with lately. Answering these questions made me realize some things, and I thought that in turn, I would share what we learned together with you.

1. Why analyze books?

There are books where reading them feels like coming home. For me, some books that fall under this category include Pride and Prejudice, The Little Prince, Harry Potter, David Copperfield, Ender's Game, and Beauty (Robin McKinley). This "at home" feeling may come because I grew up with these books (Harry Potter, Beauty), it may be because they eloquently display ideas and concepts I have found to be true (The Little Prince), or maybe I just love the story and have read it so many times that it has become a sort of literary home base (Pride and Prejudice, David Copperfield, Ender's Game). A book may also seem like home because I identify with the characters (I can't think of any examples of this off the top of my head, sorry).

If some books feel like home, then analyzing a book is like going to a house and casing the joint. You go in to a book that is home for someone else and try to find out why it is home for that other person. What objects and furniture are in there that make them feel comfortable (or uncomfortable, if you're trying to figure out why it spurred change), which colors were used that make them feel like it was real, that sort of thing. It isn’t your home; you’re going in to figure out why it is home for someone else. Also, sometimes we use a book to analyze an author (though they call it analyzing the book), and that’s like breaking into a house to learn about the architect or the person who built the place. Note that it is possible to get so caught up in the house that you start to feel at home.

2. How do authors create stories?

She was wondering where writers start when they sit down to write a story. It depends on the author, but in a broad sense, stories tend to have their core in one of four areas: character, plot, conflict, and concept.

Character is when the story would completely change if someone else were used. In a character-driven plot, the plot is generally rather simple and it’s the characters who make it believable and awesome. Jane Austen and Mark Twain do character-driven plots. Huckleberry Finn is about a boy who runs away from home with a slave. Everything that happens throughout comes because of the way Huck and Jim respond to the events thrown at them, and the story is more about Huck's progression as a character than anything else (okay, you could also say that it's about modes of governing or about economic systems, but we're looking at this from a story perspective, not a message perspective).

Plot is when it doesn’t matter who is doing it, it’s all about the action. So yes, nearly every action movie is plot-driven. Books like The Odyssey belong here; anyone could have taken Odysseus's place and the story would not have changed much. He was a catalyst for the action.

Conflict is when the story is all about how people have differing desires. Take Peter Pan for an example here: Any kids could have been hijacked over to Neverland, and it really doesn’t matter what they do while they’re there. The story is about Wendy’s indecision over whether to grow up or remain a child. So it’s all driven by an inner conflict, and that’s the point of the story.

Concept is what my stories are, as far as I’ve written up to now. The Descartes Project was a story about a concept: What does a person need to have in order to still be alive and still be human? A lot of science fiction is concept-driven. What would happen if someone could be invisible, for instance (H.G. Wells says he’d become a terror to society, but would eventually be found and killed). If a story circles around one core "What if?", then it is probably concept-driven.

Figuring out the core of a story is a good place to start when told to analyze it because you’re stripping away all the other parts of the story and just looking at its essence. Every story will involve all the categories (if it’s a good one), but they tend to emphasize or find their core in just one. In my humble opinion, anyway.

A lot of contemporary literature (not "genre fiction") does not have a core at all, but I don’t happen to like it. They just seem directionless and pointless to me (but a professor of mine would say a story does not need direction or a purpose, which is the argument I believe contemporary authors use, from my experience with them).