LogFAQs > #926480651

OK. So. Dresden Files breakdown. I've been writing an UF novel on and off, a lot of which was a reaction to DF and thinking I could do better alongside a very close friend, so let me see if I can offer you a detailed perspective...

-Harry Dresden is definitely a heartfelt character. It's very important to understand he also is very, very good at not confronting his own feelings. He jokes and quips constantly because he's terrified and crumbling at the edges a lot of the time and if he didn't do it, he'd break. Practically his entire inner monologue is textbook irony, in the classical sense. If you want to see what an actually underdeveloped character is like, read, say, Iron Druid.

-He's a shonen protagonist. There's not much point beating around the bush there. Imagine a very fleshed out Goku and you're not too far off the mark. People like it when their shonen media is thought-out for a change. Don't think of the books as you would something like Saving Private Ryan or Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Try to see them in the vein of Terminator 2 or the Fast and the Furious series.

-Book 2 is poorly written. There's not much to say about it. Characters act OOC, the plot is hokey, and the action mostly weak. Using it as an example of something that breaks immersion is correct, but pointless. It's a significant step down from book 1 and book 3 is a much bigger step up, purely at the technical level. No fan of the series tries to defend it, because it's not too defensible and nothing that happens in it really matters.

-This is a minor nitpick at the lore level, but it's a quickly established fact wizards have a significantly stronger healing factor than normal humans, which is why they can live elongated lifespans, age more gracefully and die harder. Harry's ability to bounce back from terrible things isn't unexplained.

-Something I don't think you hit on is that the action is incredibly clear, lucid and concise. As these books are action movies in paper form, this matters. If you take nothing else from them, try to compare how you write fights and see if you can make them hustle and pop this much.

-Building up on the previous point, something you should learn from these books (like, actively learn and confront, not just mention in passing) is that Urban Fantasy never slows down. Dresden Files was the book that led me to coin the term 'Crisis Weekend', describing plots where the heroes end up entangled in a dire situation that resolves itself in the span of a few days, with no room for long-term character growth or significant, observable changes from beginning to end of a given story. The characters in DF, as with all action movie characters, are static in a given tale. The change happens in-between books. If you want to write UF, you should confront this and ask yourself how you're gonna deal with it. If you want to allow characters to change mid-story, how is the supernatural not going to force rapid responses? Why is the problem not going to snowball in such a way that the characters can't take a break from it without being stupid, criminally negligent, or evil? If you want to go fast, how are you planning to keep multiple plates spinning so that your readerbase doesn't see the illusion of depth that the Crisis Weekend has for what it really is? Working out how Butcher handled this across three books is something you'll find useful to help you decide how you're going to do your own thing.

If you can point out specific grievances or high moments, I can probably go into more detail, because me and my cowriter discussed this series a lot as we avidly read them and gradually fell out of love with them. But for a start, I think this should be enough.

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Shine on, you crazy diamond.