Subservient to no one

According to Stephen King, “Outlines are the last resource of bad fiction writers”, but The Running Man is a book that would have vastly benefited from some careful planning. This novel feels too much like an opportunity missed, in a number of ways. As the title alone suggests, what you’d expect to be a fast-paced, action-packed thriller is instead a wee bit plodding and pedestrian (more of a walking man). I wanted a tale in which the protagonist is attacked relentlessly from all sides, at all times: something fast and trilling and terrifying. The book is structured into one hundred sections, counting down form one hundred to zero (in fact that may be one-hundred-and-one sections in total). It’s the sort of literary device that might seem like a good idea in your head but in reality turns out to be tedious and cumbersome, and more of a hindrance than anything else. I couldn’t help thinking that much of what I was reading was mere filler to make up the numbers rather than important pl

I watched Blade Runner 2049 last night but decided to go to sleep before the end. I cannot see what there is about this film's story structure that could keep a viewer interested enough to watch the entire film. The key plot points of the film were predictable. I knew K was a replicant from the start and I knew there would be a fight between him and the other replicant, despite K averting his eyes from the other replicant. In fact, since he was there to kill the other replicant, the other replicant's only option was to try to kill K first. So K putting his gun on the table and averting his eyes makes no sense and it seems its inclusion is merely a lazy cinematic trick to create tension, nothing more. I also guessed K was the replicant who was born – or at least the film implies this up to the point I switched it off – and I was profoundly underwhelmed by this reveal. Another underwhelming feature is how drearily slow the pace of the film is, and how difficult to