The movie altered the novel's plot substantially.

Although the novel's fantasy elements ( voodoo and black magic, tarot readings and precognition, ghosts and mysticism ) are secondary to the brutal murder that is the focus of the plot, it is set in the same milieu as Asprin's Griffen McCandles novels ( Dragons series ), Dragons Luck and Dragons Wild.

New York Times writer Gerald Jonas admits that the novel's plot summary reads like a " grade Z, made-for-television, science-fiction rip-off movie ," but then says that Card develops the elements well despite this " unpromising material.

In putting together the story he was heavily influenced by the folklore and landscape of the neighbouring Alderley Edge where he had grown up as a child, taking the local legend of " The Wizard Under the Hill " as a partial basis for the novel's plot.

From another point of view, the novel's plot is another variation of a conventional nineteenth-century theme: an innocent young provincial comes to seek his fortune in the capital, where he succumbs to corruption, and loses all traces of his former freshness and purity.

Dragon described the novel's plot: " Five companions find themselves in the unenviable position of defending the soon-to-be ghost town against a rival possessing incredible power.

Bar minor differences, the film's plot, as described above, followed the novel's plot up to the moment of the attempted jail break.

The novel's plot centers around newspaperman Doremus Jessup's opposition to the new regime and his subsequent struggle against it.

The technique again works to Collins's credit: the sections by Gabriel Betteredge ( steward to the Verinder household ) and Miss Clack ( a poor relative and religious crank ) offer both humour and pathos through their contrast with the testimony of other narrators, at the same time as constructing and advancing the novel's plot.

While there is a plot involving a series of assassination attempts on the protagonist, the novel's main strengths lie in the unique nature of the setting, character development, structure and the short vignettes on each of the would-be assassins.

Some minor plot details are different as well in this story, such as the protagonist's occupation ( an editor for a video game magazine ) and the story is told from a first-person perspective instead of the novel's third-person perspective.

Algis Budrys found the novel's premise appealing, praising Brin's " really first-rate SFnal idea ," but its execution disappointing, leaving little of interest but plot details once the central mystery was explained at the novel's midpoint, " and as a plotsmith Brin is just another guy.

Science fiction critic Thomas Wagner underscores the desire for meaning, or pattern recognition, using a comparison between the film clips and Cayce's search for her father after the attacks: he very randomness and ineffability of the clips flies in the face of our natural human tendency towards pattern recognition ... he subculture that surrounds " following the footage " ... an effective plot device for underscoring the novel's post-9 / 11 themes: to wit, the uncertainty of the fabric of day-to-day life people began to feel following that event … as people don't like uncertainty, don't like knowing that there's something we can't comprehend.

The novel's plot followed the lives of FitzRoy, Darwin and others connected with the Beagle expeditions, following them between the years of 1828 and 1865.

Although Conroy drew on his experiences as a cadet at The Citadel, as well as stories from similar military schools during the 1960s to create the setting for the story, he has explicitly stated that the novel's plot and principal characters are a product of his imagination.

Baldock is one of the waypoints on Warren's long drive up the Great North Road, which brings about the occasion for the novel's plot, the rescue of the shipbuilding town of ' Sharples ' ( Blyth ), in " Ruined City ," by Nevil Shute.

Hades kidnaps Mycroft, Polly, and the Prose Portal in order to blackmail the literary world ; any changes made to the plot of a novel's original manuscript will change all other copies.

The title is a reference to nuclear war, and to the plot by the novel's antagonists to reconstruct a lost nuclear weapon.

A UN resolution to alter this legal position forms one strand of the novel's plot, in order to allow the authorities to temporarily sleeve a deceased Catholic woman to testify in a murder trial.

* The film The Village is possibly referenced as the novel's main plot, as both stories concern a very backward village which is at least a century behind modern times and despises outsiders, with having very strict rules.

The opera condenses the novel's plot through various devices: it omits peripheral characters and the subplot about the Christian orphanage and expands Chang the Coffin Maker into the key villain.

The main house, the foot path leading from the main house to the battery overlooking the river Dart and the battery itself ( where the murder occurs ) are described in detail since the movements of the novel's protagonist at these locations are integral to the plot and the denouement of the murderer.

The novel's description more closely resembles Fort Drum ( which was taken in a later operation ) but the incendiary methods used were pioneered at Caballo island's mortar pits.

The four main characters are Miriam, a beautiful painter who is compared to Eve, Beatrice Cenci, Lady Macbeth, Judith, and Cleopatra, and is pursued by a mysterious, threatening man who is her " evil genius " through life ; Hilda, an innocent copyist who is compared to the Virgin Mary and the white dove, and whose simple, unbendable moral principles can make her severe in spite of her tender heart ; Kenyon, a sculptor, who represents rationalist humanism ; and Donatello, the Count of Monte Beni, who is compared to Adam, and amazingly resembles the Faun of Praxiteles ; the novel plays with the characters ' belief that the count may be a descendant of the antique Faun, with Hawthorne withholding a definite statement even in the novel's concluding chapter.

In " The Lightning Keeper ," a 2006 novel by Starling Lawrence ( editor-in-chief of W W Norton ), the town of Beecher's Bridge is based on Norfolk, to which the author's family has longstanding ties, and some of the novel's characters echo actual Norfolkians of the late 19th and early 20th century.

Pynchon employs the spelling, grammar, and syntax of an actual late 18th century document, further emphasizing the novel's intended anachronism.

Ackroyd's novel fictitiously places the house in the Clerkenwell section of London rather than at Mortlake-reinforcing many of the novel's themes ( radicalism ; sacred london ; Dee as ' Cockney visionary ') but inaccurately representing actual events from Kelley's association with Dee.

* Forsyth was a reporter for Reuters in France at the time of the novel's writing and borrowed much of his detail from actual incidents he reported on.

The novel's climax focuses on an actual march, in which the NUWM marched on Salford Town Hall in October 1931.

The first " Brooklyn Crucifixion ", a work by Asher which plays a central role in the novel's conclusion, is an actual painting by Potok, who was an accomplished artist as well as a novelist and rabbi ; the second Crucifixion, which is described in the book as being superior to the first, does not have a real-life counterpart.

Both these historical figures are portrayed in ways that draw on their actual lives, but which depart from the facts in order to explore the novel's central theme – the relationship between creativity and self destruction.

The fictional magazine Miniature Mechanic is based on the actual British magazine, Model Engineer, and Shute himself admitted that the novel's protagonist is inspired by an author of that magazine, Edgar T. Westbury.

Roberts ' decision to cover the novel's material in two distinct halves followed the actual trajectory of Rogers ' life.

Like the historical Absalom, Absalom Kumalo was at odds with his father, the two fighting a moral and ethical battle of sorts over the course of some of the novel's most important events.

At the novel's end, the question of whether or not the Time Lords will be restored remains unanswered, although if the events of the novel are to tie in with later events in the TV series it must be assumed that Gallifrey was at some point restored, only to be destroyed again during the events of the Time War.

Two years after its publication many of the novel's events were corroborated by Melville's fellow castaway, Richard T. Greene.

That is, they concern events purportedly happening to the novel's reader.

The novel included many references to the Spanish events in which the term originated, so as to contrast the – in the author's view – traitorous fifth column with the novel's patriotic sixth.

It is the year 2021, but the novel's events have their origin in 1995, which is referred to as " Year Omega ".

The novel's events occupy eighteen books.

Greater verisimilitude is given by a series of newspaper articles commenting on events and on the novel's characters from a distance.

It is at this point that Tory ( The main antagonist ) reveals Jean's first attempt at a love spell, which served as a catalyst for the novel's events.

Because of the rapid non-linear motion of the novel's events, the narrator has often referred to Manus as Seth, an identity given to him by Brandy, and it is not until this moment in the novel that the reader learns that Manus and Seth are the same person.

Although severely wounded, Book II survived the novel's events.

A cryptanalyst working for the DIA, Fairfax was responsible for foiling two plans in the novel's events, involving a vaccine against a highly-lethal biological weapon known as the Sinovirus.

At the time of the novel's events, Meina Gladstone serves as the Hegemony's chief executive officer.

* Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin is the central character of the novel but a highly ambiguous figure and often an observer or secondary participant in the novel's key events compared to the younger Verkhovensky, who drives much of the action and repeatedly attempts to involve Stavrogin in his schemes with limited success.

The novel's time span roughly mirrors that of the Golden Age of Comics itself, starting from shortly after the debut of Superman and concluding with the Kefauver Senate hearings, two events often used to demarcate the era.

Werfel's novel Barbara oder die Frömmigkeit ( 1929 ) portrays the events of this period and Kisch was the inspiration for one of the novel's characters.

* Egdon Heath — The setting for all the novel's events ; considered by some critics to be the leading character as well.

The earliest biographers of Aphra Behn not only accepted the novel's narrator's claims as true, but Charles Gildon even invented a romantic liaison between the author and the title character, while the anonymous Memoirs of Aphra Behn, Written by One of the Fair Sex ( both 1698 ) insisted that the author was too young to be romantically available at the time of the novel's events.

However, it is profitable to look at the novel's events as part of the observations of an investigator, as illustrations of government, rather than autobiography.

Davies added some dialogue to clarify events from the novel to a modern audience but left much of the novel's dialogue intact.