I've been reading Michael Connelly's Nine Dragons.

A certain passage made me think of the many times I've heard people ask writers if they begin with character or plot. 

And, it made me think of a talk I had with the person who's representing my books to films. She said major filmmakers aren't much concerned with character.

And I thought about some years ago when I was teaching at the University of Arizona and another writing prof mentioned that he considered our task as novelist in this era might be to accomplish what couldn't be done in film, which is write with close attention to character.

Nine Dragons is mostly police procedural, a genre I don't find all that gripping. Mike's a gifted storyteller, so he keeps me reading even through the police details. But when I fell for the book, when I really started caring what happens to Bosch, was in one certain paragraph . . . I'll take the liberty of quoting.

"All his life Harry Bosch believed he had a mission. And to carry out that mission he needed to be bulletproof. He needed to build himself and his life so that he was invulnerable, so that nothing and no one could ever get to him. All of that changed the day he was introduced to the daughter he didn't know he had. In that moment, he knew he was both save and lost. He would forever be connected to the world in the way only a father knew. But he would also be lost because he knew the dark forces he faced would one day find her. It didn't matter if an entire ocean was between them. He knew one day it would come to this . . ."

If you'd like to know what "this" is, read the book. 

But my point is, one paragraph, half way through the book, and I'm invested. Completely hooked at last, because now I can feel with Bosch. Without going beneath the surface of character, novels are just paper. Better to watch the movie.