Scene and Structure is a good little book by Jack Bickham with several simple formulas that work to keep stories engaging.  Jack Bickham wrote many action/adventure/suspense novels, although he's better-known for the columns and books he wrote for Writers' Digest.

But I noticed that Bickham only uses examples from action/adventure novels. He's always talking about car chases, gunfights, and mine accidents. And the prose in his examples is terrible. So I bought some of his novels, to better understand how to interpret his advice. It's not a good sign when you list an author's books in order of popularity, and the top seven are books on how to write books.  Those who can't do, teach.

Jack Bickham was in many ways a terrible author. I say this after skimming two of his most-popular novels, Twister[1] and Tiebreaker. His minor characters are sometimes a little interesting, but his major characters always break down cleanly into good guys and bad guys—and the good guys are all basically the same person. (One of Bickham's pieces of advice is to keep the character and motivations of the protagonist and antagonist simple, clear, and free of all shades of gray, so the reader roots whole-heartedly for the protagonist and yearns to see the antagonist crushed. This makes the story less interesting, but it does keep you turning pages, at least for a while.) His stories have no themes worth mentioning. The plots, characters, and dialogue are hackneyed and uninteresting. Yet it's hard to stop reading.

Jack Bickham had very little talent or art. He wanted to write, and he studied long and hard and figured out how fiction works. And that was enough. He didn't have keen observational powers; he didn't have deep insights into human nature; he had no good ideas; he couldn't create complex characters or write poetic prose. He didn't have the gift. But he powered through with brute-force analysis and willpower, and made his living writing stories that entertained people. He's the Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger of writing, and he actually made it for a while.  That makes him a kind of hero to me.  Not the kind I want to be, but the kind I have to admire, and who can give me hope of a sort.

[1] Not the basis for the movie Twister, or at least he wasn't credited for it.