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I spent the day doing manual labor on too little sleep and too much caffeine. And I don't think I'm going to sleep anytime soon, thanks to several pressing deadlines at work. The fact that I'm wasting time writing this little rant isn't helping either.
So I've been listening to The da Vinci Code on CD while driving recently. And I'm rather utterly appalled at the writing quality. Beyond being banal and obvious and horribly stilted, the book is roughly 80% filler. A couple of decades ago, a grade-school teacher once told a young Dan Brown that withholding information is a good way to raise tension. As a result, you get chapter after chapter of crap like:
Robert looked at the piece of paper. He was shocked and amazed at what was written there. Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw there.
'I cannot believe what I am seeing here,' he muttered to himself. Yet it fit the symbolic pattern of everything that had happened that night. He knew that the progression of iconography they had been seeing could only mean one thing, though few would be able to accept it. His own editor had almost choked to death after reading the premise in the rough drafts of his most recent book.
'What is it?' Sophie asked.
'You're not going to believe it,' he said as he handed the slip of paper to her.
Sophie took the piece of paper and looked at it. She gasped.
'This can't be right!' she exclaimed. But then she thought about what she had seen all those years ago, and it made sense. She had never spoken about what she saw then, but it haunted her to this very day. The words on the piece of paper she now held were undeniably related to the horror she had seen. She had thought it was a scene beyond imagination, but now it seems that someone had in fact imagined far, far more.
...on and on and on. I dread every new plot element, because it means wading through kilowords of cockteasing fluffery as the author dances around actually telling me anything useful about it. Stop describing how stunned and amazed everyone is and just get it over with. Show, don't tell, Dan.
Of course, I'm still going to finish it. Damned completist ethics. :)
So I've been listening to The da Vinci Code on CD while driving recently. And I'm rather utterly appalled at the writing quality. Beyond being banal and obvious and horribly stilted, the book is roughly 80% filler. A couple of decades ago, a grade-school teacher once told a young Dan Brown that withholding information is a good way to raise tension. As a result, you get chapter after chapter of crap like:
Robert looked at the piece of paper. He was shocked and amazed at what was written there. Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw there.
'I cannot believe what I am seeing here,' he muttered to himself. Yet it fit the symbolic pattern of everything that had happened that night. He knew that the progression of iconography they had been seeing could only mean one thing, though few would be able to accept it. His own editor had almost choked to death after reading the premise in the rough drafts of his most recent book.
'What is it?' Sophie asked.
'You're not going to believe it,' he said as he handed the slip of paper to her.
Sophie took the piece of paper and looked at it. She gasped.
'This can't be right!' she exclaimed. But then she thought about what she had seen all those years ago, and it made sense. She had never spoken about what she saw then, but it haunted her to this very day. The words on the piece of paper she now held were undeniably related to the horror she had seen. She had thought it was a scene beyond imagination, but now it seems that someone had in fact imagined far, far more.
...on and on and on. I dread every new plot element, because it means wading through kilowords of cockteasing fluffery as the author dances around actually telling me anything useful about it. Stop describing how stunned and amazed everyone is and just get it over with. Show, don't tell, Dan.
Of course, I'm still going to finish it. Damned completist ethics. :)