On Dan Brown, and Writing. Not a non sequitur.

[wheeler]

"Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's Grand Gallery. He lunged for the nearest painting he could see, a Caravaggio. Grabbing the gilded frame, the seventy-six-year-old man heaved the masterpiece toward himself until it tore from the wall and Saunière collapsed backward in a heap beneath the canvas

Comments

[motteditor]

I actually just read my second Brown book (from the library), and will shortly be starting my third (also from the library).

And on one hand, it's certainly not good writing. I tried the Da Vinci Code when I was in London and needed something to read and it was sitting around, and it was pretty obvious immediately. But it was a page turner. I know he's going to give me enough of a plot to keep me engrossed. There's no real challenge to what he's doing, it's just something I can enjoy as I plan to go to sleep or, even better, while at the gym.

[wheeler]

All of which makes me wonder if I should take that as an incitement towards - for want of a better phrase - lack of ambition. If I want to write work that can be enjoyed, should I be aiming for 'unchallenging'?

[motteditor]

I'm probably not a good person to base that on. I hate "deep" entertainment -- give me a nice popcorn summer movie over an Oscar winner any day, a random super hero comic over the New Yorker, a good fantasy novel over a deep look at some of history's top issues, even How I Met Your Mother over Band of Brothers ... I like nice, relaxing, escapist fare. .

[lilitufire]

This is pretty much my market, too. I don't want to be challenged. I read very very quickly for enjoyment and don't ooh and ahh over deathless prose. Overextensive eyebrow wiggling and skirt smoothing (thank you, Robert Jordan) only gets on my nerves if it's prevalent enough that I notice it.

I got several worthy books over Christmas and they are mostly bores that I will dutifully read once before passing on. It's the fantasy in my collection that gets read time and time again.

[burge]

It's not things that are "unchallenging" that are a pain to read, it's things that are downright patronising. Hence my deep and abiding hate for James Patterson, a writer whose vocabulary wouldn't have challenged me when I was ten, let alone when I had to read one of his books when I was 29. It's the clunking of the sentences and the grating of the similes and the sporadic clang of a metaphor being dropped in with all the subtlety of a falling piano in books like his and Brown's and others.

Sometimes, I can overlook mediocre writing for a good plot, because I'm looking for entertainment. But mostly not. I can also overlook lack of plot for good writing in some cases, but the writing has to be very good, and the central idea( or ideas) in the story has to be really, really interesting

[marysiak]

If you want to write work that will be as well read as Dan Brown and his ilk (and I include Rowling in there) then unchallenging is definitely where you want to aim. The audience for clever, complicated books is far smaller than the audience for simple but exciting books. It's like a film - you need a hook, a killer idea and then a basic structure and enough plot to keep it going for a books worth of story. You can write an amazing book, but if it's title, cover and logline can't sell it and the dumbish masses can't follow it while commuting, you'll never sit on Dan Brown's mountains of money.