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.

[ndgmtlcd]

Don't underestimate the importance of tooting your own horn. Brown and his wife understood the importance of self-promotion right from the start. And, they persisted.

I read all of the Davinci Code, to see what there was behind it. Like you said it's badly written and badly plotted. However there is at least a semblance of reality to the characters. You can feel a bit of sympathy for the hero and the heroine as they stumble along. You can see their motives, up to a point, and that's important.

But if Dan Brown is bad (I tried to read Angels and Demons and found that I couldn't bear more than the first fifty pages) then Tom Clancy is even worse. His success is based entirely on his persistence and his incredible talent as a salesman and a self-promoter. I've tried several times yet I've never managed to go past the first twenty or fifty pages, on any of his novels.

[lilitufire]

Dan Brown and David Eddings have a lot in common that way :)

If you haven't read it, I rather enjoyed Stephen King's "On Writing" - it's worth a hunt out. And Mr King knows how to write a yarn as well as anyone, or so I think anyway. I don't really mind that I don't have educated literary tastes :)

[tyrell]

I thought "On writing" was very good, yes.

[stu_n]

'On Writing' is pretty much a more readable version of Strunk & White, though.

[tyrell]

I thought it concentrated more on the process of writing, but it certainly does parrot the 'and then take out all the excess words you don't need' advice. I got the impression that was from experience, though. And hey, a more readable version of S+W reaching a modern audience is all good!

[tyrell]

It's not just that his he can't write well. The problem with that particular book is that he can't read either: he's clearly bought the top 5 "Jesus/Magdelene" conspiracy books from his local waterstones and then completely failed to understand the basics from even the crazier ones. His "and this means this!" revelations are either stupidly basic compared to the decent evidence there is (on relatively normal topics like the Gnostics) or illogical to the point of bizarre.

It's not the quality of writing that made him sell millions, it's the pseudo-templar-evil-vatican bollocks. Just wish he'd actually read his source material (90% of which is worthless anyway).

[grim_tim]

"No one ever got rich overestimating the intelligence of the[...] public.”
-PT Barnum

For every Dan Brown there are several thousand others of equal or greater talent who don't get anywhere. (Presumably these other books lack a sufficient USP). IIRC though, the main reason he had more than modest success was through publicity of the plagiarism case.

I always recommend this to fellow writers; it's the diary Steinbeck kept while writing his Nobel-bagger, and is packed with insecurity. He can't write, he's a charlatan; 'Grapes' is the book that'll show him to be a fraud. The public will hate him, and justifiably so.

It's comforting that even the acknowledged greats feel like this too.