Monday, May 30, 2005
The Best-Seller Code
I recently finished The Da Vinci Code. Am I behind the times, or just frugal, waiting until I can find it for half price? Like the "clues" in The Last Supper, I will leave that to others. If, however, you would like to make the kind of money the Knights Templar only dreamed of by writing a novel, Dan Brown's book gives us some good leads.
First, keep the chapters short. This 450-page book has over one hundred chapters. The easiest way to write a page-turner is to break it up into little pieces of literary crack. If you have events transpiring in different places at the same time, this approach is admirably effective.
Second, write about a large organization doing scandalous things. Although Brown picks one of Earth's easiest targets in the Catholic Church, he does an excellent job of dredging up the Church's gory past, and suggests the present is not much different. I understand that books about Enron are also doing well.
Third, imply that world events are controlled by shadowy forces we barely apprehend, much less understand. Secret societies are gold, and Dan Brown serves us a full platter, with the Knights Templar, Opus Dei and the Priory of Sion. The only thing missing is alien abduction. It seems on some level, we are all part of the tinfoil-hat crowd.
These observations aside (and perhaps in spite of them), I thoroughly enjoyed The Da Vinci Code. It careens at breakneck pace through tangled threads of art, architecture, history and religion. Except for its implication that the modern Church is illegitimate, I can't imagine what got the Vatican so exercised. Or is that exorcised?
First, keep the chapters short. This 450-page book has over one hundred chapters. The easiest way to write a page-turner is to break it up into little pieces of literary crack. If you have events transpiring in different places at the same time, this approach is admirably effective.
Second, write about a large organization doing scandalous things. Although Brown picks one of Earth's easiest targets in the Catholic Church, he does an excellent job of dredging up the Church's gory past, and suggests the present is not much different. I understand that books about Enron are also doing well.
Third, imply that world events are controlled by shadowy forces we barely apprehend, much less understand. Secret societies are gold, and Dan Brown serves us a full platter, with the Knights Templar, Opus Dei and the Priory of Sion. The only thing missing is alien abduction. It seems on some level, we are all part of the tinfoil-hat crowd.
These observations aside (and perhaps in spite of them), I thoroughly enjoyed The Da Vinci Code. It careens at breakneck pace through tangled threads of art, architecture, history and religion. Except for its implication that the modern Church is illegitimate, I can't imagine what got the Vatican so exercised. Or is that exorcised?
