If I find three of them in the space of two sentences, I tend to find they're being used as a tell device, by a writer who is either unsure of their own abilities to show me by painting a scene, or by someone so damned cocksure and convinced of their own talent that they think they don't have to paint a scene.

To make a small divergence -- the show/tell comment reminded me -- my Dad has lent me The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons (I assure you, this is the correct thread for this post). He really really REALLY wants me to read them, because he loved them and wants to discuss them with me. Even though people whose opinion I respect have said that the books aren't that well-written, nor are they All That, I took them.

I started Angels and Demons tonight.

Sweet Italian Jesus. Four pages in, and he's already using paragraphs to describe Our Hero, rather than letting the reader figure it out by how Our Hero acts.

I've made it to page 6 so far, where I found this sentence, and I quote (Our Fair Hero has received a Fax with Shocking News): "Instantly the breath went out of him. It was like he had been hit by a truck."

I swear to you I'm not making that up.

How does crap writing like that make the bloody best-seller list? HOW?!?

Also, I have no idea how I'm going to get through 2 books of such dreck just to please my dad. I wonder if there are Cliff's Notes....

How does crap writing like that make the bloody best-seller list? HOW?!?

(kissing Teppy repeatedly)

I couldn't get past page 15 or so of DVC. Haven't even tried A&D. I give up.

Me neither.

I think the books are the written versions of Muzak or the kind of paintings they sell in Malls. if you care about the art form, it is painful to listen to or look at--but if you don't, the actual flaws of the piece are exactly what appeals to you.

I almost see them as the mirror image of the Left Behind books. It's all about confirming a suspected or cherished belief system. Literary merit or even basic fictional craft are barely relevant, if at all.

I think the books are the written versions of Muzak or the kind of paintings they sell in Malls.

Oh. my. gawd.

I loves me some Robin.

Dan Brown is Thomas Kinkaid!

I heard two women (who loved DVC) discussing it at work. They both thought it was like a cool puzzle, with a bonus art and a romance. The clues are so obvious, they could be ahead of the writer. It made them feel SMART--where, for example, a beautifully written fictional or deeply researched non-fiction book would be hard for them to get through and likely make them feel the opposite.

Robin, I'm betting they both backed away from Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose like it had plague sores on it.

I am not going to get any solid work done for at least another week. This is driving me bonkers. I want these floors done and my life back.

When The DaVinci Code was first really popular, a whole lot of people were telling me that I'd love it, so I went to Barnes and Noble to get a copy. They were sold out, but they had a "If you liked The DaVinci Code, you'll like..." table set up, and I ended up buying a few books from there. I loved all of those. Hated DaVinci Code, when I finally did read it.

An adverb is just a word. That's all it is. It's not the antichrist and it's not the second coming, either.

They're like anything else - it's how and where you use them. Also, why you use them.

Oh, I agree. It's one of those many, many cases where a piece of sound writing advice--"Watch your adverbs, for they often mean telling rather than showing, or overexplaining"--is taken as an absolute fundamentalist Rule That Must Never Be Broken. If it ends in -ly, Thou Shalt Excise It.

Thing is, in my work, 75% of my adverbs don't belong in the finished version. I let myself use them freely in rough drafts, because all those "said thuslies" are like my notes to myself indicating what I'm trying to accomplish.

Some of them, I keep. I've got an "exquisitely, excrutiatingly" in my new version of Anna's first chapter that's staying, because those are the perfect words, dammit. It's not tied to a "said," though.

Part of it for me is I've entered that stage of an unpublished writer's career where my obsession is figuring out just what I have to do to get past all the damned gatekeepers, and deciding what compromises I will and won't make. So I'm questioning every adverb, because some gatekeepers care. And I'm upping the action in my early chapters, because the gatekeepers don't seem to like the subtle. And while I'm not about to change my central conflict, after having more readers than not question whether class difference is a strong enough conflict to build a 100,000-word novel around, I'm trying to be a lot more explicit about WHY it's not something that could be easily overcome.

Those are compromises I'm willing to make. What I'm not going to do is write anything that doesn't resonate with me because it sells, nor step away from what I'm passionate about because gritty Regencies aren't what's on the shelves.

Susan roooooocks.