No, it’s not a synonym for suicide anymore.
I recently read Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons to see if it was any better than The Da Vinci Code. Yeah, it was better, but not enough to make me want to read anything he writes ever again.* The only point in Angels and Demons of interest was a vertical wind tunnel at CERN the staff used to take skydiving breaks. Now that was a cool idea!
Well, now it’s come to my neighborhood. I’m definitely dragging the wife to this one.
She won’t go on roller coasters because she’s worried about vertigo. But I think she could handle this. At $50 for two flights, it’s cheap at the price!
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* One of the most annoying things about Dan Brown’s writing: he cheats.
Modern readers (and too many current writers) are so unaware of the requirements of a consistent point of view that they can read (or write) something like The Da Vinci Code where the author has no understanding of or control over point-of-view whatsoever – where the narration leaps from mind to mind in each scene for no reason at all, like a grasshopper in a hot skillet, with no benefit to the story – and they (the readers, the writer) don’t even seem to notice. I mention The Da Vinci Code not to dis one particular writer – it is a common, almost universal malaise among current popular writers not skilled in their craft – but because in one chapter, which may be the ultimate example of out-of-control viewpoint inanity, we view a long scene through the viewpoint of the arch-villain who, in his own thoughts, does not seem to know that he is the arch-villain! Or a villain at all. He chats with our heroes and thinks his thoughts about recent outlandish events without ever once acknowledging – in his own mind – that he has been the architect of all this villainy. What a cheat! What horse puckey! What sales!! (“No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public†– P.T. Barnum.)
–Dan Simmons, Nov.-Dec. 2005 Message from Dan
It’s easy and fun. I loved it and so did my 10-year-old.
Point of View is a killer in The Craft of writing fiction. It’s difficult but not that difficult. I suspect readers are forgiving on the point of view because sometimes they get tired of watching the protagonists constantly.