Last night, I finished Doctor Sleep, the sequel to The Shining. There were a lot of things to like about it, chief among them being it’s the sequel to The By God Shining, one of the scariest novels I’ve ever read. Most of the books I read when I was a kid were probably too old for me, and Stephen King’s The Shining was at the top of that list. I read it at the age of thirteen, and as you might imagine, it scared the stuffing out of me, but in a good way. It didn’t traumatize me, at least not permanently and no more so than a good…
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The Secret Plan
Recently, I’ve noticed a trend in fiction, including among authors I admire. It works like this: The protagonist and company have a plan that’s going to lead to the novel’s climactic scene, and they discuss the plan, but we don’t get to hear it. The reason for this device, presumably, is to surprise us when the plan is executed, but here’s what makes it especially problematic: The discussion of the plan doesn’t happen “off screen.” Instead, it’s perched right there in the middle of an otherwise packed scene, its place held by a little line that read something like “They discussed it, and everyone agreed.” And then the action of…
