A Book to Read: Angels and Demons

Last night I approached the final pages of Dan Brown’s novel, “Angels and Demons“. And boy, does it have a twist. I didn’t even see it coming.

That’s a lot for a psychotherapist, where suspicion mixed with a little of cynicism, comes with the trade.

I emphasize, the so-called bad writing that critics accuse Brown of and that I addressed in a previous blog, is really the artistry of rendering a story in a way that many can read and understand it. Brown simply tells a story. This is wise since by the very nature of subject matter, Angels and Demons addresses several levels of life, learning and spirituality.

I did not read The DaVinci Code. Unfortunately I saw the movie first, which in my case kills my ability to imagine beyond the story. This is something I will work to overcome, since, in most cases, I find movies never do justice to the books on which they are based. That said, I have promised to read The DaVinci Code, if not before, definitely after reading The Lost Symbol which I eagerly await. It’s due out in September 2009.

I encourage everyone to read the book before the movie hits the theaters in May. It’s schedule to show here in the San Francisco Bay Area May 15th, 2009. Don’t let the 567 pages discourage you. They move like lightening, evidence of another one of Dan Brown’s gifts. The book spans little more than 2 days, if that. And yet I felt as if I had lived centuries of history. The story teaches much without once sounding like a lecture.

From a writer’s perspective, not only did Angels and Demons present an example of how to reveal a story through the right chemistry of showing and telling. Yes, there are times in a story when it benefits both the reader and structure to simply say what happened and then move on to the next scene that you show. Brown does this with elegance and style that I would call adequacy. Not too much, not too little–enough.

On the emotional side, as all good books have an emotional thread even thrillers and suspense novels, Brown carries this with deftness and clarity, erring on the side of plot as one would expect from the genre. Yet and still he presents an avataric moment.

A place where all movements and actions throughout the book lead up to a transformation experienced by many in the novel or story. I felt this change even as the reader.
I realized something, a point I had often pondered. Yet seeing it played out on the page gave me greater conviction.

An avataric moment is something the best stories, short or long, contain enabling the protagonist to undergo an epiphany. In the best of stories, that avataric moment extends to the reader, as I did when witnessing the events in the climactic moments of Angels and Demons. It is a shift in consciousness where one ebbs closer, if not goes form believing to knowing.

In its most rudimentary form an avataric moment is a twist.

Good stories have twist. The best stories manifest an avataric moment. The greatest stories yield a point of transformation releasing energy that propels readers to move and act.

Writers of all genres and levels need strive to deliver stories with at least a twist and through refinement of our craft of writing, seek to deliver stories wherein through editing, pondering and revision, we uncover the avataric moment.

I suppose this is why we’re just now about to receive his follow-up to The DaVinci Code.

That Brown wrote Angels and Demons prior to The DaVinci Code offers something that novice and aspiring authors might want to ponder concerning the development of a clear understanding of one’s process before seeking to enter the world of large publish houses. I certainly am.

More to the point, every novel, I am convinced, despite genre has potential for ushering an avataric moment. That moment of transformation is usually linked to a secret, either as in a large mystery or a small truth we’ve always known, but were afraid to admit.

Angels and Demons carries both.

Figuring out these aspects of one’s story as a writer takes time. It also requires patience and attention to one’s craft.

After reading those pages near the end of Angels and Demons, I closed the book and thought back through my novels, asking as I considered each one, “What was the twist? Was there one? And if not, Why?

Surprisingly each story presented me with an ah-ha moment of discovery when I had been writing it.

In revising these stories I will now seek to uncover, peel away the depth of the twist, and the secret exhumed in each. And then hopefully I can find the kernel of truth, dispel the doubt and in holding it up to the light of revision, carve out the avataric moment.

This process of distilling the epiphany of a story involves both attention to craft and developing faith in stories one is given and the way in which they come to us.

This is the joy of writing.

Without undergoing and experiencing the pain and sorry that accompanies this ecstasy our stories will never move the hearts and touch the minds of readers

Where are the twists in your stories?

Have there been any avataric moments?

What surprises arise when you’re writing your stories?

Have you ever been transformed by a discovery concerning one of your characters?