TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. The Madness Begins, plus POV wordcount outline - This post
II. Characters divided into factions, POV wordcount outline modified accordingly
III. Quick note on applying the above to Fate: Stay Night. The April Fool's Day forum joke screwed it up, though.
IV. Stream of consciousness notes about Brown's overall tropes.
V. An organized version of the above, Part I
VI. [...] Part II
VII. [...] Part III
VIII. [...] Part IV
IX. Word count outline with words tallied at each chapter.
X. Statistics on each POV's word count
XI. Keira Knightley, apropos of nothing
XII. The Lectures
XIII. Extreme, in-depth dissection of part I (first ~10000 words).
XIV. Summary of above.
XV. Dissection and summary of Part II (next ~20000 words)
XVI. Quick note on chapter length
XVII. Dissection and summary of Part III (next ~20000 words)
XVIII. If you think this is crazy, you should see what Heller did for Catch-22.
XIX. Dissection and summary of Part IV (next ~17000 words)
XX. Dissection and summary of Part V (next ~20000 words)
XXI. Dissection and summary of Part VI (next ~20000 words)
XXII. Dissection and summary of Part VII (final ~10000 words)
Goal [Spoiler: To eventually give Beast’s Lair a FLEXIBLE narrative structure/”frame” to write long, epic Grail Wars.]
In a nutshell, this thread will (try to) explain how to adapt Dan Brown's thriller structure to writing Grail Wars, and then give everybody the tools to do the same for their own fics. This may seem like a weird topic, especially since it’s analytical rather than fictional.
Allow me to explain:
When I wanted to write a Grail War, I started looking around for fast-moving plot structures that could support one. Grail Wars are tricky: they involve seven factions all jostling against each other. If you want to encompass their epic scope, you really need ~140,000 to ~180,000 words. Even then, you can’t really focus on all of the factions equally, or your fic will mushroom into a bazillion-word monster.
Unfortunately, few Western writers have actually written ~140k to ~180k battle royal plots. And if anybody did, I doubt that they’ve written much about how they composed it. (Surprisingly, the actual Battle Royale and its Western ripoff, The Hunger Games, didn’t fit well either).
So I found the next-best thing: a fast-moving urban thriller that involved ancient conspiracies, buried secrets, cast members trying to murder each other, and a Quest For The Grail.
Long story short: it fit a large percentage of Fate's plot points.
There are some differences – mostly thematic – but they’re fudge-able. The trick is boiling the formula down until you’ve got a skeleton that you can use for multiple types of Grail War plots.
And so, with that goal in mind…
This thread will be a depository for my ongoing attempts at analysis. I’ll try to pick apart how The Da Vinci Code’s plot works, and figure out how you would use The Da Vinci Code’s general structure to write a rapidly-moving Grail War fic of around 140,000 to 180,000 words. The analysis isn’t done yet, so this will be a work in progress. Naturally, feel free to use any concepts you want from this.
Approach
Although this will look at Brown's methods in the abstract, I recognize that examples help.
To provide that context, I’ll apply the Da Vinci Code formula to a test case: the Fifth Grail War. This thread will gradually develop a vestigial “story outline” of what Fate: Stay Night would have looked like through Brown’s lenses instead of Nasu’s. Most of it fits hand-in-glove. A few of Brown’s methods differ, though, and I’ll note them when they diverge from Nasu’s.*
(One of those rare divergences: Brown’s male MC would not have been a shounen hero – or if he was, he’d at least be more competent. Rin, by contrast, would have been very similar.)
* You could probably discard the Brown stuff that differs from Nasu's anyway and still get the structure to work. It's fairly flexible.
Sources
Unlike many of Dan Brown’s peers, you can actually find stuff about how he writes. It’s tricky, but it’s out there:
1) A few years before The Da Vinci Code, Brown wrote down seven tips for writers on his website. He’s since taken these down. Fortunately, an enterprising biographer found them and resuscitated them. The “seven tips” reflect an early stage in Brown’s evolution.
2) Many of Brown’s early “Seven Tips” came from a book that deeply influenced him: an early 90’s instructional called “Writing the Blockbuster Novel”. I'm reading it as part of this project. The book explains how (some of) Brown’s plot construction works at a bird’s eye level. But Brown’s later developments are actually more interesting...
3) And here’s where the legal system enters the picture. A few years back, a couple (nonfiction) authors sued Brown for using their research. Although this lawsuit was incredibly silly, Brown submitted a 60-odd page court document that described exactly how he’d written The Da Vinci Code. Most of his general formula’s RIGHT THERE. I dug it up in PDF. It’s great for getting an understanding of the finer points. Seriously, people should sue bestselling novelists more often.
4) The text of The Da Vinci Code itself. I chopped it apart by word count per chapter, POV, and a bunch of other ways.
…Obviously, the “meat” of this thread will involve relating (1) through (3) to the text I’ve sifted through in (4).
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First thing's first: the broad topography of The Da Vinci Code. I'll probably refer back to this a lot.
At first, it looks pretty chaotic. Here's a breakdown of each chapter's word counts.
The main POV characters for the chapter are listed in Bold. The characters who only get brief snippets in the chapter are mentioned in regular text.
Where two characters each share a major part of the chapter, they're BOTH listed in bold.
So here's the broad outline --
EDIT: So for whatever reason, Beast's Lair's writing software is reading the Opus Dei bishop's name as "Arinno Hamoosa".
So I'm changing it to "Bishop A.". GRRGH.
Spoilers for the book, obviously
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Argh. I have no idea why Beast's Lair is reading Arinno homoosa as "Arinno homoosa". Give me a minute.