OK, out of interest, let's take this passage. It's been much maligned and ridiculed, but it does illustrate something of a stylistic problem. Yes, you can skim over it, let the momentum of the plot carry you, but let's put the brakes on for a moment, get out and take a poke in the undergrowth. We'll either find some meaning, a vintage copy of
Knave, or a Louis de Bernières novel tossed out of passing car.
A voice spoke, chillingly close. "Do not move." On his hands and knees, the curator froze, turning his head slowly. Only fifteen feet away, outside the sealed gate, the mountainous silhouette of his attacker stared through the iron bars. He was broad and tall, with ghost-pale skin and thinning white hair. His irises were pink with dark red pupils.
So what he's saying, if we pare down the prose is:
"Do not move." The museum curator stopped and looked around. He saw his attacker standing behind the gate.
So we've stripped Mr Brown's skeleton of all that fleshy prose. So what was he trying to do with all those words? I think we all appreciate the effort he's making not to leave a word unemployed, keep them off the street where they may get up to no good, possibly hanging out with Will Self or some other verbose miscreant. So Dan is putting them to work. But in a rather odd and unnecessary way, rather like a government back to work scheme. Have you ever wandered into a meeting and surveyed the gallery of blank faces looking back at you and had that horrible, sinking thought: am I in the right place? That's what many of the words appear to be doing here. Give them their dues, they usually don't bottle it. They take a seat, and even when it becomes very apparent they're sitting in the wrong meeting, they stick with it. The 'voice spoke' for instance. Well, his attacker was probably not going to burst into song, unless Dan Brown is hosting an impromptu version of
Phantom. OK, the paragraph doesn't have context, but I'm thinking we're not about to segue into a musical number here. Someone, somewhere must be working on a musical version of
The Vinci Code.
But back to practicalities, our Dan is telling us that curator is being threatened by his attacker (they'll do that, those attackers), and that the attacker is an albino. We can deduce that it's dark but there is a source of light somewhere behind the attacker. He's a silhouetted after all. Unfortunately, Dan has tripped himself here – as much lamented – you can't have an albino silhouette. Albinos are, of course, pale. I'll vouch that you don't see them eagerly booking holidays to the Costa del Sol and if they do, they're going to be in Boots buying up all the Factor 50. I think we're getting the point here that the attacker is an albino and rather a large one at that.
Mountainous, however, is rather large, unless of course those are mountains really far away, in which case we may be dealing with an albino midget. It's pretty easy to see why he's a bit angry in that case, he's not been dealt a good hand by the gods.
What it really lacks is any kind of comparator. Skipping the nonsensical, you have to ask questions like how
tall and broad. Tall as the gate? Perhaps he fills the space between whatever is holding the gates up? It's an easier comparison for the reader than a distant and rather unfeasible mountain. And then to the silhouette problem. We can't see his features, but we need to know that he's an albino (for some reason, just go with it, OK). So, hey what do albinos have? Dan helped here: he has
thinning white hair. So, perhaps with the light behind him, we can see that, cast like an aura. Perhaps an halo, like an angel, but not that kind of the angel, after all he's holding a gun and your average angel doesn't point a gun at you (well, I assume he has a gun, he may of course be using chilling language instead).
There is, of course, no perfect way to write it, but there are better ways to write it, either leaner or richer.
