Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Lady with the Dragon Tattoo

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I am currently reading the book after having seen the movie. I liked the movie and give the book high marks where the “Wow!” factor is concerned. I think a writer should look closely at the stories they like and examine the structure to see how they are written. One of my former students tells me that the Playwriting Workshop changed forever the way she looked at the stories she was reading.

When my wife read the Novel above she told me she had a great deal of difficulty getting into it but when she did, enjoyed it very much. So when I read it I made it a point to see why this might have been the case. I am now in the pleasure read phase of the novel but a part of my mind can’t help but attach to the structure of how this novel was written.

It is a story within a story and has two Central Characters. Yes, I say again two central characters. Perhaps this is one of the reasons the story is hard to get into because at the end the reader is still confused as to who the central character is. Now I am not panning the novel because it works and is masterfully written. On the one hand it is difficult for the reader to figure out who to attach to and on the other having an internal story proceeding concurrently with an external story certainly propels the action once they both get loaded into the reader’s brain.

As I read the story it seemed to me that the writer had a central character in mind to begin with, however as he wrote, the supporting character gradually began to steal the show. By the end of the first novel it is clear to the reader who the more fascinating of the two are by a wide margin.

The book starts as a rather ordinary mystery novel with a mystery to solve and suddenly there comes the supporting character to steal the show. I find it hard to believe the writer planned it in this manner but he certainly did a good job keeping both balls in the air at the same time. The tradeoff was a slow beginning and my wife actually put the book aside. The high side was the synergism of the two main characters working together.
It strongly recommend it to my readers as an example of a variation on the story telling model that is an interesting example of the craft,.. That worked well in this case, but one that is extremely hard to pull off