Dan Brown's Use of Dialogue in Digital Fortress

By Vishik B.

Dan Brown's does not make good use of dialogue in his book Digital Fortress. The story is great, but the dialogue just doesn't work well with the story. There are many moments when the action in the story halts, because of the dialogue, and sometimes it is very cheesy.

For example, in the end of the book, when the worm was eating through the NSA's security filters, the people kept announcing how much time was left, which is like a cheesy Hollywood movie. Also there are chapters with action, and then there is another chapter with a complete change of setting which is fine, but it goes from violence and action, to a pleasant chat about how the TRANSLTOR is doing on the code.

Dan Brown does a lot of tell, but he doesn't show, and he makes every character sound almost the same. The commander Strathmore talks almost exactly the same way as Greg Hale does, even though they have completely opposite personalities. Also Susan basically tells us everything we need to know in the first couple of chapters, because Dan Brown tells us everything instead of showing it.

Dan Brown makes his characters talk a lot for no reason, and most of the time the stuff they are saying is completely pointless and irrelevant. There is a part in the story where there are 10 or so lines of David Becker and Susan Fletcher talking about a game called squash, and playing word games. It has no importance to the story and doesn't show anything meaningful. 

Overall, though Dan Brown's Digital Fortress was a great book, the dialogue needs a lot of work. There is too much dialogue, and a lot of it is pointless, boring, and cheesy. He should make the dialogue relevant to the story, and make the story more show than tell, which would cut down the amount of dialogue. Also he should make it less cheesy, as his book is not for young children. The book would have been much better if Dan Brown had improved his dialogue.