Terisa Green

In this last part of scene-by-scene analysis of Dan Brown’s thriller Deception Point, I tally up the types of scenes used and how these change over the course of the novel. Pantsers, don’t look here.

To recap the first post of this plot analysis of Dan Brown’s Deception Point, we were off to a great start with a nice disturbance in the first scene. In Part 2, Scenes 21 through 40, we got the catalyst for the story–extraterrestrial life has been discovered in a meteorite in the Arctic.

I’m using James Scott Bell’s Plot & Structure exercise of analyzing a novel, scene-by-scene, using index cards to keep track of several things in each scene: the setting, the POV character, a two-line summary of the scene, what type of scene it is, and what, if anything, makes you want to read on.

We’ve had hints that something is wrong and one of the characters has even died at this point. So, the next plot milestone that we’re looking for is Doorway 1, also known as the end of Act 1, and the scene that will propel us into the middle of the novel.

In part 1 of this analysis of Dan Brown’s thriller Deception Point, we were off to a great start with a nice disturbance in the first scene. In the first twenty scenes, there were fourteen scenes of setup, four scenes of action, one reaction, and one of deepening. That’s a lot of setup. It’s a globe trotting thriller, which takes a fair amount of setup, but I’m expecting some action soon. I’m sure DB won’t disappoint. We’ll also get the catalyst for the novel in the next twenty scenes.