The Rule
Characters Must Treat Urgent Situations Urgently
"They're wandering around...completely drains the thing of any urgency. They really did just start a scene...where they're trying on hats."
The Rule
Characters Must Treat Urgent Situations Urgently
"They're wandering around...completely drains the thing of any urgency. They really did just start a scene...where they're trying on hats."
Commentary
In his book Secrets of Successful Fiction, Robert Newton Peck wrote a whole chapter called "Stay In The Phone Booth With The Goriila", urging the writer not to cut away from an exciting scene to an unrelated, rambling backstory. This is actually far worse, because eventually the wandering author, after irritating the reader with a cutaway, might return to the exciting scene with the phone booth and gorilla.
This pattern, which is amazingly common in 372 books, sets up an tension, danger, excitement—and then instantly nullifies it. In this specific example, we're told our heroes are in existential danger with the world at stake—and Cline inserts a romcom-level montage.
May be a sub rosa form of padding.