> The other thing you should "never" do is open a scene on two characters entering a restaurant. Because then you have to chronicle the waiting, the seating, the ordering, the food, etc, before you get to why the story is there in the first place, which is, in most cases, for the two characters to have some sort of important conversation. Actually I think I heard/read that from a film director with respect to movies, but I guess it applies equally well to prose. Maybe I'm just a product of a generation with a short attention span (even though I don't watch MTV), but it gets tiring reading about the tiresome mechanics of routine. I hate it when writers chronicle journeys, usually in fantasy novels, and elaborate on their rate of speed, the weather, what they ate on the way, and so on. Even one of my favorite fantasy authors, Terry Brooks, gets bogged down with that one, though I guess he can't hold a candle to the atrocities of that nature committed by Robert Jordan. Now I'm completely sidetracked.

Ever read "The Erasers," by Alain Robbe-Grillet? Gah! There's a lot of tat sort of nonsense... ordering food and the like...