More writing secrets of Dan Brown

Whether or not you’re a fan of Dan Brown’s work (admittedly, I’m not) he’s got something the public wants. In an older Slate article, Bryan Curtis examined what makes Brown’s fiction tick:

 “Brown has done a lot of thinking about what makes a successful Dan Brown thriller. He has found that it requires a few essential elements: some kind of shadowy force, like a secret society or government agency; a ‘big idea’ that contains a moral grey area; and a treasure. The treasures in Brown’s four novels have been a meteorite, anti-matter, a gold ring, and the Holy Grail.”

 “When all of Brown’s elements come together, doled out over cliffhanging chapters, with characters that exist to ‘move the plot along,’ it is like mixing the ingredients to make a cake.”

 Here’s what Brown himself says: “All of my novels use the concept of a simple hero pulled out of his familiar world.”

“The trick is to make your characters experts…then you pair them with an expert of a different discipline, making it convenient for the experts to assay to one another at some length, in the process spilling all the research you have done for your novel.”

 I don’t advocate trying to follow anybody else’s pattern but having a look at what works for somebody else might inspire you to figure out your own version.

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