Writing 101: How to Write like Dan Brown
Christopher Mart medium.com @christopher.mart
In this rather short passage, I’d like to share with you how Dan Brown develops his ideas from scratch. He shared this approach in his masterclass which I strongly recommend you. The way we build…
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Medium
In this rather short passage, I’d like to share with you how Dan Brown develops his ideas from scratch. He shared this approach in his masterclass which I strongly recommend you.

The way we build ideas is unique and individual, but Dan’s approach can serve a great starting point and a potential checklist.

1. Select the world and the moral grey area

Select the world you are passionate about and find something ambiguous in this world, something that you can argue from both sides. It gives you surroundings, and it gives you a potential conflict.

2. Create the hero

When you have a world, you can create a hero. Make the hero imperfect and remember to show his or her high-stake intentions. Imperfection creates interest and suspense; clear intentions with high-stakes create a sense of urgency and importance.

3. Create the villain

The villain should be a worthy opponent. If you find a moral grey area, you can easily create someone who is terrible but at the same time reasonable.

4. Check for the Three C’s

Three C’s are the clock, the crucible, and the contract. The clock means you have a sense of urgency; the hero has a lack of time, and she should act fast. The crucible means you have a tough condition and a worthy opponent; the hero has no way out except to jump into the fire. The contract means you’ve made a promise to a reader. Dan Brown suggests making it explicit so that your hero, for example, swears to do something.

5. Set the stage

After you did the first four steps, you need to start writing chapter one. Chapter one needs to accomplish a lot of things. You need to set the world, introduce the character, the villain, and the conflict. The earlier you do this, the greater your chances you can grab the reader’s attention and hold it until the very end.

Dan Brown likes writing short prologues to introduce part of the stage. He says prologue is a good trick to get the reader into the book before they even started.

“I’m hooked and I’m not even to chapter one.”

6. Write the final first

Novel writing is a daunting job and writing final first can be a good idea (even if it’s not perfect). It motivates you, and it keeps the direction where your hero needs to go. You can always make it better later on.

7. Navigate the “middle muddle”

The middle part of the book is the hardest part of it. You need to create a natural flow of the story with your voice. Dan Brown likes to navigate through it with shifts in location. Every location is suited for its’ own actions and making a sequence of places or an outline can help a lot.

8. Develop supporting characters

Supporting characters should create more tension. Make your hero date the relative of the main villain or make your hero’s relatives get into trouble. Supporting characters should bring in both — new obstacles to overcome and opportunities to overcome the old obstacles.

9. Turn up the tension

Make things complicated. Change the villain’s real intention half-way through, change the surroundings. Maybe someone betrays the hero; maybe the hero finds something that aggravates the situation. Never make it opposite, though, — the hero shouldn’t find something unexpected that can alleviate the situation. The audience won’t forgive you that.

10. Build more obstacles

When everything seems to be over, make the situation worse. Play with the hope and despair of the reader and the hero.

11. Remind about the stakes

Make something bad happen. Kill someone and remind that this is not a game. The stakes are high, and the time is running out.

12. Motivate the character through location

Promote the hero and the plot forward, don’t stuck in the same place or lose the pace. Make triggers and location shifts as soon as you can.

13. Wrap it up

The ending should be satisfying and fit your story. If you write a thriller, make sure you don’t kill the villain if he just steals something from the main hero. If the villain is a heartless killer, though, make sure he finds a worthy end. As Dan says: