Dan Brown’s Top 13 Writing Tips
Thriller writers are experts of pacing and storytelling. The best thriller novelists can keep readers turning pages even after the city lights dim and the bed pillow beckons.
One of the most popular novelists of the past 20 years is Dan Brown, who has sold well over 200 million books. You likely know him from his Robert Langdon series: Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code, The Lost Symbol, Inferno, and Origin.
Brown recently recorded a writing MasterClass. His class focuses on writing thrillers, but — as with most writing advice — his tips span multiple genres. If you haven’t yet spent the $180/year for a MasterClass subscription, you can find Brown’s top 13 tips below. (All quotes are from his MasterClass.)
1. Let your location do the work
Everyone knows that a book’s setting is a key aspect of the plot. It can also be an enormous tool to help you build suspense.
“When I sit down to write a book, I think of location as a character,” says Brown. “I think that if I choose the right location, it’s gonna do a lot of the heavy lifting for me.”
Brown says he selects the location of his novel early in the writing process because any location naturally lends itself to where certain scenes should take place. Key places in that city or country become the “tentpoles for your story.”
2. Operate in a moral gray area
Rather than writing villains who are evil to the core, Brown prefers to humanize his characters by choosing interesting moral gray areas that divide his protagonists and their foes.
He says the best villain is often someone who is doing the wrong thing for the right reason — someone with their own moral take on the world, one that is slightly warped yet defensible.
3. Leverage the three C’s
Brown explains that every story needs three things:
- The Contract — What promise are you making your reader? What will you need to deliver at the end of the story?
- The Crucible — What is holding your protagonist and antagonist together? What’s keeping them from just walking away?
- The Clock — What time pressure are you exerting upon your story? What needs to happen by when?
These three C’s help you build suspense while keeping the story believable.
4. Make many promises
Brown talks a lot about promises in his MasterClass. “When you set up the opening of your thriller, it’s critical that you make as many promises to the reader as physically possible,” explains Brown. “They have to be believable, but make as many as you can. Make them as big as you can.”
Each curiosity gap is a promise, such as the following:
- Dropping a hint that your protagonist has a dark secret in their past
- Showing that your villain just purchased a high-caliber rifle
- Creating a romantic spark between two characters
These promises need to be resolved during your story, and Brown says you must withhold delivering on each promise for as long as you can without irritating your reader.
5. Control the flow of information
“Withholding is one of the real keys of writing suspense,” says Brown.
Don’t give away too much information too early. Brown advises, “Find ways to withhold. Figure out what your hero wants and just put it somewhere they can’t get to it without going through a series of tasks.”
To withhold information in a convincing way, Brown often switches point of view (POV). If he doesn’t want readers to know something that’s in his protagonist’s head, he’ll switch over to a different character’s POV for a while. That tactic helps Brown stay true to his story while hiding the info he doesn’t want readers to know yet.
6. Focus on the HOW — not the WHAT
Just like most writers, Brown is a prolific reader. He cites the work of multiple other authors in his MasterClass, including British spy novelist Ian Fleming.
He explains that everyone knows that Fleming’s protagonist James Bond is going to “disarm the bomb and get the girl.” It’s just a question of HOW. People keep reading because they want to see what obstacles Bond will need to surmount and how he’ll find his way around those obstacles.
Brown says that half the fun of being a writer is figuring out the HOW — determining the most interesting or surprising way to accomplish the task.
7. Give the reader what they want
Brown isn’t bothered by the fact that most readers can predict WHAT will happen. He just steers into it: “Stories that are satisfying really have only one ending: the hero wins. Your job is to make sure that the hero wins in an exciting way that you don’t see coming.”
He encourages writers to begin from the perspective that the hero will win. Then work backwards from there and give the reader what they want but not necessarily in the way they want it.
8. Make yourself scarce
“When I read books that I love, I forget I’m reading,” says Brown. “I just feel like I’m part of the action, and I never like those moments when I think, ‘Oh, there’s the author at work. He’s just jumped over here or she’s just gone into omniscient narrator and done this.’”
The best writers are invisible. They write clearly and concisely, and they use small words in big ways. Brown refers to this type of writing as “transparent.”
9. Just start — you’ll find the ingredients later
It’s tempting to outline, research, and plan your book until you understand steps 1 through 100 of the plot. But Brown doesn’t write that way.
“You do not need to have total mastery of your subject matter to start a novel — only to finish it,” says Brown. “Give yourself a break. The beginning of a novel is inspiring yourself, finding the ingredients. You can worry about the rest of it later.”
10. Be honest with yourself
All writers have good days and bad days. Sometimes your keystrokes beget brilliance and sometimes they generate gobbledygook. The tough part is discerning one from the other and having the courage to prune out the crap.
“You’ll often hear writers say that the difference between good writers and bad writers is that good writers know when they’re bad,” says Brown.
11. Wear out your “delete” key
“Writing a lean, tight narrative doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re writing less. It means that you’re editing more,” says Brown.
For many writers, editing is the least appealing aspect of writing. It’s tedious and often feels like the opposite of the creative breeziness of the first draft. But the best authors are defined by what they leave on the cutting floor.
12. Protect the process
Brown operates on a relentless writing schedule. He begins writing first thing each morning at 4 a.m., then wraps up around 11 a.m. While many writers operate on a word count goal each day, Brown sets a goal for the number of hours he wants to write that day.
“Writing a novel is about a process,” says Brown. “It is not all about inspiration and craft. It is about making sure that you set aside time every day to do your work…Protect the process and the results will take care of themselves.”
13. Set the table for breakfast
Before he wraps up each day, Brown says he “sets the table for breakfast” the next day by writing the opening paragraph of whatever section he’s planning to kick off the following day.
By doing that, he gives himself a running start the next day because he’s already partway into an idea.
If you enjoyed this article, I encourage you to support Dan Brown by purchasing one of his many books.
Happy writing!
