OLD POST ALERT! This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing! – Joanna Penn
I saw “Angels and Demons” the movie last weekend. It was excellent. Fast-paced, exciting, interesting story and great entertainment. Kudos to the excellent direction of Ron Howard, but it was still based on the Dan Brown book of the same name.
Dan Brown gets a rough deal from literary critics, but he is a popular novel-writing genius spawning a whole genre of pseudo-religious thriller. His next book “The Lost Symbol” is out in September and no doubt Random House is raking in the millions in presales already.
A few weeks ago, I asked whether you wanted to be a best selling author or a best writing author. No one would say that Dan Brown writes literature, but “The Da Vinci Code” is one of the best-selling novels of all time. It has sold more than 80 million copies and is translated into 51 languages.
So how does Dan Brown do it? I decided to find out some more about him and what we, as authors, can learn from him.
- Base your work on what you know. Dan Brown studied Art History at the University of Seville in Spain. He used a lot of what he learned in his novels.
- Research is key. His novels are based on real artwork and real history but twisted into fiction to create a great story rooted in enough facts to keep it credible. He spent a year researching before writing “The Da Vinci Code” and utilizes the “thriller as academic lecture” approach.
- A little controversy helps with marketing. “The Da Vinci Code” had a lot of people upset about the divinity of Jesus and even the Catholic Church weighed into the debate. This got a lot of publicity for the book and the author. Brown also got sued by Baigent & Leigh, the authors of “The Holy Blood & The Holy Grail”, which also increased publicity.
- If you find a great character, keep writing about him. Professor Robert Langdon is an excellent character. I'm not aware of any other symbologists in fiction (before Langdon anyway) and there are certainly enough symbols to make for many sequels.
- Persist and keep writing. “The Da Vinci Code” was the fourth book that Dan Brown wrote (although he also co-wrote others before), but it was the catalyst for his success. If he had given up after the first book, he would not have made it to the multi-millionaire he must be today.
- Use the classic elements of a thriller… and repeat. This article suggests “a shadowy force, secret society or government agency, a big idea with a moral grey area, and a treasure” plus “set in 24 hours..a simple hero pulled out of his familiar world”. The book may be formulaic, but the formula works. People love this archetypal story, so they keep buying.
Dan Brown has made it into the movies which sky-rockets the author's revenue. How does he do it when plenty of ‘literary' authors fail? This quote also sums it up from the brilliant book Story by Robert McKee
“Countless writers lavish dressy dialogue and manicured descriptions on anorexic yarns and wonder why their scripts never see production, while others with modest literary talent but great storytelling power have the deep pleasure of watching their dreams living in the light of the screen”
Story-telling power is what gives Dan Brown his edge over others. Whatever you think of his books, he is certainly successful and as such, we can all learn from him.
But wouldn’t it be nice if all those positive points (the research, the controversy, the thriller basics) were allied to good writing? They’re not exclusive (see John Le Carre, Len Deighton).
My other bugbear is that nobody who knows anything about Renaissance art refers to the guy as Da Vinci. It’s Leonardo, for crying out loud. See my moribund blog http://chasmsoftheearth.blogspot.com/ for more details.
I’ve got to say, the elements of a Dan Brown story ought to interest me, but I can’t read his books.
Simply because he doesn’t write well. I read one page of The Dav Vinci Code and had to give up. Turgid, poorly written, and when the fifth conspiracy theory was introduced and dismissed on the same page as the previous four, my brain started to leak out of my ear.
I simply cannot understand how people can tolerate bad writing for the sake of a decent plot. I get why the movies are popular (even if, in a separate type of criticism, I don’t particularly rate then as movies!).
The Da Vinci Code, as with the Harry Potter phenomenon, have just left me cold and uninterested – I have the feeling I read them a decade earlier, and with better execution, when I read Holy Blood, Holy Grail and the Earthsea Trilogy respectively, at the age of 12.
It’s great that this post caused some controversy! The criticism of Dan Brown’s writing doesn’t seem to make an impact on his income of millions and the fact he, Rowling and Meyer are probably accounting for about 1/3 of publishing income! Whatever the thoughts on his writing, his stories have captured the imagination of millions. I find this inspiring, and I believe, as authors, we can learn from everyone. Thanks, Joanna
Forget Dan Brown – How Does Joanna Penn do it – You are everywhere at all times writting, Blogging, Video productions, Podcasting – I am exhaused following your activities – Top marks – I woukld love to see a blog that shows your daily schedule…Seriously!
Kind Thaoughts
Jeremy
Hi Jeremy, Thanks for that! I am seriously busy right now! I have a few goals for the year and one is to have a top writing blog! (I am currently no 6 in Australia – of course, I want to be no. 1!)
I also have this Author 2.0 course which espouses all these things, so I have to practice what I preach! http://author2zero.com/
Thanks, Joanna
Paul Anderson,
I have issues with you including Harry Potter as an example of a badly written piece of work.
On a side note, it did help A LOT when the publisher gave out 10,000 free copies of the Da Vinci Code before it became a runaway bestseller. This should stress the importance of marketing. Marketing is far more important when you want to sell a book.
The reason you’ve never heard of another character in fiction who was a Symbologist is because there’s no such thing. Semiotics is probably the word Dan Brown was looking for, but his research seems to have failed him.
Joanna
Great little piece on Dan Brown. I love the story telling of the Langdon series and I have been waiting patiently for the 3rd installment. I have read The DaVinci Code twice and Angels and Demons 4 times. I also love both movies. Angels and Demons is by far my favourite book of his. His other 2 non Langdon books were ok but I am glad he has stuck to the formula for The Lost Symbol. It has been pre-ordered since July!
Can’t wait.
Nice blog by the way. Thanks for your tips.
Jack
Uh, are you sure Dan Brown does his research? From what I’ve heard, The Da Vinci Code has quite a few factual errors.
Hey Livia,
It is still a fiction novel – so aren’t factual errors allowed?
or should it based on truth?
Thanks, Joanna
As far as I can tell, if a writer’s going to talk incessantly about his extensive knowledge and research on a topic, leaning on how speculative his speculative fiction is, he should consider being more realistic than not. Making up facts about the Louvre distracts from the “nonfictional fiction” of his prose.
I don’t care if there are factual errors in it. It is a story and sold as fiction, not non-fiction. His job is to entertain us, not educate us and I think he does that terrifically. If I want to learn about the Freemasons or The Illuminati then I will research them using non-fiction books available at all libraries or via the web.
I started The Lost Symbol last night and am thoroughly enjoying it.
Are you kidding me? Reading Brown’s books are like running over cobblestones barefoot. Every bumpy sentence is a painful reminder that it’s going to be a long arduous journey.
Research? At least half the “facts” in his book Angels and Demons is inaccurate.
Great character? The character of Robert Langdon in the book was an incredibly flat, two-dimentional character. It is simply a testament to the talent of Tom Hanks the the character is so engaging in the movie.
Great storyteller? Try master plagerist instead. How many times has Brown been sued for plagerism?
When a book becomes a movie, as we all know (Well at least those of us who actually read a book before seeing the movie) the movie is never exactly like the movie. There are very good reasons for that one of which is molding a 300 something page book into a 120 page script. But in Brown’s case it’s because the script writer’s cleaned up Brown’s mess.
Controversy? Oh, please. If you have to create drama outside of your novel to sell it maybe you should just write soap operas. After all how much controversy do other authors have to create to sell their books to loyal fans? What are the controversy factors for Dean Koontz, Danielle Steele, Stephen King, Joh Grisham, Janet Evanovich, and so on? They all have loyal readers but they keep the drama IN the stories.
Yeah, I know, I left the i out of plagiarism.
And it should be script writers not script writer’s.
And as far as Jack McClane saying he doesn’t care if there are factual errors in the book that’s his choice but the tradition of fiction writing is one of not screwing your readers. Every author is prone to a mistake now and then but most authors put a lot of effort into true research knowing that their readers trust them. But discovered early on that he can dupe adult readers the same way Meyers can dupe thirteen-year-olds. At least with Meyer’s books and her target audience’s age it’s not only understandable but acceptable.
I think Dan Brown is brilliant and there are too many jealous haters hope I can write as well someday : )
Every writer has his/her own style of writing…it’s his style and language….don’t read if you don’t like it…simple….his ideas are interesting…though slowly he is running out of ideas…I found Origin quite flat….
Dan Brown
Net worth 2018–160 million. I dare say that justifies that Dan Brown does not suck.
Just because not everyone can, or does, appreciate his style doesn’t have any bearing on the quality/success of his novels. Ditto for J.K. The masses have spoken.
If you think you can do better, I dare you. Writing takes a tremendous amount of effort, skill, and a relentless tenacity that most of us can’t imagine, let alone achieve.
Good for you Mr Brown. I envy anyone who gets to work with you and learn from.