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"Soon the structure underlying The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons and The Lost Symbol was laying bare before my eyes. I could see why the stories worked.
by bravura 8y ago
"Soon the structure underlying The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons and The Lost Symbol was laying bare before my eyes. I could see why the stories worked.
I had reverse-engineered Dan Brown."
Could you talk a little more in depth about what Dan Brown's pattern/structure is?
- ggambetta 8y agoI get that request a lot, so I'll have to write something about it :) All I can offer right now is my raw notes, which are in Spanish. This is a structural analysis of Angels and Demons, The da Vinci Code, and The Lost Symbol: https://imgur.com/bX6ByJA https://imgur.com/bX6ByJA This is an one-page treatment of the three books, with the "blanks" filled appropriately for each: https://imgur.com/LlDVUKn https://imgur.com/LlDVUKn I doubt any of this is groundbreaking. Story structure is a widely studied topic (and one that I find fascinating). But it seems like Dan Brown uses a very well defined, customised version of this, that makes for engaging, fast-paced books. I sort of proved (for myself, at least) that this works, by writing a novel whose structure was originally based on this pattern (although it later diverged a bit), and which causes the expected effect - a couple of readers have read it in a single sitting :)
- bambax 8y agoVery interesting! Could you maybe provide those links in text form, so that we may run them through Google Translate? ;-)