MasterClass has numerous creative writing classes from successful authors at the height of their careers. If you’re looking for someone who can teach you all that you need to know about writing a bestseller, then there is no better place than
Of course, all writers have their own specific niche. If you want to learn about thriller writing, then the best place to start is with Dan Brown. In this article, we’ll tell you about Dan Brown, and about his
If you want to learn more from Dan Brown MasterClass to improve your own writing process and writing style then read Dan Brown’s books!
Who Is Dan Brown?
Dan Brown is one of the most successful thriller writers known today. He’s written three stand-alone novels, including his first ever novel written in 1998: Digital Fortress. Also, Dan Brown’s books and his novels are the world’s best-selling novels
However, you may know of him for his Robert Landon series, which includes the novels: Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code, The Lost Symbol, Inferno, and Origin. Some of his books, such as The Da Vinci Code, have been adapted for film.
Dan Brown Teaches Writing Thrillers
Throughout this Dan Brown’s
Not only will you learn about the genre, but he’ll teach you how to research, craft compelling characters, and maintain suspense throughout your novel.
Lessons From Dan Brown
There are 19 video lessons available from Dan Brown in this course, and the overall length of the course is 3 and a half hours. The lessons themselves vary in length from small lessons that are around 2 minutes and the longest lesson being just over 20 minutes long.
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Anatomy Of A Thriller Writer
Dan Brown reveals his own checklist to craft his thriller novels in this lesson. He discusses the three Cs: the contract, the clock, and the crucible.
These are the promises made to the reader, what answers you’ll find when you read the book, and the one element that keeps the story together.
Finding The Idea
This lesson focuses on how Dan Brown finds his ideas for his stories and how you can use the world around you for inspiration. This is all about finding the moral grey area of your story and how writing what you know can also mean writing about what you want to know.
Choosing Locations
Dan Brown explains how he chooses the locations to set his stories and how these can create interest, generate suspense, and provide the structure for your book. It’s all about how the location is treated as another character and whether the location interests you as well.
Creating Heroes And Villains
If you want to know how to create compelling heroes and villains for your readers to connect with on a human level, then this is the section for you.
Dan Brown explains how you need to craft a hero that suits the world you’ve created and a complex villain who serves as a worthy opponent to your hero.
Universal Character Tools

You’ll find out how you can develop your secondary characters and how you can design the relationships they have with the protagonist and antagonist.
This section is about using your secondary characters to drive the plot and create more conflict. It’s all about the purposes they serve and what they can do to get in your hero’s way.
Character Case Study: The Da Vinci Code
As an example, Dan Brown takes a closer look at the characters of The Da Vinci Code to demonstrate examples from his previous lessons. You’ll explore the types of characters that are used and how they can create suspense and move the narrative onward.
Research
This two-part lesson focuses on the importance of researching your novel. These sections focus on how you can research to make your novel more authentic.
He discusses how research is the most fun part of the writing process and how you can use your research in your book. Once you’ve done more research, the second part focuses on how these elements can combine in unexpected ways.
Building A Story From The Ground Up
This section delves into how you can build a story and serves as Dan Brown’s step-by-step guide to story building. It doesn’t necessarily focus on narrative structure but on world-building and character profiles.
He’ll take you through the step-by-step process of how you can turn your research into a fully-fledged thriller.
Creating Suspense
As another two-part lesson, Dan Brown uses an example from his novel, Origin, and some exclusive content from a new book to create suspense. He explains how he utilizes parallel plotlines and how the opening paragraph keeps the reader interested.
Then, as he delves further into the lessons, he talks about how to invest your readers in the scenes and how to write compelling cliffhangers. However, he also explains the importance of cliffhangers, and when to use them, so they’re used correctly.
Writing Exercises Chapters And Scenes
Now, this lesson will focus on delving into the structure of your stories, such as the outline and the first draft. He suggests how you can identify what you want to happen in each chapter and how you can use the outline to build on your chapters.
Dan Brown explains how you can put each scene in the chapter and what purpose these scenes have.
Selecting And Utilizing Point Of View
In this lesson, you’ll find out how Dan Brown suggests you use the narrative point of view to create suspense and withhold information. He suggests how point of view can reveal character and how you can focus on what your characters are thinking in these perspectives.
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Exposition And Dialogue
Dan Brown reveals how you can craft exposition by appealing to your audience’s senses. It’s all about revealing not just the way something looks but what it smells, sounds, and feels like.
In this lesson, you’ll also discover how to write and use dialogue to communicate information to the reader while also revealing character.
Editing And Rewriting
Once you’ve written your draft, Dan Brown will go into more detail about how he edits and rewrites his draft. He identifies his own system of how he strengthens his projects and how you need to know when your writing is bad.
It’s all about accepting that not all of your writing is good but that you can rewrite it to commit to your idea successfully.
Protecting Your Process
In this lesson, you’ll find out how to protect your writing process. It’s all about sticking to your routine, and it’s all about writing. He even talks about the environment that he writes about and how you can remove distractions from your work.
Final Thoughts
Finally, Dan Brown finishes his lessons by explaining how you need to persist with writing a novel and how you should build a team who believes in you.
By the end of this course, you should have an idea of how to write a successful thriller novel, but you should be able to find out how to write a successful query letter.
The Dan Brown MasterClass review contains a great deal of useful information that can help thriller writers and writers of all genres.