The Da Vinci Code: How To Write A Hit Novel
Henry here. I’ve figured out how to write a best seller. It is surprisingly simple. I would just have to follow Dan Brown’s model in The Da Vinci Code.
What he has done is write a fairly good mystery full of a rather silly mixture of “facts.” What makes it spectacularly successful is the way he has woven the great archetypical themes and persons of history into his novel. Some of these are:
1) He spends great energy and time emphasizing the critical importance of the Sacred feminine. There is no doubt that the past two thousand years have been, in part, an over emphasis on the masculine. Women have been second class, to the terrible point of being burned by the thousands as witches. The church was a prime factor in this suppression and persecution.
The final emergence of feminism and the rights of females has been long overdue and a welcome balance to our masculine culture. Brown captures the energy of this emerging balance.
2) He finds a villain in the Roman Catholic Church. The church was obviously guilty of much villainy. It was Lord Acton who said about the history of the papacy “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Every good mystery needs a villain and Brown produces an overdone but credible one.
3) Although I have not yet finished his mystery he clearly is setting up a
Romance which is needed.
4) He sets up a second villain in the person of the police inspector.
5) The two thousand year search for the Holy Grail.
6) He makes the entire work based on the notion of the struggle by the bright, honest, pure, and in the place of Leonardo Da Vinci brilliant, heroes’ search for the Grail against the oppressive, at times vicious, dishonest authorities. Especially in America this makes people feel that they are fighting the Boston Tea Party over again. Quite a rush.
Now I just have to find such a powerful theme and such a marvelous hero as De Vinci to sell 40,000,000 books myself. I wonder where to start…