NEW YORK (AP) — The plots of Dan Brown’s novels have so many turns that even the writer has to verify he can maintain all of it organized.
“Anybody who writes a thriller needs to have a plan. There’s a great saying that the thriller writer who starts a book without knowing where’s he’s going is just lying,” he instructed The Related Press on Tuesday.
“And certainly these books are very complicated. One way I sort of battle, trying to keep it all straight, is to write every single day, just to keep it fresh. If I go through two sleep cycles (without writing), it starts to evaporate. And, of course, I also have what looks like a detective’s chalkboard in a police station. We’ve got the pictures and the yarn and the notes and the sticky notes, all that on my wall trying to keep it straight as well.”
Brown’s “The Secret of Secrets” has been revealed this week, a 650-page thriller and mind-bender from the writer recognized worldwide for “The Da Vinci Code,” “Angels & Demons” and different million sellers. Brown once more combines suspense, philosophical digressions and travelogues, together with codes and puzzles and secret societies as he dispatches favourite protagonist Robert Langdon to Prague and ensnares him in a lethal, worldwide race for the important thing to final knowledge — what occurs after we die.
Moreover Langdon, the Harvard symbologist who has discovered journey and bother in all places from Paris to Washington, D.C., Brown has introduced again love curiosity/noetic scientist-in-distress Katherine Solomon and a New York-based e-book editor with a really real-life counterpart. “Jonas Faukman” is an anagram for Brown’s editor at Doubleday Books, Jason Kaufman, who has labored with the writer for greater than 20 years. Writer and editor are good buddies, they are saying, though that did not maintain Brown from subjecting Faukman to abduction and different un-literary experiences in his newest e-book.
“I always enjoy getting manuscripts from Dan and seeing where he’s going,” Kaufman instructed the AP not too long ago. “I have to ask him not to tell me in advance what he has in mind. He always finds new ways to surprise me.”
Brown additionally spoke with the AP about how he decides on his topics, his evolving ideas on mortality and why Prague is the proper setting for a couple of conspiracies. This interview has been edited for readability and brevity.
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AP: How do you go about deciding what to jot down about?
BROWN: It’s no secret that I like to jot down about massive subjects and there actually isn’t any subject that’s greater than consciousness. It’s the lens by way of which we see ourselves. And so the actual problem was find out how to make a concrete pressing fashionable thriller about one thing that’s so ethereal.
About eight years in the past, my mother handed away concerning the time that I used to be pondering of writing about consciousness, and I began asking myself, “What happens when we die?” and when you’d requested me eight years, in the past, I’d say nothing It’s full cease complete blackness. Over the course of the eight years that took me to jot down this e-book and all of the conversations that I had with philosophers and physicists and noetic scientists, I’ve come out the opposite aspect with a very completely different mindset. And actually, it sounds loopy. I not concern demise.
AP: Earlier than you labored on this e-book, did you contemplate your self an atheist? An agnostic? How would you have got described your self?
BROWN: I grew up Christian, Episcopalian, however I moved away from the organized nature of faith. I’ve all the time been religious and sensed there’s one thing else, however I’ve additionally been skeptical and stated, “Well, that sense of there’s just something else could just be wishful thinking.” It may very well be as a result of it’s so onerous to think about that there’s nothing else that we simply type of say, “Well, I sense there’s some thing else.”
And now I do sense there’s one thing else. And that’s from an mental standpoint. I’ve not had a non secular expertise, a religious expertise, an outer physique expertise, or close to demise expertise. This alteration of thoughts comes from wanting on the science that’s occurring proper now on this planet of physics and noetics.
AP: Some individuals speak concerning the artistic course of, so to talk, as virtually a non secular expertise, that second the concept involves you, whether or not it’s the correct phrase or a chunk of music.
BROWN: It’s referred to as move, a muse. Actually, we writers have that have of, “Ah, I’ve got it. It’s just flowing through me.” I’ve definitely felt that. Not on daily basis, sadly. There’s plenty of trial and error, however that’s the feeling that artistic individuals are all the time searching for. My mother was an expert musician. I used to be introduced as much as be a musician. I believed I might be a musician. I nonetheless play piano on daily basis. I studied music composition in college, and I’ve had that have additionally with music.
That type of muse second when one thing flows in, it’s completely different between writing and music. Writing type of seems like discovering the correct Lego piece to place in. You say, “Ah.” It’s virtually like doing a jigsaw puzzle. You’re like, “Got it. It fits.” And music is a bit of bit extra fluid. It’s like making a giant brush stroke. And the melody simply type of flows in and finds its strategy to your fingers, after which it exists.
AP: The cities you set your books in are so vital to what you do. Do you have got a sort of want listing? Like, “I need to set a book in this city.”
BROWN: I imply, there are a couple of of them that I received’t point out as a result of I don’t need individuals operating out, they usually’re type of off the crushed path, sort of like Prague is.
I like to make use of location as a personality. I wish to guarantee that, no matter e-book it’s, it may solely be set there. “The Lost Symbol” may solely be set in D.C. as a result of it’s concerning the symbology of D.C. “The Da Vinci Code” may solely be set in Paris as a result of it’s concerning the Roseland. “The Secret of Secrets,” about human consciousness, may solely be set in Prague. It has been the paranormal capital of Europe since Emperor Rudolf II (within the late Sixteenth-early seventeenth centuries) introduced all of the mystics and scribes and alchemists to Prague. And as a personality, Prague is ideal for Langdon. It’s stuffed with secret passageways and cathedrals and monasteries and all, that’s his world.
AP: Puzzles and thriller and passageways, that’s simply endlessly fascinating to you? It’s as attention-grabbing to you now as whenever you have been 10 or 20?
BROWN: I don’t know what that claims about me, however yeah, I nonetheless love secret passageways. You discuss that “aha” second. It’s sort of the identical factor to say, “Wait, there’s something here that you don’t see and now you see it.” It’s the identical sort of sensation of “aha.”
