How to Write Suspense With The Da Vinci Code Author’s Toolbox
By: J.E. Guzman
Tags: Toolbox, Masterclass, Suspense, Writing, Writing Tips

How to Write Suspense With The Da Vinci Code Author’s Toolbox

Photo by Eric TERRADE on Unsplash

Reading the Book Dan Brown Teaches Writing Thrillers, Dan Brown refers to a couple of books written by James Scott Bell that I happen to have on my bookshelf. And it was funny to see that James Scott Bell mentions The Da Vinci Code in his examples.

So, I decided to do a cross reading about suspense, giving birth to this article. We will use the four types of suspense and theory from James Scott Bell as the framework for the fourteen resources Dan Brown explains he uses to create suspense in his thrillers. Yes, like he did in The Da Vinci Code.

I like how James Scott Bell explains suspense in his book Elements of Fiction Writing: Conflict and Suspense. It is very logical yet artistic. Insightful indeed. Masterful without a doubt.

I was especially drawn to the systematic classification of suspense he does. And that we will cover in this article. He identifies the following types of suspense:

Macro Suspense; Scene Suspense; Hypersuspense; and Paragraph Suspense.

After getting the right set of mind with James Scott Bell’s framework, we will cover Dan Brown’s Toolbox to create suspense.

James Scott Bell on writing suspense

The suspense every story needs is one in which the reader asks what happens next?

“Suspense is the delay of resolution.” — James Scott Bell

Suspense is about pleasurable uncertainty. The reader wants to know what will happen and has to turn the page.

What we are looking to build is the bonding between our reader and character. Our reader has to care about our character, and because of this, when she is in trouble of high stakes, our reader feels the urgency to know how it turns out. We have to do that throughout the whole story.

Macro suspense

It is the withholding of resolution from beginning to end of your story.

Our story has to make our reader turn all the pages of our story to resolve the macro suspense. One way I use to understand this is to imagine that we are in a helicopter. We leave our story on the ground. When we are high enough, we see clearly the macro suspense of our story. We see it in the shape of one sentence.

We have to be able to write the macro suspense of our story in one sentence. For example:

Will Katniss Everdeen survive The Hunger Games? (The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins)

Will Ender defeat the Buggers? (Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card)

Will Harry Potter defeat Lord Voldemort? (Harry Potter Novels by

J. K. Rowling)

The macro suspense sentence is a resource to keep at hand as a reminder when writing your story.

Scene suspense

When writing a scene, make sure it has something unresolved, the outcome. Our character has to enter the scene with a goal related to the macro suspense. As writers, our job is to put obstacles, so our reader constantly wonders if our hero will succeed or not.

In Ender’s Game, there is a scene where Ender is alone in the showers, and he is ambushed by Bonzo Madrid’s gang who want to hurt him. We can feel the scene suspense when Bonzo says:

“Naked and wet and alone, Ender, so we’re even. I can’t help that I’m bigger than you. You’re such a genius, you figure out how to handle me.”

We as readers care about Ender and want to read more to see if Ender’s survives the fight with Bonzo.

Basically, we descended the helicopter a little bit, and now we see the scene suspense within the macro suspense. It's about zooming in and out.

Hypersuspense

This is the case when neither the character nor the reader knows what is happening and who exactly is against them. This occurs naturally with the first person point of view (POV) because the reader only knows and sees what the main character knows and sees. However, this can also be accomplished with a third-person POV following the lead POV procuring not to reveal another POV.

Through withholding information to the lead character, we do it to the reader as well. Here the helicopter is closer to the ground. This technique is responsible for the hypersuspense we experience in Ender’s Game, especially in chapter fourteen, where resides the masterful punch of the story, which I would never ruin for a reader making spoilers or giving a clue.

Paragraph suspense

Accordingly to James Scott Bell, this is the smallest unit of suspense. We don't have to forget that dialogues interactions are made up of paragraphs. The next Pride and Prejudice's paragraph by Jane Austen makes us want to read more to know what Mr. Darcy will do.

“. . . she saw Mr. Darcy walk into the room. In a hurried manner, he immediately began an inquiry after her health, imputing his visit to a wish of hearing that she was better. She answered him with cold civility. He sat down for a few moments, and then getting up, walked about the room. Elizabeth was surprised but said not a word. After a silence of several minutes, he came towards her in an agitated manner, and thus began . . .”

As you can see, here the helicopter is on the ground. Maximum zoom in.

Dan Brown’s toolbox for creating suspense

James Scott Bell's understanding of creating suspense complements very well the toolbox for creating suspense of Dan Brown’s Master Class on Writing Thrillers.

“Suspense is all about making promises. It’s about telling a reader, ‘I know something you don’t know. And I promise, if you turn the page, I’m going to tell you, if you keep going.’ ” — Dan Drown

These fourteen items are my notes from Dan Brown’s Masterclass. They aren't literal transcriptions but my abstraction and understanding. Even the examples you will read are mine and not the ones he uses in his class.

Dan Brown doesn't state, per se, these fourteen resources in his Masterclass but rather explain them in the exposure of his toolbox and how he used them to write The Da Vinci Code and his other thrillers. His Masterclass's accompanying book appears a bullet list of his tools, but valuable knowledge from his exposition was left out.

Cutting the chase, these are the fourteen items I identified in Dan Brown’s Toolbox:

Create impending danger

The most direct way to create tension, for example, your hero is sitting in a park reading, and a sniper is waiting the right moment to shoot.

Describe a feeling in your character's mind

Here an internal monologue, your character states that she feels something is off and an ominous or weird feeling of walking right into something dangerous.

Put a secrete in one of your character’s back story

Your reader gets aware that the character's current behavior has its roots in something that happened in the past, but you don't reveal it yet. But the reader knows that if she keeps reading, she will eventually find out.

Use a hidden identity

Dan Brown says that this trick isn't subtle but works. It’s about a mastermind, a puppeteer working from the shadows whose identity the reader tries to guess. And our work as writers is to show at the end that it is not who the reader thought, logically and believably.

Introduce parallel plotlines

This is about showing in different chapters or scenes plotlines that the readers know will eventually meet. For example, in one chapter, you show a young man who doesn't believe in love because it’s a chemical reaction in our brain. In the next chapter, you show a young painter traveling to Paris after breaking up with her boyfriend. There you created suspense, the reader knows they will fall in love, but they don't know how it will happen. They will keep reading to find out.

Make big promises and make them early

The key is to make these promises believable. For example, in The Hunger Games, there is a big promise in the first chapter, through the description of how Panem, the districts, and the hunger games work we know it’s unfair and that it has to change, we readers know that the writer promises us that if we keep reading, we will see that status quo change. Which Suzanne Collins eventually delivers with her trilogy.

Cut the timeframe

What we do here is to compress the story timeline. For example, all the event of your story occurs in one day. In fact, do you remember that famous serial drama 24? That is exactly what we do in this case. We commit to making our story happen in twenty-four hours. It provides pure suspense.

Start sentences with a sense of urgency

You can also start with a feeling of discomfort. To illustrate, you can think of a girl running to be on time for her thesis dissertation. You can also start the chapter with a question like “where am I?” Instant suspense there.

Use different kinds of cliffhangers

My favorite example is the ending of the first chapter of The Hunger Game when Effie Trinket reads the name of the female tribute “Effie Trinket crosses back to the podium, smoothes the slip of paper, and reads out the name in a clear voice. And it’s not me. It’s Primrose Everdeen.” It’s katniss's little sister, Prim! I wonder if there is a soul in this world that can put down the book and not turn the page to find out what will happen with “little duck” Prim.

End the chapters earlier

The evil genius came up with this trick. We have one normal chapter with its resolution. Establish the ending of the chapter before that resolution. Put the resolution in the next chapter. Your reader will be immersed in a new chapter, and by using another resource of this toolbox, such a poor soul won't sleep until finishing your book.

Use moments of a revelation

Eureka! I got it! Put similar expressions at the end of the chapter and don't tell the reader what the character discovered. Yes, the answer is on the next page in the next chapter. Turn the page, dear reader.

Withhold information

Show in your story that your character is looking at something, and she has a sudden sad, surprised, or horrified reaction. Don't show what your character is looking at. Reveal that information until the next page.

Use flashbacks to make big promises

Do you remember The Wolf of Wall Street’s opening scene? They show us how Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) lives with riches, unbridled, and excesses. Then they make a flashback to when he was twenty-two years old, and the big promise is that if we keep watching, we will find out how he got to be The Wolf of Wall Street.

Instill sudden suspense with pulses

The pulses are reminders to the reader about a threat. They take the shape of little sections in your writing, even the size of two lines. It can remind our readers that a sniper is waiting for our hero to go outside the building.

Takeaways

Although writing suspense is not an easy task, the key concept is understanding which type of suspense you are creating and the suspense tools at your disposition.

“Withholding is one of the real keys to writing suspense.” — Dan Drown

Write down the macro suspense sentence of your story. The question makes your reader turn all the pages of your book to find out the resolution. Put it somewhere you can see it when you write.

Then at the scene level, make sure it has a question to be solved. Start with it and provide resolution using one or a combination of the fourteen tools to create suspense.

Afterward, in your scenes and chapter, try to create hypersuspense, limiting what the character and the readers know and making them wondering “what is going on here? Who is behind all this?” Remember, you can do it with the first and third POV.

Check for opportunities to instill suspense in your paragraph remember they are the smallest units of suspense, and dialogue interactions are made of paragraphs.

Finally, to create suspense in every level of your story, use Dan brown’s toolbox. Pick a tool or combination of them and target to write a scene or chapter. Be aware of the type of suspense you are creating. Your writing target is to promise your reader if she keeps reading, she will discover the answers, withhold information to create pleasurable uncertainty.

If you do struggle, review in the first part of this article the type of suspense you are working on, and experiment with the fourteen tools of suspense detailed in the second part. Eventually, you will create the feeling you intend.

Previous writing tips by J.E. Guzman