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Comment by midgetjones | Hacker News Reader

Hey, OP! I admire the fact that you took all this on yourself, and also from reading the linked blog post[0] it seems like you took the hacker's approach to the planning and writing of it too.

Honestly, I'm not sure it's a book I'd read - not a big Dan Brown fan - but I am deeply envious that you've completed such a huge undertaking :)

[0] https://medium.com/@gabrielgambetta/how-i-wrote-my-first-nov...

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... then OP, could you share this structure? "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."

I suspect OPs spreadsheet is lacking the metadata that exists in their mind to be interpreted usefully.

Multiple mcguffins, drip-feed expository dialogue and prose, cliff-hanger in 30 minute reading time chunks. Always keep at least one good mystery open. Start in media res, slow the pace for the second act, which is where you consolidate to accelerate to a frantic conclusion where you draw seemingly unrelated threads together. Essentially, give the reader a reason to keep reading, and to keep coming back.

It's not Brown's recipe, it's how pretty much all compelling fiction hangs together.

Well I never knew about McGuffins before. Every day's a school day :)

Pretty much, plus mini-cliffhangers at the end of each chapter. And tons of chapters. My novel has around 70, so roughly 5 pages on average. It helps keep the pace, and because of the psychological need to read "just one more chapter", it makes it a "page turner" or "a book you just can't put down".

If you read more than two Dan Brown books, honestly it's hard to not see this structure. I read The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, which were OK, but then reading Deception Point I could guess all the plot twists several chapters in advance. He's just very formulaic.

Sure, sounds like a good idea for a follow-up post!

Fair enough. I really didn't know whether I could pull off writing an entire novel at all, so for my first attempt I'm totally fine for it being formulaic. Even so, most of the people who have read it have enjoyed it - some read it in a single sitting, which is probably the best compliment they can make :)

Agreed. After reading the snippet of the manuscript in the OP's screen-shot this sprung to mind:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/10049454/Dont-make-fun-of...

Oh that is golden. "The critics said his writing was clumsy, ungrammatical, repetitive and repetitive." Apparently DB isn't an Oxford comma man?

See my comment here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12314100

Also, English is not my native language. In fact I wrote and published the novel in Spanish first (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00I1EU1Q0). I didn't trust my English enough to translate it myself, so I hired a translator to do the job. The result is OK but I have the feeling I could have written it better! FWIW, I'm probably going to write whatever I write next in English.

If you don't mind revealing this information, which version is doing better?

They're both rounding errors, to be honest!

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