How To Make Readers Feel Like They’re IN Your Book

Analysis of "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown

📖 The Da Vinci Code is the definition of a page-turner.

💰 Dan Brown’s second installment in his Robert Langdon thriller series became a global sensation when published in 2003. It’s one of the best-selling books of all time.

✍️ I studied The Da Vinci Code and discovered the page-turning techniques that you can apply to your own writing.

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My analysis is broken into five posts:

Part 1: How to hook readers BEFORE your first sentence

Part 2: Why you should start in the middle

Part 3: The trick to creating a compelling supporting character

Part 4: The power of short chapters

Part 5: How to make readers feel like they’re IN your book

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Here is Part 5:

The Da Vinci Code lets readers solve the story’s mysteries alongside the characters.

Dan Brown uses inserts to make readers feel like they’re IN the book.

Inserts - Text integrated into a narrative that represents an element of the fictional world (like a letter, newspaper, or diary entry)

Also known as intertextual elements, inserts follow the principle of showing, not telling.

Example:

The first insert in The Da Vinci Code appears in the first chapter, when Robert Langdon wakes up in a Paris hotel.

Dan Brown doesn’t tell you who Robert Langdon is or why he’s in Paris, he shows you. The character begins to look around the room, and information is revealed to the reader.

Langdon still felt fuzzy. A visitor? His eyes focused now on a crumpled flyer on his bedside table.

This “crumpled flyer” is shown as an insert:

The use of inserts allows readers to engage with a fictional world.

In this example, readers imagine seeing the flyer from The American University Of Paris. It’s like they’re inhabiting the scene themselves, instead of just being relayed information.

The effect of inserts is amplified throughout the rest of The Da Vinci Code as the story’s focus shift to the main mystery. Readers are able to solve the various puzzles alongside the characters because the clues are shown as inserts.

Here are 5 ways you can use inserts (with examples):

1. Codes and Puzzles

2. Computer Terminals

3. Signs and Banners

4. Documents

5. Symbols

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Continue reading the other parts of The Da Vinci Code analysis:

Part 1: How to hook readers BEFORE your first sentence

Part 2: Why you should start in the middle

Part 3: The trick to creating a compelling supporting character

Part 4: The power of short chapters

Part 5: How to make readers feel like they’re IN your book

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