I Learned From Reading Origin by Dan Brown

6 min readDec 15, 2020

Over the weekend, I was feeling a bit drained on morale, so I decided that rather than lie in bed all weekend, I would read a book and have a genuine reason to lie in bed all weekend.

I decided to read a book from the famous author, Dan Brown because it had been sitting on my bookshelf for a while.

The first chapter — or rather the front matter of the book was enough to convince me to keep reading.

The first thought I had when I dropped the book was that I had to read it all over again — I can count on my right hand the number of books that have had that effect on me.

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Before the enthusiasm of talking about my new favorite author consumes this article, here are four lessons I learned from reading Dan Brown’s book Origin.

1. Research can be made intriguing

“All art, architecture, locations, science, and religious organizations in this novel are real.”

This paragraph piqued my interest. There is a stupendous amount of research that went into writing Origin. The names of artists and artworks featured in this book alone are enough to make one’s head swirl, but the way Dan weaved facts with fiction was seamless and intriguing.

In this interview, Dan Brown says it took him two years to research Origin in Spain. Amazing!

I kept alternating between googling the landmarks (which he painted to produce the sweet music only a skilled wordsmith can craft) and reading, but alas, the strong pull of the book won, and I was content to read through and note down the locations for later viewing.

2. Character Development is vital

A quote that comes to mind is:

“No one is ever the villain of their own story.”
― Cassandra Clare

There is something I find more appealing in reading books when compared to watching their respective movie adaptation. The fact that I get to peek into the character’s head, and see their motives rather than just watching their actions brings me closer to every single character in the book, be it the good guy or the bad guy.

Origin was written in third person omnipresent POV, and every relevant character was featured in a chapter, especially when they had a confrontation with the main character. More, every single character had a backstory.

Hence, no matter what actions they took with or against the protagonist, it was justifiable.

For me, it made them realistic. And the fact that the characters didn’t see what we did — we were always a step ahead of each character because we could lead into the heads of other characters involved, gave us more empathy for their diverse causes.

Most noticeably in Luis Avila, who was on an assassin mission to serve his God by killing the atheist, Edmond Kirsch, but still waited long enough to save a waitress from being disrespected.

3. A single strong plot is enough to pull a book

The book was geared at answering the ultimate question of human existence, “Where do we come from, and where are we going?”

This question became the central plot.

I was deep into chapter 17 when I realized that Dan hadn’t told me anything about what I was reading, but I was still eager to turn the next page.

This is because each chapter was progressive. The secret was, each chapter reminded us of the problem at hand and stoked our curiosity to discover the secret of our origin.

I still felt the same enthusiasm in Chapter 58 that I did in chapter 17.

All chapters were directed to solving the question posed in the first chapters, “Would we ever have the answer to the question Edmond claimed to have discovered the answer to?”

I didn’t think we were ever going to get the answer, I thought the catastrophe the religious leaders feared would materialize. And I imagined how the author, being a writer, would be able to come up with a substantial answer to the amazing scientific discovery.

I legit came out of the book to ponder the author; How could he know so much!

The arguments were too sound and solid that the author made me question everything I knew about religion from a logical point of view.

4. Readers love mystery

I didn’t realize how much I loved mystery until I read this book.

Here again, is my talk about character backstory: To have everything you assumed about a character change due to new information is the kind of epiphany I want to see in books!

For a quick summary of the lessons mentioned in this post, here are the points:

1. Research can be made intriguing

2. Character development is vital

3. A single plot is enough to pull a book

4. Readers love mystery

In all, Dan is a master of his craft, and I can’t express how much I love his mode of writing. My next goal is to read every single one of his books before the end of this year!

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I Learned From Reading Origin by Dan Brown

1. Research can be made intriguing

2. Character Development is vital

3. A single strong plot is enough to pull a book

4. Readers love mystery

Written by Mokarrom