I don't hate Dan Brown

Darn it, this Parade magazine article humanized him! When I read "The Da Vinci Code" years ago (at the behest of my brother who insisted it was pure awesome), I did what any normal writer would do with it: I trashed the writing while praising the plot. It was the very definition of a page-turner, even more so than "Twilight." No matter how wooden the dialogue or trite the prose, I couldn't stop reading.

I learned a lot from Brown's book: keep chapters short, end chapters on mini-cliffhanger...