Dan Brown’s bizarre “gravity boots” writing technique

Posted On August 5, 2025August 5, 2025

If you’ve ever wondered “just how did the renowned author, 61-year-old male Dan Brown turn the literary world upside down with his reductive, asinine and oftentimes child-like writing”, then the answer might just be a little more literal than his books pretend to be.

He undoubtedly has his critics, having attracted headlines like ‘Dan Brown still can’t write, but he deserves some respect’ in The Guardian in 2013 and “Dan Brown is a very bad writer” in The Week four years later, but he has more than enough loyal readers and money in the bank to make up for it.

Having sold a staggering 80 million copies, Brown’s 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code is easily the highest-selling book released in the 21st century. Some of his other books, like Angels & Demons (39m sold) and The Lost Symbol (30m sold), haven’t done too badly either. 

Surely with that much demand comes an added layer of anticipation, expectation and a pressure to please your oversized audience, and even the very best writers can suffer from writer’s block from time to time.

Over the years, Brown has shared some of his secrets and top tips for breaking the barriers between the mind and writing the next great novel. In language that is more engaging than any of his prose, he once told an online writing MasterClass that his first trick is to start his working day at 04:00.

“I try to get from the sleep state–the dream state–to my desk as fast as possible,” he explained.

Other advice he offered may be similarly helpful to some yet seemingly obvious to others. Eat well, keep to a routine, fill up on smoothies and coffee, take regular writing breaks, work out to keep your body functioning well alongside your mind. But, alongside these more regular aspects of his writing regime is something that is a little more unique, eccentric and interesting.

It seems that Brown was able to turn the literary world upside down by literally writing upside down himself. Using a pair of gravity boots, he would upend and suspend himself, dangling any doubts about the furthering of his plot or character motivations away. The use of the gravity boots and his technique of inversion therapy “seems to help me solve plot challenges by shifting my entire perspective”, he has said. Whatever you think about hanging yourself upside down to clear your head as a writing technique, it has certainly worked for Dan Brown.

As he is not getting any younger, though, he’s had to modify his methods. But while he’s more than happy to suspend himself, he is not quite willing to suspend the practice altogether. “My wife was very concerned that I would pull myself up into these gravity boots and not have the strength some day to get back [down]”, he explained, “I’d just be hanging there forever. So I now use an inversion table.”

The author’s next book, and the sixth instalment in his Robert Langdon series, The Secret of Secrets, will be released on September 9th. Perhaps alongside your pre-order, you should also get hold of an inversion table of your own, to see if the experience of reading his work is altered while swinging upside down yourself.