Dan Brown offers a taste of what you'll get with his new MasterClass on writing thrillers

"The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown is one of the bestselling books of all time. Brown's novels have been translated into 56 different languages and have sold 220 million copies worldwide. Now, he's ready to share the secrets behind his own writing process.

Brown is joining online educational platform, MasterClass, where experts offer classes in their specialty ranging from cooking with Gordon Ramsay to photography with Annie Leibovitz. Brown is teaching a course on how to write thrillers.

As he told "CBS This Morning" on Thursday, teaching is in his blood. 

"I grew up on the campus of a prep school. My dad was a teacher, my mom was a teacher. Teachers were my heroes. I always thought of teaching as the noblest of all professions and so the chance to come back and do it in a platform like MasterClass.com, absolutely amazing," Brown said.

He hopes to offer more than the kind of advice that's often given to young writers like "show don't tell" and "write what you know," which he admits is true, but not necessarily very helpful. He almost didn't agree to do the class because of that fear.

"I want to make sure that I can create a class that's actually helpful, that somebody can watch and say, 'You know what, these are the specific elements that make up stories. And now after seeing this class I have a sense of how to write a story myself,'" he said.

Another misguided notion about writing he's ready to dispel is the need to write in a sacred space. He says he wrote the outline for the "The Da Vinci Code" in his parents' laundry room.

"The reality is writing takes place in your head and you don't need to be quite so precious about your space. I know people who have written bestselling novels in the front seat of their car in the garage on a laptop," he said.

And the very first thing he tells students? "Write like nobody's watching because, guess what? Nobody's watching."

Brown's course on how to write a thriller costs $90 or $180 for access to the entire MasterClass catalogue.