All language subtitles for Masterclass - David Baldacci Teaches Mystery and Thriller Writing - 02.Finding the Idea

Probably the question I get most of all

when I'm out on tour and from writers,

where do you get your ideas from? And

the answer is not simple, but it can be

a little made a little more simple by

what I'm about to tell you. You have to

Writing isn't a job or an occupation or

a hobby. It's a lifestyle. So for all of

you out there, it has to be something

you incorporate in your life as you go

through your daily routine. I get ideas

from waking up in the morning and

walking out the door and I look at the

world through a writer's prism as I call

it. It's sort of cocked a little bit and

I see everything that everybody else

sees, but what I look through and I look

at the potential of what could be out

there if I sort of add a little pixie

dust, fictional pixie dust to something.

You can't just see what's out there in

black and white. That's what everybody

else does. And those people are not

going to be writing novels or

screenplays or anything. They just see

the world and they forget it and move

on. Your job is to see the world and

then realize the potential of what is

out there every single day, every single

minute of every single day. If you just

look at the world, twist your prism a

little bit and think if I combine a

couple of elements of my imagination, I

can make the scene of a plane flying

over and a truck passing by and a guy

looking out a window, I can make that

into a compelling story. All I need to

do are connect the dots. You just have

to see the world and feel the world in a

way that is so visceral that 99.9% of

the rest of the population are totally

oblivious to. I'll give you a couple of

real life examples. I wrote a book years

ago called One Summer and it was not a

thriller and uh it came about because my

son was having being confirmed in the

Catholic church and my wife said get to

the church early because we're it's

going to fill up. We got a lot of

friends and family coming in. So I went

there and it was just me and the priest

who I'd known for a long time and then

he left and it was just me and some

personal things in my life. My dad had

died, my mom was probably going to pass

away pretty soon. My son, my youngest

was being confirmed and you know you

have your own sense of mortality. At

least when I go to mass, I sort of sense

my own mortality coming at me. And I

just sat there thinking about those

things. And this idea for one summer

came, which is about a family drama. The

guy, the husband is terminal. He's

saying goodbye to his family. His wife's

going to be the remaining parent to care

for the three kids. But as it turns out,

the husband turns out to be the

surviving parent, which is kind of the

twist. I would never have written that

story, never envisioned it except I went

to the church and kind of looked around

in my own inner experience and at the

church what it meant to me and through

the writer's prism this idea unspooled

while I was waiting for the mass to

start. Another another experience was I

was on NPR and it was a roving NPR

interview. was live being broadcast and

we were walking down by the White House

and the anchor and presenter was asking

me I've heard that you will walk down

the street sometimes and ideas will come

to you and I said yeah that happens to

me a lot because I look at the world a

little bit differently and he said great

so we're alive right now so do it you

know just come up with an idea right now

for our live radio audience and we were

outside of the White House and you know

the big iron bars and the fence and all

that and there were all the tourists

that are always plastered against the

fence taking pictures at least they were

back then. And inside uh there was a

National Park Service and they take care

of the landscaping, the grounds around

the White House. And there was a team in

there replacing a tree that had died.

They'd removed the tree and they brought

a new tree in. I said, "Okay, what's

happening here is not what you think is

happening." That tourist over there with

the camera is not really a tourist.

She's a North Korean spy. The guy inside

is an inside guy. He's been working in

the White House for 20 years. He's also

works for North Korea. He's a

clandestine spy. And they're not taking

a picture. He's not removing a tree.

they're actually signaling to each

other. And I actually went on about four

years later uh to use that plot idea in

a book called The Target. I think if

you're a writer, you have to be

receptive to what the world gives you.

And then you have to run it through your

filter of creativity and out the other

end comes an original idea. So if you

get up every day and walk at the door,

you will never run out of ideas because

all those ideas for stories are right

out there in front of you if you take

the opportunity to to grasp them.

My wife likes to tell people that he

he's looks very nice. He's a very nice

guy. He's a very calm guy. Um, but he

has a dark side to him. The building

that I'm in right now is kind of cool.

You can see the backdrop and it reminded

me of like Gotham City with kind of the

sinister thriller thrilleresque thing.

But I I like the idea. There's so many

parked trailers in the front of the road

and as I was walking in, I had my own

trailer today which is kind of cool. you

know, now I can say I'm I'll be in my

trailer. You know, I can't take this

anymore. Um, but all the trailers parked

along there. Wouldn't it be really cool

if there were six trailers there, five

were supposed to be there, but one

wasn't, and nobody noticed, and there

was something going on in that last

trailer that has nothing to do with what

we're filming about today, but might

have an effect on everybody who's

sitting in this room right now. You

know, this could be a great hostage

scenario if you think about it. Uh, as a

thriller writer, my job is to look out

into the real world and see the dark

side, see the problem side. I create the

problems then during the course of the

novel. I've solved them. It's just

really a part of how I'm wired. It's in

my DNA. But it also it's it doesn't

necessarily have to be something you're

born with. You can develop that skill

over time. And I think a lot of that

came from me. You can do the same thing.

I read a lot of books in that genre. And

I found that I really liked that type of

storytelling. I like the high stakes. I

like the action. I like sort of the

banter back and forth. And I like the

puzzles because thrillers and mysteries

are very similar in the fact that

there's a puzzle to figure out. I love

mysteries because you have to take these

little clues, get really into the weeds,

and then have it resolved in a really

clever way. It tests your wit. It tests

your cleverness. And I like that

challenge.

I have in throughout the course of most

of my books written about and used real

world issues, current events in my

novels. I do it for a couple of reasons.

One, I think it's a great way for the

writer to connect with readers because

they understand that these events are

happening in their lives uh with the

Amos Decker character. Uh he was a

former football player and I've been a

football fan my whole life. I have to

admit that my enthusiasm has been

dampened ever since the concussions and

the CTE and and football players who I

grew up watching now are either dead or

have serious dementia because of the of

the the punishment they took as football

players. So I was interested in that. So

it served a twofold purpose. I could

write about a story that was very

current that people could understand and

relate to because they see it in the

news all the time. Put it into a story

in a in a different format. I like to

entertain, but I also like to inform. So

when I write about these current events,

I'm trying to tell people, you know,

this is happening. Here's here are the

facts as I know them. I'm not trying to

give an opinion on them. I'm trying to

tell you on my soap box preaching to

you, this is how you should come out on

this issue. That's for you to decide.

Just that it's an important issue. And I

did the same thing with the opioid

crisis. Um when I was writing about the

fallen, another Amos Decker book, I was

think I knew it was going to be drug

involved. And I was trying to think

about where do I want to set this place

because I was also dealing with

automation and these fulfillment

centers, these big warehouses or you

know a lot of people working these days

and it's been in the news a lot. So a

rust belt town sort of hit me because

that served both of my purposes. As you

as you read in the news, rust belt towns

have a lot of opioid addiction crisis

because people have lost their jobs or

homes, a lot of hopelessness. They call

it the drugs of despair. And also a lot

of these fulfillment centers are going

there because they get cheap labor and

the land is cheap. and they put up these

three million square foot facilities and

throw people in there to, you know, to

run a marathon every day for $9 an hour.

So that for me allowed me to know the

perfect place to set it in a rust belt

town in western Pennsylvania talk about

two issues that I really cared about and

I wanted readers to know more about

which was the CTE and football and all

and the opioid crisis as well. And also

this idea of automation is one of the

character Amos Deckers talks about in

the fallen. That's great. you're gonna

have robots doing all this work then and

nobody has any jobs. So, who's gonna buy

all the crap on the shelf? You know, has

anybody thought about that? And I said

that question in particular because I

wanted readers to sort of ask themselves

the same question. Yeah. Who's going to

buy all this crap on the shelves? So, I

love books that I read where I come away

really entertained and that was a cool

story, but I love it when I close the

book and I feel a little bit smarter

than when I open the book.

Writing anything is a long hard slog.

It's going to take you a while. You're

not going to finish a novel over a

weekend. It's just not going to happen.

So, you have to set yourself up for

success and not failure. And how do you

do that? Well, make sure that this long

road that you're going to start off on

is something you're actually interested

in and have a passion about. So if a lot

of the books out there that have been

successful, you see like Michael Kiteon

who wrote about dinosaurs. He had an

interest in that stuff. He had an

interest in science. He had interest in,

you know, whether [ __ ] Japan was going to

rise up and overtake the the American

economy when he wrote Rising Sun or Dan

Brown with code books or John Gisham

with the legal world. But they had a

fascination and an interest for that

stuff. And if you do, trust me, one,

your research will be better. Two, your

plots will be better because you'll

invest more time because that focus is

there. because this I want to be in this

moment. I want to write this stuff not

because I'm chasing a trend because

something is hot and all of a sudden

everybody's writing code books or

dinosaur books. Trust me, when Jurassic

Park came out, everybody was writing

dinosaur books and dinosaur scripts. You

could have romantic comedy and a T-Rex

was going to run right through the

dining room. Just that's just the way it

was back then. But half the time people

didn't finish the books because they

really weren't interested in it and they

weren't really good anyway because there

was no passion there. So set yourself up

as a writer for success. make sure you

know what I this could take me a year,

two, three, four, five years to do. I'm

going to hang in there because you know

what? I'm actually interested in what

I'm writing about.

Early on in my career, and I will I will

confess to this freely, and you and all

of you will probably make the same

mistakes that I made. You'll jump into

something too fast. So, you come up with

an idea and you think, "Okay, this is

cool. I think I can do this." and you

sit down, you write a 100 pages and you

run out of gas because you just didn't

not that you didn't think of everything

you needed to know in the book because I

never do that but you just ran out of

gas because you really weren't

interested in the stuff and you didn't

allow yourself the flexibility, the

breadth of material and the breath of

story you needed to actually write a

four or 500 page book. It just wasn't

there. So over time what I've done as a

writer is I think of an idea that I

might be interested in. I don't

immediately sit down to kind of outline

it or write it. I let it percolate in my

head. I might walk around for a few

weeks with this idea germinating. But

it's almost like a little computer in

your head. You're sitting there and

you're walking down the street and you

got this core idea and then the threads

start coming out. Okay, what are the

characters going to be? You know, who's

the protagonist? Who's the antagonist?

What could the plot twist be? Where am I

going to set it? You know, what is the

dial dialogue going to feel about? What

sort of research do I need to know? How

much do I need to know in order to write

this book plausibly and authentically?

And that takes time to sort of get grips

with that in your head. So, my advice to

all of you would be let the idea

percolate for a little bit. Jot down

some story ideas, jot down some plot

lines that maybe you can have fun with,

try filling in the blanks as you go

along. Don't jump head over heels into a

story idea the minute you come up with

it because you might run a 100 pages

down the road, run out of gas, and

everybody gets disappointed, and that's

not a good thing.

I did a writer's workshop for Iowa High

School back in Richmond, Virginia long

time ago. Kids there wanted to learn how

to write as well. So I said, "Here's a

newspaper.

Here's a story on the front page. Read

that story. Here's an unrelated story on

the back page. Read that story. Then

write a story combining both of those

stories together in a plausible way."

And that forces you to think at a level

that you probably didn't think you could

think at, but you actually can if you

try. It's almost the same exercise as

going out in the world and you see a

person walking down the street and you

see a car driving by. They're going in

separate directions, but I want you to

connect them up somehow in a way that

seems plausible and likely and not

coincidental. And then all of a sudden,

you feel like your creative juices

really are firing. But those types of

exercises, it takes you out of your

comfort zone. So you got to take two

disperate sort of elements and combine

them together. Not only is it

instructive, at least it is for me,

sometimes it's fun.