Original subtitles

Hi.

I'm Stephen King.

Well, actually I'm not Stephen King,

but the purpose of my saying that

is that's the first line in our story.

And first lines are hugely important.

And what I do in those four words

is I'm letting you know that this

is going to be irreverent and fun,

and it's going to be a little jokey at times,

and I know who writers like Stephen King are.

I hope the people who take this course or listen to me

will pick up a lot of tricks of the trade.

And I think it's a couple levels.

I think one are people that want to write books,

or think they want to write books,

and it can help them to make the decision

about whether they're actually going to invest the time

or not.

And I'll give them a lot of tips in terms of how

to invest that time well.

I'm very, very efficient.

And I'll take a lot of the time wasting

things out of the process if you'll listen.

But also people who like to read books,

like to read mystery, suspense, even kids books.

I think they'll find it very, very interesting.

I think it'll be very cool.

I don't think they'll read books the same way

again after listening to this.

What I'm going to try to do with the class

is just go right from the beginning from the ti--

raw ideas for books, character, how to build a character,

how to create a scene.

We'll deal with how to make a chapter work,

we'll do with outlines.

Outlines are huge.

We might do a couple of chapters on outlines.

We'll talk about marketing at some point.

Which is more of a curiosity, I think, for most of you.

You shouldn't worry too much about marketing.

I think a lot of people who watch this,

it's going to turn them on.

It can be very stimulating.

And I think, along the way I had a couple of people,

I had a professor at Vanderbilt.

And he did get me excited about one,

just the process of writing a book, and two, my own talent.

And just a lot of things that he said clicked with me.

And so when I left his class, I had to write.

I had to write a book.

By the way, that book didn't get published.

But it was part of the process because I've been there.

I've been starting out.

You don't know if you're any good,

you don't know if you ever going to get published.

It's a very difficult-- it's a daunting thing

to sit down and start a book because

at the end of the trail can be embarrassment or heartbreak

or all sorts of things.

So we're going to get over that.

No heartbreak, no embarrassment, we're

going to have the tools to do this.

And that I think that's very exciting.

And it's exciting to me to stimulate

people to go out there and write,

not just great mysteries, but whatever kind of book

Somebody said you're lucky if you find something

in life that you love and then it's a miracle

if somebody will pay you to do it.

And I think that's what ideally you want to move toward.

That you found something you love, and you know, look,

when you start doing this, if you don't love it,

you're not going to finish the book.

You're not going to finish the outline.

And that's OK.

That's telling you that's not what you're going to do.

You have an interest in it, you like it,

but you're not that passionate about it.

If you are passionate about it, you can't help yourself.

You've got to write that outline.

You've got to write that book.

The great thing about Vanderbilt was

I had a professor there by the name of [? Solomon ?]

and he said you are very, very good.

You can do this.

You can be a novelist.

Practice, practice, practice, practice.

And through this period I was reading 10 to 12 novels a week,

I swear to god.

Novels and plays.

I was reading everything I could get my hands on.

I was scribbling everything I could.

At one point I went up and I stayed a week

in a Trappist monastery, just thinking about my vocation

and whether I could do this thing.

And you know, the Trappists have this silence thing which

was kind of weird but it was also very cool

in terms of really focusing.

Is this what I want to do with my life?

Do I want to be a writer?

Can I do it?

And I really came out-- it was a life changing

thing for me-- I came out of there going,

I'm going to go for this.

You know, once again, passion.

No, I'm going to do it.

I'm going to do it.

I'm going to do it.

I get a job in advertising.

I knew I had to go to work.

I was getting up at 5:00 in the morning to write.

I didn't really want to get up at 5:00 in the morning,

but that was the only place I could fit it in.

I would fit in a couple hours.

But when I was writing The Thomas Berryman Number,

it really was that sort of 5:00 to 7:00 in the morning.

And I did have to force myself, just because I

didn't want to get up at 5:00.

It wasn't that I didn't want to write the book,

I didn't want to get up at that time.

But I did it every day.

I really think it's useful to get into that

and do not sit there like, oh, I don't feel like it today.

I don't feel like it tomorrow.

Feel like it.

Do it.

Force yourself, even if it's half an hour.

And half an hour isn't enough.

Try to at least figure out an hour, somewhere.

On the train, before you go to work, get up earlier.

When you come home, before dinner, after dinner.

You're going to have to figure out

when it's going to be comfortable for you to do it.

But I think it's really, really useful

to get into that discipline.

It's like any other habit, running.

Once it becomes a ritual, a routine in your life,

you don't even have to think about it so much.

And then hopefully it's a joyful thing as well.

When I was a kid I grew up in this little river town

and there wasn't a hell of a lot to do.

And in the summers once a week my grandfather

would take me on his delivery route.

And we would pack up the truck at 4:00 in the morning

and off we'd go.

And he would do this six days a week.

And we all know that delivering products to stores

is not the most exhilarating thing in the world,

especially when you're getting up at 4:00 in the morning

and getting home at 7:00 of 8:00.

But my grandfather was a terrific guy and very positive

and he would always sing.

He would go over the mountain, the Storm

King Mountain toward West Point.

He would always be singing, singing all those

the songs from that era, "Put Another Nickel

in the Nickelodeon," and "Oh!

Susanna" and whatever.

And he had a terrible voice.

Terrifying.

It just was a horrendous voice.

But he said to me, he said Jim, when you grow up--

and I'm a little kid, I'm eight, nine, 10 years old--

he said, whether you become the president or a surgeon

or if you wind up driving a truck as I do,

just remember that when you go over the mountain

to work in the morning, you've got to be singing.

I do.

I'm singing every day.

I'm singing on my way to work every day.

I practically sang here on my way to do this class.

And that's where you have to be.

And if it's all pain, there's something wrong.

There's something wrong.

Try to fix it.

And you're listening to me and certain things you should

walk away and try to do, and certain things you kind of have

to ignore.

So you've got to pick out what you think

you can handle and deal with.

And look, my first novel was turned down by 31 publishers.

We could say, since it won "Best First Novel in America,"

we could say they were all wrong, OK?

So there's 34 wrong opinions.

And I think you can kind of objectively

say they were all wrong.

So you have to be careful about what you hear.

And you have to be resilient.

And you have to be tireless in terms of just moving forward

with something.

I could have said after five rejections, shit,

I don't have it, man.

Five publishers, they must know what they're doing, right?

They turned the book down.

Well, clearly, I don't want to say

all of them didn't know what they were doing

because sometimes it just doesn't fit what they do

or they have another author or a couple of authors

that do the same thing.

Or they already bought a bunch of first novels that year

and they just aren't going to do it.

Or the editor didn't make a good case

at their editorial meeting, whatever the heck it is.

But a lot of them are just wrong.

John D. MacDonald, a famous mystery writer,

he writes a blurb for my first book, The Thomas Berryman

Number, and it's perfect for what we're doing,

it's perfect for what I had done previous to writing that novel.

And what MacDonald said was, I'm quite sure that James Patterson

wrote a million words before he started The Thomas Berryman

Number.

And that's the key here, OK?

You may have to write a million words.

Maybe you've already written a million words

and you're ready right now.

But that's how it works.

And it's all driven by passion and the beauty for me,

the gift for me, the miracle for me,

is I still have the passion that I had when I started.

I'm not cynical about it.

I'm not skeptical about it.

I love it.

I loved it when I was 19 and I love it

right now when I'm now 39 or so, 40, whatever I am.

Are you going to succeed with that first book?

Some people do.

I didn't actually.

I started a book, they actually let

me write fiction for my master's thesis at Vanderbilt.

I started a book there, continued it.

It never got published.

I then took off for a little while.

I was a kind of disappointed that it

didn't get accepted and a little disappointed in myself.

I think I always was like, OK, that was yesterday.

Today is today.

On we go.

I think that rarely have people really bought into

and said you can do this.

I mean, it took me into my 40s before people really

believed in the kind of fiction I was writing.

One of the reasons that I will blurb especially first novels

is I've been through this.

I've been through this, the insecurity,

the oh my god, the rejection letters.

Every short story I ever sent out,

anywhere I sent it from The New Yorker to Redbook,

it was rejected.

So I've been through that.

I remember it.

I still can feel the pain.

I identify with it.

I have the scars, the scars don't go away.

I am as passionate about writing books today

as I was when I was 19 years old.

That has not changed.

It's a gift.

And I think it's really important that you try to,

no matter what happens, whatever setbacks,

however hard it might be, that you keep that passion alive

because that's going to drive you through the hard times

People will always ask the stupid question, where

do I come up with my stories.

[LAUGHTER] No, I'm kidding.

People frequently ask where do I come up with the stories,

and it really can be anything as I had this big folder of ideas.

That's a piece of it.

So how do these ideas get into the folder?

I'll see something on the street,

or I could probably write a story about anything.

I could write a story about the classroom here probably.

Figure out a way to make it an interesting mystery.

Sometimes a title will come to me.

Sometimes just some little-- some little

scene I'll see in the street.

Just some little thing catches my eye and I go, oh, I see.

That stimulates something in me.

The idea to the Women's Murder Club-- women

frequently are more collaborative than men are.

And I notice this in business.

A man will come in and go, I got it.

They have the idea that-- whatever.

Whereas, a lot of times women will come in

and they want to hear the other people's ideas in a room

and contribute and get to something--

so that collaboration.

And I found that interesting.

And in the world of detective fiction,

it didn't seem to me that there was much of that.

So the idea of a police inspector, a medical examiner,

an assistant district attorney-- now they

would normally be together.

They would know each other, presumably,

and could have become friends.

And then, little tricky with putting a journalist in there

because they would have issues maybe

with sharing some information with the journalist.

But they come to trust the journalists, Cindy.

And they get together and they just chat about cases.

And is it realistic?

No, not really.

I don't write realism.

But it's a cool idea-- that you get four women together

and they would collaborate on solving mysteries.

And maybe it's been done somewhere,

but I'm not aware of it.

So I just want that-- I think that's a cool idea.

One of my favorite, if not my favorite of the novels

that I have written is one called Honeymoon.

And you start out with the book and you always

hope it's going to be spectacular.

And you just never know.

You start writing and some of them

turn out better than others for whatever the reason is.

That one started with the idea of,

I love the idea of a woman who was a bigamist.

So that's where it started-- a woman who would,

you know-- and it went a lot of different places from there.

But the way the book opens is you have this couple

and they're married.

And they're in bed together.

And it's just a delightful Sunday afternoon

and they make love.

And you really like them.

You like the way they interact.

You like the dialogue.

You go, I'd love to be there.

I'd love to-- that's the way I want my life to be.

And then she has to go off.

It's Sunday.

She's got to go off on a business trip.

And she goes to Boston.

And she arrives in Boston and she goes to a Brownstone there

and she walks in, honey, I'm home.

She's got another husband in Boston.

And as it evolves, you find out that she actually kills.

She's a black widow bigamist, which is even cooler.

Not only does she have more than one husband,

she's actually going to kill them.

So I'm so hooked, I can't tell you,

to myself both as a writer and a reader.

And then we're going to introduce an FBI agent who

primarily gets involved in it because of some

of the insurance settlements would seem a little peculiar.

And he starts stalking this woman.

And he's a clever dude, but she's irresistible.

And a guess is better judgment.

He starts to, in a believable way, fall for her slowly.

And he knows he can't do this.

And this is too stupid for words, but she's irresistible.

And as he follows her a little bit,

he starts believing that she really couldn't have

knocked off these husbands.

As she said, they had to have been accidents.

And so now we have the workings of a pretty cool story.

And where the hell's it going to go?

When I got out of school, I started

working at ad agency J. Walter Thompson,

but I've been clean for 20 years now.

And there was a book there about how to come up with ideas

and it was written in England.

It was a pretty thick book and it

was-- I avoided reading it like all young creatives.

What are they going to tell me?

It sounds like a goofy idea anyway.

Where do ideas come from?

And about 15 years into my time and imprisonment

at J. Walter Thompson, I actually had to read the book.

And I read it and it was terrific because it really did

shed light on a lot of things.

And one of the things that the author wrote about

was his theory-- I don't know if this is totally accurate--

but that it's very rare that somebody comes up

with a totally fresh idea out of nowhere.

More often what we do is put together disparate ideas

that nobody has put together.

So people talk about the Beatles and how a lot of their music--

they put together three different kinds of music

that either nobody had put together

or it rarely was put together and out of that

came something fresh.

And they kept experimenting.

They would hear some music out of India and all of a sudden

that would stimulate them to do three or four songs

by combining rock and roll with, you

know-- but if they hadn't studied the music out of India,

they would have never come up with some of those songs.

And similarly, if you had an idea that involved rap and say

Chinese pottery-- a visual idea or whatever

it was-- and something new would come out of it.

But if you don't know anything about Chinese pottery,

you don't know anything about rap-- you never have that idea.

And the point there is learn about a lot of things.

If you go through life-- and a lot of kids to do this,

they just don't know too much.

They'll know everything about every movie,

and everything about every video game, and beer.

And they have those three categories.

They know everything.

They know nothing else.

Well, it's very difficult to be creative

if that's your whole universe of stimulation.

Well, let's see.

What do I do that's going to be beer and a video game.

The more you know about, the more likely

you are to combine things into an idea that's striking.

You're watching.

You presumably have some idea for a novel

or have had several ideas.

It's really going to depend on what kind of novelty

you want to write.

If you want to make money, it's really useful

to have an idea, a hook, something.

I don't like the language of hook

just because it feels like it's mechanical.

But a story idea that when you tell people that idea they go,

tell me more.

That's really important.

When they go like, that sounds so cool.

I love that idea-- some feedback.

And it's good to get it from a few people

because a lot of times your friends will go, oh,

we love you.

You know the way friends are these days.

They lie.

You're a great dancer.

You have such a great smile, or whatever.

But you need some honest-- so I mean,

what you want to do is go to your nastiest friends.

The friends who are good friends, but they really

will tell it like it is.

Now here once again, as you go out and get grandmother

testing, don't follow.

If you really believe it and you know you can do it,

don't listen to them.

But it really is useful to have an idea

that-- because ultimately, you're going

to have to sell to a publisher.

And probably what they're going to want

to see is a letter where you say,

I'm writing a book about, [BUZZER NOISE].

And when they go like, I don't think so.

it really is that vicious.

John Grisham always is very good at setting up

a good hook early.

And then he's a much more leisurely storyteller.

He sets his hook.

He's very confident that that's going to hold you.

Now here's the firm.

And here's this nice guy lawyer and he

gets this unbelievable job in a law firm.

But then there's always a catch.

He finds out that this law firm is basically

a big mafia that they work for the mafia,

and not in legal ways, and holy shit, I just took this job.

And I've moved to this area-- the country.

And I bought a house and I'm trapped.

So that's an interesting commercial hook.

Obviously, there are a lot of books that don't really

have a catchy idea.

And it's just the writers are so-- it's

going to create a character that's just so engaging.

The latest JK Rowling-- there's no idea there, per se,

where you go-- where she could say,

let me tell you about this story.

Or there's nothing in particular about the character.

She's just a very, very good writer.

And that's to trick in terms of the idea.

Sometimes, somebody's just going to be there.

The view they have of a character and the view that

character has with the world is going

to be very engaging to people.

And a lot of times with that if you don't have that real catchy

idea, you write a couple of chapters,

have people read it and just gage about

whether they want, oh, I'd love to read that.

And not just because I'm your friend,

but because it really sounds interesting.

I think one of the funny things that writers do and all of us

do-- and I've done it-- is that thing of you

wake up in the middle of the night

and you've got to jot something down.

I have stopped doing that.

Similarly, I used to, if I ever took drugs, write stuff down

if that ever happened-- writing things down.

I wouldn't do that anymore because what I found

is if it really is a good idea, I will actually remember it.

And having read all these various things I go, that just

really isn't that terrific.

And I got up to write that down.

I think you're going to remember your good ideas.

And there's a certain point where

you do want to write them down.

And I really do urge you to keep notebooks within reason,

especially ideas.

I have a big folder of ideas.

It's literally this thick.

And when it's time for me to consider a new book,

I will take out the folder and just start going through.

And I'll usually write on a pad-- just bulleted

four, five, six ideas-- for whatever reason--

I'm feeling good about.

And then I stare at them for a while.

And then I usually come down to one of them and go, let me see.

Let me start to put together an outline on this idea.

Now, most people don't do that but they probably should.

To keep an idea folder, I think, is a really good idea.

Do that.

Just start jotting down just a couple of sentences--

not a lot.

Just what's the core there?

What's the-- Women's Murder Club that four women

are going to collaborate.

A human could fly.

A human who could swim like a fish.

There are a lot of things you could theoretically

write about that could be interesting.

And then keep enough of them.

And then you start-- you look at it

and, you know what, I keep coming back to this one.

We're going to talk a lot through the course

of this thing about if there are secrets

to writing a best seller.

I think the trick to it is you have to have a good gut.

And that's important.

And for me, it's emotion.

And not everybody has this, but the ability

to be very emotional about things and go, I love this.

I love this.

This is a great idea.

I'm so passionate about this.

But then to be able to step back and go, well, hold it.

Am I really going to be able to write a whole book about this?

Is anybody going to care?

What's going to happen when I go to publish it?

So those two pieces, I think, are

really essential that the emotional side what gets you

excited initially, that that's there

and that there's some substance to it, hopefully.

But then you can step back and go,

OK, is this really something I can write 400 pages about.

So that's a big part of the process, I think.

And I don't know that I can teach that as much as just make

you aware of it.

And just be careful about investing too much in something

that has you all excited, but it's not going to be a book.

It's a ghost of a book.

Story is about-- it's about the thrills and the twists

and the turns, but more than anything else

it's about revealing character.

In a thriller it's how will that character react

in a very dramatic situation.

I really believe that character is revealed through action.

Try to write every chapter as if it was

the first chapter in the book.

We pay a lot of attention to these first chapter

because we know they're important.

Try to write every chapter as if it's that important.

Write a story, not necessarily a lot of pretty sentences,

write a story.

Don't set out to write a good thriller,

set out to write a number one thriller with a number

one story idea.

Don't write a single chapter that doesn't

propel the story forward.

Leave out all the parts that readers are going to skim.

They're going to skim stuff.

If you find it's that kind of writing, leave it out.

Try to write for a single reader who's

sitting across the desk from you and you

don't want them to get up until you're finished.

And if you're smart, make that reader a woman.

Why?

Women by 70% of the books.

Women by 70% of my books, which is interesting.

A lot of people don't-- they think that I have a lot of male

readers.

And I have a number of male readers, but more women.

Now let me just give you just a couple of thoughts

about condensing plot into something

that's manageable very quickly.

So if you take the Great Gatsby, you

start with Gatsby has everything anybody could ever

dream of except love.

Gatsby gets love.

Gatsby loses love and thus loses everything.

And that's kind of Gatsby.

And we have Ian Forster's famous line about story and plot.

And he wrote, "a plot is a narrative

of events, the emphasis falling on causality."

The King died and then the queen died is a story.

But the King died and then the queen died of grief is a plot.

The time sequence is preserved but the sense of causality

overshadows it.

Let's talk a little bit about personal stakes in a novel,

in a screenplay.

You'll certainly hear that when you-- if you've sold something

to a studio or you're doing television work

or with your editor when you're doing your book,

that the stakes need to be raised.

And that essentially means that what's at risk here,

or what's to be gained is so important to the character,

or should be, that you feel-- that the reader feels it

big time.

So if there's no stakes-- and that's one of the things,

I'll talk about having worthy adversaries.

If you know as a reader-- and you kind of

know-- that the good guy is probably going to win the day.

It can't be that simple.

You have to feel that there are stakes here.

So worst case in the Cross books,

in Hope to Die or Cross My Heart, one book

and then Hope to Die second book,

the stakes couldn't be higher because Alex Cross' family has

disappeared and he believes they're dead.

But he's not 100% sure they're dead because there

are little pieces of information that suggest maybe,

there's a tiny little bit of hope

that his family isn't dead.

That, especially for Alex, the stakes

don't get any higher than that.

And that's why those books are powerful,

because the stakes are so high.

So that always needs to be-- or not always--

but almost always needs to be a piece of the puzzle.

One of the keys to all drama is conflict.

If there isn't any conflict, there isn't any drama.

So there has to be-- your hero or your main character,

even if the character isn't that heroic, it

has to be a worthy opponent, that villain.

Or the puzzle needs to be a worthy puzzle that that person

needs to solve.

It needs to be a puzzle that you're

finding is challenging to solve as the detective,

or whoever, is assigned it to solve the puzzle.

Or if it is a villain, that that villain is really

a worthy villain.

And to some extent, maybe even a smarter and better

and cleverer than your protagonist.

So that's one kind of conflict.

Another kind of conflict is if there's a love story in your--

what's the conflict there?

If it's a cop, I mean invariably it's

the cop life which is not really good for a lot of people.

So you can have people that are really, really in love,

and the woman's going, I love you so much,

but I can't be in this life.

I just can't stand it when you go out

and I don't know if you're going to come home.

Or the way you come home is so different from who

I know you are.

So that's an example of the kind of-- now that's

probably a little too overly familiar,

but that kind of conflict.

That love, the romantic or not romantic,

or why hasn't this person ever been with anybody.

And that's inner conflict, where the demons that this person has

inside create-- the conflict is all inside the person.

So yeah, I mean nothing worthwhile happens,

I think, without conflict.

If you have villains in your book

and if you're writing mysteries and suspense,

well, I mean there's a couple ways to approach it.

Obviously one is where you never see the villain until the end.

That's a decision you have to make.

Are you going to-- is it going to be a who done it,

where you really don't know.

Or are you going to know right from the get go?

Like an invisible-- you know, you

meet the villain very early.

And the villain is this fascinating.

And if you're going to reveal the villain early,

then you got to-- you really got to map out

the villain so that it's going to be interesting for people.

That that villain, following that villain,

that villain cannot be one dimensional.

That villain has to be a worth opponent.

I've said that before but most of the stuff

I read in that genre, they're not worthy opponents.

You know they're going to be defeated.

And you know they're going to be defeated in a way that

isn't that interesting.

That's what makes it even worse.

The chase has to be interesting.

It's got to be where you're going like,

I don't know what's going to happen.

I don't know how the hell Cross is going to get this villain

or if he's going to get the villain.

And sometimes you just go like, I wonder if he will.

And sometimes they don't.

Some of the readers will have problems with that

if you let the villain get away at the end of the book.

They're going to go, that's not right.

The villain didn't get it at the end of the book.

But sometimes it's just the way you've got to end a book.

That's the way it felt right to you.

And that's important, too.

That you know how this book should go.

You know how that story-- and the story

should dictate to some extent something about the ending.

You're not going to be able to pull a twist and surprise

people in every scene.

But you need to do it-- you need to do it enough so that--

and you need to feel it.

You need to feel that if the story's lagging, what can I do.

And twists and surprises are one of the things you can do.

Henry obviously believed in all of his stories

having a sort of a big surprise.

And that worked.

Some writers use it more than others.

I use it more than a lot of writers as a device.

Readers like it.

I think from a reader's point of view,

if you could do it, having a surprise in every chapter

would be just fine with the reader.

I don't I don't know if it would work.

But if you pull it off, I think readers would really like it.

As you're starting to map out the story, less is more.

Stick to the nuggets of the story.

What's the story?

If you had to tell me your story in 10 minutes, 15 minutes,

figure out a way to tell me that story in 15 minutes.

And that'll be the core of your story.

Now you may flesh it out like crazy,

you're going to flesh out the characters,

but there's the story.

You should be able to tell that story,

The more you BS when you're writing a book,

the worse it is.

And people have a real tendency to do that

with thrillers and fantasy.

They just start making stuff up and that's really hard to do.

So I think the research, one, it just makes the writing better.

It builds your confidence because you actually

know what you're talking about.

Sometimes you'll read stuff in the research

and it will give you more ideas things, things

you hadn't thought of.

And that's another beauty of research.

With Maximum Ride and the flying kids,

I wasn't sure where that was going.

And then I thought of sort of an outlaw lab

and then I went and did a little bit a research

with biotech people.

And they said that things like that in the world of biotech

will happen in our lifetime.

Not necessarily humans with wings,

but they said we could do that.

We could do humans with wings.

There would be a lot of problems with it.

So I said, well, that's kind of cool that you could do it.

And that idea of a little bit of the Frankenstein thing,

OK, what have we created if we created flying kids?

And you begin to see the possibilities for the story.

Different writers have different approaches

to how they use research.

In some cases, they really feel the need to build credibility

with their readers and some readers really

love that, in particular males.

Male readers really like a lot of-- they're

very narrow in terms of what they like and they don't like.

And they really want realism.

Not every male but an awful lot of them.

And if they don't get it, they feel

that it's just not authentic.

So looking at a Picasso in terms of art, no, no, no.

I don't get that artsy fartsy stuff.

So in particular for male readers,

a lot of authentic detail is really useful.

I mean, you can't tell them enough about a car,

or how a car works, or how this, that, and the other thing

works.

And if you get it wrong, you lose them.

I mean, you literally lose them.

You get the information that you have about guns wrong,

you lose anybody that knows anything about guns.

They just go, well, if this person, if this writer,

can't get his facts straight, how can I believe anything

in the story?

But for my money, whether it's a kidnapping, even

a bee sting, research.

What happens when it was a bee sting?

If you're writing about-- go on the subway.

I mean, don't fake it.

Don't make it up.

You know, look, if we go somewhere

and somebody asked us, unless we're

horrifying verbal storytellers, we'll

remember a few details that really capture it.

Just a couple of things.

You go, this was cool, and this was cool, and this was cool.

My son and wife just came back from Berlin

and they kept talking about things like the fact

they have these water pipes all over the city built

above the ground and they're in colors.

And anyways, you're immediately getting very quick pictures

in addition to some of the ancient architecture

and then the new buildings that are going up

that are pretty tasteful.

And then the airport there, which by referendum they

turned into a park but left it with the tarmac and everything.

So you know, in a very little bit of information,

there's a lot that gives you a sense of Berlin in a hurry.

So I like to do that kind of research.

If you're writing about a city that's important to your story

and you haven't been there, it's really useful

to go and walk around and make notes,

and whatever catches your eye, catches your spirit.

You'll find it very stimulating in terms of making everything

more concrete in the story.

You'll come up with ideas that you

hadn't had before just wandering around, wandering

the streets of a new city or going to a crime scene.

There may not be a crime there but if you

know the kind of building, or you know the kind of apartment

or whatever, just going to that neighborhood,

wandering through that kind of apartment.

Sometimes the police will help you.

I mean, that gets more into the interview thing.

If you're going to talk to some cops,

detectives, homicide detectives, and they'll

talk crime scenes to you.

But really, I'm just thinking about,

we're in New York City right now and just wandering

around this neighborhood, if your hero lived here

or if this was an important scene.

You're just going to pick up stuff.

you know, pick up about the way that people-- and it'll

be very stimulating for your writing.

You'll write better.

When I'm going to do research on an individual,

I always try to find out a little bit about the person,

both in terms of whether their expertise might

be relevant to me and secondly, whether they're

the kind of people-- it's really helpful if they're verbal.

Otherwise, you might as well be reading stuff.

And there's an awful lot to read now.

I mean, pretty much anything you want to write about,

somebody's written a lot about it.

There's just a lot of stuff on the internet.

But in terms of, ideally if you're

going to interview people, you want people who are verbal.

Where they're going to be able, you

know-- do you like being a policeman?

Yes.

No.

This is no good.

If you get in an interview and it's not working,

I mean for the most part you just

try to dig in terms of in particular that notion of

and it usually loosens people up.

When I asked Jack about his day and how

was school this semester?

Good.

No, no.

It's an essay question, dude.

I want to hear the whole-- why do you say good?

There's a reason why you said good

or a reason why you said terrible, or whatever it is.

You want them to be able to open up in terms of what it is.

Why do they like doing what they do or hate doing what they do?

Or how does it work?

Or what happens when you don't want a stake out?

And is it boring?

Or are you afraid?

Or are you ever afraid?

Or have you ever fired your gun?

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Mostly you won't have trouble getting your research done

because you're asking, one, there's a little bit of respect

that people have for somebody who is writing a book.

And that's a little piece of it.

The other piece of it is you're asking them

about stuff that they know and that mostly they

want to talk about.

That's somebody is interested in what they do

and a lot of people like that.

I remember when I wrote Along Came A Spider,

I got in to see the FBI, which was great.

And the two guys that I talked to

had been involved in the case of the Bronfman kidnapping,

Bronfman, the Seagram's heir and whatever.

And they wouldn't shut up.

It was great.

I mean, they just kept talking.

I learned so much about kidnapping from those guys,

from the FBI's point of view, what

it's like for somebody who has been kidnapped,

what it's like for the families, all the procedural stuff.

And that really helped because Along Came A Spider

is about a kidnapping in a private school Washington.

With the Cross books I had to learn

a lot about forensic psychology because Alex

is a forensic psychologist.

And when Morgan Freeman agreed to take on the role,

one of the reasons was he liked the idea

of an African American hero who wasn't the stereotype.

Who was not the-- he was the male at home with the kids.

He was going to Johns Hopkins.

He solved things with this head instead of a six shooter.

But to make that convincing, I had to know enough

about forensic psychology.

And one of the things with this psychology

is, I worked my way through college

at McLean Hospital in Belmont, MA, which is a very

good psychiatric hospital.

And then I had a lot of contacts.

I still knew, a lot of the psychiatrists.

I knew some of the charge nurses.

Enough said about that.

I saw a lot of people who had mental problems.

That was useful for me, just in terms

of symptoms and also understanding in a big way

that these are just regular human beings.

All this stuff about crazies running around,

even in the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,

that has very little to do-- I mean, it's a fun movie.

It's a terrific movie.

But it's not like that in any mental hospital that I've ever,

and I've been in a few of them.

Not as a patient.

So I really got in touch with abnormal psychology,

a lot of things that go on, how normal a lot of these people

are in most of their life.

And that was very useful.

What psychologists and psychiatrists are like.

How they operate.

And all of that was useful as I began to create Alex.

One of the things you'll see that people do,

and some of these are published writers and some of them

are pretty well respected, you can almost

feel them dropping the research on you.

They've learned everything about the Louvre

and you're getting it now.

They're just dumping it on you.

OK?

And I have an issue with that in fiction for the way

I look at it, which is, if I'm right in first person then

obviously, all you're going to hear about is things

that that character knows about.

So you're limited to what he's read, what he's seen,

what he feels, et cetera, et cetera.

But I really discourage writing omniscient third person

unless you're really, really, really, smart, unbelievably

smart.

Where you really are a god and you

know so much so that you can actually,

the way you're doing it, you're Tolstoy

and you can write because you've got a view of the world

and that's great.

But limited third person is a lot easier.

And so if you're writing about a character in the third person,

really what should show up in that chapter for the most part

is stuff that that character knows about.

So once again, unless that character

knows a lot about the architecture for whatever

reason, because he or she is smart or they're architects

or whatever, it shouldn't be there.

The other thing about research now,

it's never been easier because of the internet.

You can get at stuff now that used to really be hard.

You'd be finding yourself in the stacks at the library, however

far the library was from where you lived

and traveling all over the world and stuff.

Now there's just so much you can get on the internet.

The most common mistake that writers

make, especially young writers, is they

don't do an outline.

Uh they just wing it and they just

start, you know, and and it that takes a

certain amount of discipline, but I

guarantee you that is a discipline that

will pay off in

you're you're you're going to have

you're going to do a better book. It's

going to take less time. You know, I

will I will write anywhere from three to

six drafts of every outline. It's and

that's the most important piece for me.

Literally writing that outline.

Everything should be in the outline. The

the the arcs of the characters, the the

main characters anyway, the the

villains, if they're villains, got to be

in there. And and and the villains need

to be complex. They cannot be

simple-minded villains. I really want to

build it around that the nugget of the

idea. I want to put in as much

really juicy stuff as I can. And that if

I read that outline or anybody read the

that outline, they would say, "What a

terrific story

and and how well you figured out these

scenes." The outline should have tons of

promise. you should be going, I can't

wait to read this scene or I can't wait

to write this scene because it's such a

rich idea for a scene. Uh the drama

between these characters is just, you

know, it's it's just so delicious to to

sink my my pencil into, sink my teeth

into, sink my typewriter into, sink my

computer into, whatever you're sinking.

Um, so I mean, and that's that's one of

the beauties of I mean, some days you I

can't wait to write these next two or

three chapters just because they're the

the potential is so great.

The only time I ever face the the blank

page is when I start the outline. And I

don't find that that daunting because

when you write an outline, you're not

even thinking about sentences. You're

thinking about laying the story. And

that, by the way, is is another tip. Uh

when you're writing a story, don't think

about the sentences. Think about the

story. Write the story down. We all know

how to tell stories. We tell stories all

the time. You You already know how to do

it. Write the story. Don't write

sentences. Write the story.

what I do in terms of turning uh you

know once I get that that idea that I

love or you get that idea that you love

I'll then just start writing scenes down

just one line two lines you know Alice

Cross starts in his house he's playing

the piano he's playing Gershwin he gets

a phone call from Samson

something

um fresh and exciting that grabs you so

you want to go with cross into the next

scene, but I'll just keep writing out

scene after scene almost as though it's

a movie. And um at a certain point, I

will organize those scenes.

Uh now, the thing about scenes is when

you're writing a story, I'm going to say

there are an infinite number of

possibilities for scenes. There aren't

an infinite number, but there are an

awful lot of potential scenes. So, um

and you have to be aware of that. And

ultimately you have to choose the best

scenes. But but it starts with just

scene after scene after scene. Now in my

books obviously there are a lot of

scenes. There might be 120 different

chapters or whatever. Your book might

have 30. It might just be 30 scenes.

Whatever the heck it is. But but just

keep writing out that those couple of

lines. Eventually I'll start getting rid

of ones and I'll keep adding them. And I

might do that for a couple of weeks just

writing scenes down possible scenes. Um,

at a certain point I, as I said, I will

put them in an order and then, um, I

start fleshing them out a little, not a

lot. I mean, every once in a while I'll

I'll do one in a week and a half, but

more often they'll take me a month or

two months, and there'll be three, four,

five drafts. And every draft, just like

I was writing a novel, I'm layering on

more.

One of the questions that people will

ask has to do with how how how does the

mystery move forward? Do you do you blow

it all early? Do you blow it in pieces?

Do you

um and and and I think that really comes

down to your to your gut and how you're

going to and and and that needs to get

established real early in terms of your

outline and stuff. If you're going to

reveal a lot of the mystery early, you

have to have a reason to do it and it's

got to be able to go somewhere from

there. I mean, that's one of the tricks.

Don't don't write yourself into a

corner. Uh, and that really is

important. You really have to be

careful. And that's the beauty once

again of being able to look at it in

outline form. You can see where, oh my

god, where am I going to go from here?

There will be a couple of time, you

know, maybe once or twice when I write

the outline where literally all I do is

write twists. It went here. Eh, I'm

going to take it here. Okay. It went

here. Too expected. I'm going to take it

here. And what does that do to the whole

story? Okay. And sometimes a twist, I

mean, it changes everything, but better

to do that at the outline stage than 80

pages into the book. You're not gonna

wake up six months into the process and

go, "Oh [ __ ] man. I wrote myself into a

terrible corner. I'm dead. I got to

throw out six months worth of work."

When you read about writers all the

time, and and it happens occasionally,

but it shouldn't happen much, especially

with commercial fiction. You should not

have to throw out

six months worth of work. And and it and

it happens and or it's not working. Oh

my god, it's not working. Well, if you

spent more time with the outline, even

if it's an extra month, so what?

When I do the outlines and even even the

manuscripts, I will put notes to myself

all the time or if if I'm writing with

somebody, notes to the coowwriter. Uh

things that I think are essential to

make that scene work. If we don't get

that if I don't get that part right or

if we don't get that part right, the

scene isn't going to work.

I will not write

a note like, you know, with with Max in

the beginning of Maximum, right? I'm not

going to write things like she needs to

be cool and mysterious because it

doesn't that doesn't help me. Uh what

does cool mean? And that just that's

just a cliche that doesn't get me

anywhere. So, I might write a little

note that gives me an idea

about

why she's cool. some something that that

she's going to do or some observation

that she's going to have that it's just

a cool observation. Uh so I might write

a little note about that and sometimes

I'll just put that note to myself, you

know, that this needs to be scary or

it's not going to work. Not going to

work or or that I need to feel

more than more than I have in the whole

book the relationship between these two

people in this chapter or none of it's

going to work. you know, we've been

building to things and and along the

way, you know, and that should all be

70% of it, 80% of it should be in the

outline then, you know, and it's not

mechanical because that's creative. That

is that is a book. It is a book called

an outline. And if that book is great,

you ought to be able to sell your

outline to a publisher if it's if it's

done the way it should be done.

One way to break down your outline is

what happens to that character through

the length of the story. What happens to

this character through the length of the

story? What happens to this character?

And are those plot lines interesting? Am

I interested not just in, okay, they're

going to find out who's killing old

women in San Francisco. Not just that,

but why am I interested in that person

in addition to the fact that he or she

is solving this crime? What happens to

them? In the Women's Murder Club novels,

uh, invariably there are two or three

crimes being dealt with in every in

every novel. So, there are three crimes

to follow and hopefully they're all

fascinating and different and things you

haven't read about before.

Um, and and and then we have the the the

four uh main characters and what's

happening in their lives. So, what's

happening with Lindsay? Oh, Lindsay's

going to have a baby. Holy [ __ ] You

know, after all these years, uh or or

you know, uh uh Yuki is still

a lunatic and and unable to get out of

her own way in a lot of ways. So, so

that's a continuing and and and you want

those characters to to change and you

want conflict to come into how they're

handling life as well.

You should be able to read the outline

and and and just go, I I get this book.

I I see how it flows. I understand why

these characters are going to be

interesting to me. Um I I I feel the

twists. Uh, and then you know as you

write it, it hopefully it gets even

better.

Only my editor has seen this outline before,

so I'm sharing something with you

that I haven't shared before.

And what happens in this outline and why it's important for you

to listen to this is the first couple of chapters really set

up the third chapter, and without the first couple

of chapters, a third chapter wouldn't even work,

so this is also an example of how you set things up

in a book.

In the first chapter, Nora Sinclair

is packing for a business trip and we

hear a voice over her shoulder and it's

Gordon Brown, who is her lover.

And he's kind of a boyish 40.

She's sort of 35ish.

And he tells her, you travel too much,

because she's going off on this business trip,

and we like them together.

And it's important that this is written that way

and even it's important that the outline stresses

the fact that we have to really like them together.

We have to love them together.

We have to go, we're in love because they're in love

when we read this chapter.

It makes us feel terrific.

In the second chapter, they're having a lunch,

and it's a really neat lunch in Gordon's house

and Gordon says he's never been happier.

And Nora laughs and she says is that your idea of a proposal?

And Gordon says no, this is and he reaches

into the pocket of his robe.

He removes a small Tiffany box, or maybe a good sized Tiffany

box, and he gets down on one knee and he proposes to Nora,

and we want them to be together.

We love them.

They are a terrific couple.

We wish that we were with somebody like that.

Third chapter, Nora is off on this business trip, same day,

later that afternoon.

She arrives at this spectacular brownstone in Boston.

On the doorstep, she removes Gordon's engagement ring

and as a reader we're going, what the hell is going on here?

She puts on another engagement ring.

She lets yourself inside.

She has the key.

She calls out, honey I'm home.

And we realize that she's engaged to two men.

So we are hooked as readers.

And once again, we're playing this cat and mouse

game with our readers.

And they love this.

They want to play cat and mouse.

That's why they're in the other chair.

The outline is the most creative of all of the disciplines.

That's where your imagination is going crazy.

And you're going to make mistakes,

and you're going to put in stuff that's like, oh wait,

that's just too much.

And once again, as you read it, if you being honest, I just,

I took it too far there.

And you may find at times that as good

as you try to make the outline be

that it's sort of losing drama in a certain place.

It just started being repetitive.

I mean, and that happens a lot of times.

And that's just a little bit your imagination

leaving you for a while and you start repeating.

And that, I mean that happens a lot when you write,

and all of a sudden, we already heard that.

Or you just keep repeating sort of the plot points,

or you just need to be conscious of stuff like that too.

But the outline needs to change as you write the book.

It needs to grow.

It needs to have vitality.

It needs to expand and contract at times.

Everything that I'm telling you, I have gone through.

I have gone through where the outline isn't working.

I've thrown out occasionally outlines.

I'm constantly dealing with chapters that aren't

working and reworking them.

Now what I like to do, I mentioned this thing

about write the story down.

Just keep going.

Don't stop.

Even if you have to in some chapters just go TBD.

Move on.

You're stuck.

Get it the next time around.

I like to write several drafts.

I'll write five, six drafts.

The greater the challenge, the more impossible it seems,

the better chance is that it's really

going to be something fresh.

Because it's like, this is impossible.

Oh no it ain't.

I can do this.

And in doing it, you write something like nothing's

been written that way before because nobody would

be that stupid to try to solve those problems, except for you

and me.

We're done.

But that's how we get rich, by being dumb.

Now you've got the skeleton.

We can work with the skeleton.

And if the outline is right, that skeleton

will not have a leg coming out of its head,

and another leg coming out of this, and an arm.

That's a bad skeleton.

If the outline is right, you're going

to have a skeleton that is correct, anatomically correct,

and you can really go from there.

Once you have your outline and you've read it

and you know it's really percolating for you,

and maybe you've had a couple people read

it and they're going, I love this story,

they should be able to read it and really get the story.

But once you have the online, start writing, dude.

Start writing.

You're ready.

This is the enemy, the blank page.

This is the Oh my god. And you you

always you'll see this so so often in

the movies. Uh, and this and I think a

lot of screenwriters are frustrated

novelists and and you've seen this 50

times in the movies and it that

shouldn't happen. That just that just to

me bad writing where they write the

first line and then they cross it out

and they write the first line again and

they cross it out and they write the

first line again, you know, and I I've

seen that literally a dozen times. But

it is there is a reality to it which is

that blank page is is is troubling.

Every author has a a different approach

or many authors have a different

approach, but uh uh I really recommend

just crash through freight train through

that first draft. Get that story down.

Apparently, I guess Raymond Chandler had

that process. I have that process. A lot

of writers have that process. Get it

down. I've seen writers who can write

that first draft in a month. um I can do

the first draft in a month. At certain

times it's just flowing. Uh and I'm not

sure I don't know if it's health

related. I have no idea why, but

sometimes it's just flowing and it's

working and I can't write enough and I'm

amazed at how much I do in a very short

uh period of time. And then there are

times when I'll sit there and I'll write

chapters and I'll go, it's all coming

out flat for some reason. It's all

coming out flat. and eventually

something hits me and I go, "Okay." And

I I'll go back and and polish the stuff

and and suddenly raise the level. I I

don't know why that happens, but it it

it just seems to it's it's certainly

part of my process. Don't have blocks.

Uh partly because if if a chapter if I'm

not getting it and I know I'll just put

TBD and I get it on the next draft,

which is a useful and smart thing to do.

Do not torture yourself. just go, I'll

get it. And be confident that you'll get

it. That's how people get blocked. They

they get to a point and it's like, oh my

god, I can't get this chapter. I can't.

And you then you start obsessing on it

and it's not coming. You get worried,

you get nervous, you get panicked. It's

sort of like these thing I guess that

some couples go through and they can't

get pregnant. You start pressing too

hard and the mind starts getting tired

and you know it doesn't work. It's like,

you know, you're trying to do a sport

and you get all tense. That's not going

to work. You're going to strike out. So,

so if you're not getting it, move on.

Get it the next time. Get it the time

after that. I mean, I've had times when

I've gone through where that TBD would

be on three or four chapters for a

couple of drafts.

I write seven days a week. I get up

early in the morning. Um, I'll very

quickly go through two or three p

newspapers. Uh, have a cup of coffee and

go and I'll go through those in 15

minutes. you know, I have my little path

through the newspapers in terms of, you

know, the things that I always, you

know, want to read about. Uh, and then I

start writing uh whether it's outlining

or whatever, you know, book I might be

working on. Pencil, I write in pencil. I

do not write at the computer. I'm not

suggesting that anybody do that. I write

on a yellow legal pad. Um, I write on

every other line. Um, I have an

assistant who's now legally blind from

trying to read my handwriting. Um, she

will type up stuff, send it back to me.

Once I get it typed up, it will be

triple spaced. I write between the

lines. When I'll do a draft, a second

draft. When I when I write between the

lines, and I only when I'm going over

that draft, I only read what I just

wrote. I assume that everything that I

left there is just fine, which means

that I can kind of do a second draft of

that draft in no time. I um frequently

then will go out, this is just my own

nuttiness, and I admit this and this is

just to show that I am a flawed

character with dark secrets. Uh I will

go out and walk a golf course for an

hour, hour, 15 minutes, a lot of

mornings. Uh it I have no thoughts about

writing. I walk. I chase a little white

ball. I curse the little white ball.

Occasionally I praise the little white

ball. Rarely. Uh I come back and I

write. I'm refreshed. I've had a nice

walk. It's good for my health. Um I

write some more. I'll write until

lunchtime. I

six days a week I'll have lunch with my

wife. I love my wife. I like being with

my wife. Um I'll come back and write

some more.

And um I I pretty much do that every

day.

I have always been able to to I can sit

here. I could stop what I'm doing here

and just start writing. I've always been

able to do that to just tune out the

world. And I think part of that is

because I just love it so much. And I

I've always been able to to focus on

what I'm doing in a in uh in a very

powerful way. So, I you know, I don't

know where you come from. I don't you

know, you're going to have to figure

that out. But, uh uh it's useful if you

can write anywhere, you know, on a

plane. You can just tone it out and and

and focus and concentrate. And I guess

there uh uh you just do what you can to

try to practice that uh practice your

your skills of concentration because

it's not just a matter of being able to

write anywhere. It's really what you're

really honing there is your your ability

to concentrate and um you know more and

more now we have a world where you know

people want to do two or three four

things at a time and they'll actually do

advertisements on television on oh isn't

this great you can do two things at one

time. I don't believe that. I don't

believe people do two things well at one

time. You certainly are not going to

write uh well while doing something else

in my opinion. So if you're writing and

and playing with games or it's just not

and and the more you do that the less I

think it lessens your ability to

concentrate. So whatever however you can

do it uh and part of it is is is just

being able to just you know in the

middle anything be be able to write no

matter where you are but but but I think

the most important thing is is that

you're learning how to concentrate

better, how to focus better. You need to

focus. You need to get in touch because

when you're focusing and concentrating,

you're actually getting farther and

farther into your story. You're more in

touch with it and you got to get into

it. I think sometimes if if I do uh go

through a period where where it's not

happening, I think it's because my

concentration is not working as well and

I'm not in the scene. I'm not there. I'm

not aware of who that character is or

who those characters are, how they I'm

just not into it. and and and that's

just a matter of concentration and

focus.

I've said it before, I I for me, I I

don't work for a living. I play for a

living. So, you know, I'm writing seven

days a week. I I love it. Uh so I I

never, you know, want to be away from

it. I don't, you know, I don't want to

stop. But if you need a break, take a

break. I mean, if you're feeling like,

man, you're overloaded, take off for a

week. Just don't do it. Do something

else. Stop. Uh cuz it is important. If

if you're getting a little neurotic

about the thing, you just have to just

turn it off. Put your mind somewhere

else. Stop the the the neurosis

uh uh from happening, the pressure,

whatever you're doing to yourself. And I

would just go to the movies. I And I

would go to the movies, you know, almost

every afternoon. Sometimes I'd see the

same movie two or three times. Sometimes

I would go watch a movie for an hour

that I was kind of enjoying and leave

just because I felt like I don't want to

be here anymore. I want to go back and

write. And sometimes I would go back and

try to and and watch the second half

like the next day. But if you're

overloaded and it can happen and it

probably will happen. Uh sometimes you

just got to walk away for a little bit.

Let's face it, I'm not writing War in

Peace. I'm not writing Ulyses. Uh but

you know I I I always try to do the best

I can possibly do. When I used to be in

advertising and I think this relates to

a lot of jobs and I was you know running

a big group and I would say look let's

face it this is ridiculous. Okay we're

writing commercials about Ford cars or

or Burger King burgers or Toys R Us kids

or whatever. And it's kind of a dopey

thing to do. But I'll tell you what, if

you make this little film and it's a

really good film, at the end of the

week, you're going to feel pretty good.

If you condescend to it or don't give it

your best, at the end of the week,

you're going to feel like [ __ ] you

know? Would you rather feel pretty good

or you're going to rather feel crummy?

If if you say pretty good, then then

really give it everything you got. So,

don't condescend to the genre. Uh uh

because chances are, you know, most of

the people watching are never going to

be good enough to to to to do the genre.

Uh you got you got to you got to aim for

the stars with this stuff.

Even if it isn't that good yet, it's

okay. You're you're learning. You're

you're putting in your 10,000 hours. Uh

not that that's a magical number, but uh

uh you're practicing. you're getting,

you know, when I'll go to school school

with, you know, little kids, sometimes

I'll go, who likes soccer? Yay, we like

soccer. You know, are you better now

than 3 years ago? We're better now. Yay.

How come? Because you play a lot. It's

the same thing with with learning how to

read. Same thing with writing. The more

you do it up to a point, the better you

get. You have to get to a certain level.

And at when you get to that level, I

think it becomes a very joyful

experience. At least for me, it always

was. And it's just it's a high. It's

just a high. It it was a high when I was

younger and it still is

If you write something mediocre chances are it's

not going to get published.

Now how does it not become mediocre?

It becomes not mediocre because, a, you

have just this tremendous idea.

And we talked about ideas and how some of them

really rise above the pack.

Or you've created these characters, or a character,

who's just so fresh and involving

and just the way they look at the world-- that's

really what it is.

It's the way they see the world.

And you really want your readers to have strong feelings

about your characters.

You want them to love that character.

Or you want them to want that character to somehow pull

themselves up somehow.

Or you want to hate that character.

But you're not going to do it unless you create

characters that really make an impression on them,

make them feel.

What goes into creating a character?

What goes into a human being?

What goes into me?

What goes into you?

What are the parts?

One of things that's useful, I think,

is just think of anybody you've met, anybody in your life,

that you find interesting.

Why is that?

Are you a religious person?

If you're not, what are you?

Are you a spiritual person?

How does that affect how you conduct your life?

Do you have any physical attributes that are important?

Are you 70 pounds overweight?

What does that mean to how you conduct your life?

Your internal life and the way you deal with the world.

Pretty much everybody you meet, if you just

start writing down all their little ticks and all the things

they do, and that's what makes them who they are.

And there's a kind of an infinite number of things.

I mean they really are.

And that's the challenge of it.

You know, what fits your main characters that

are relevant to your story?

So that's-- you just want to make it as tight as you can

in terms of those talents really making that story stronger

and stronger and stronger.

And you just keep more and more attributes and things

that the characters do.

And eventually-- and that's also an aha moment, and also

very joyful, when you figure out something

about that character that that's exactly right.

And what you're going to find that is you're

starting to understand your own character.

As I said, I don't write realism.

But I've had hundreds, maybe thousands, of policemen

and FBI people go, you got it right.

And I think what they mean by that is not

that I got all the details right,

but I got the spirit of it right.

I have the feeling for what it's like to be a cop

and after doing a very difficult job that a lot of people

don't understand how hard that is,

and then how hard it is to leave it behind and go home and try

to be a father or a husband or a wife

or whatever that particular cop is.

So I get the emotional part right,

and that gets me over a lot of bumps.

Talking about Michael Bennett and one of his kids

who goes out and is robbing stores.

One, the scenes with this kid, who's been brought up really

well, him going out and robbing a store, that's big.

And you need to be able to put yourself

in the head of that kid.

What goes through the mind of a young kid who's

been brought up well.

His father's a cop.

He doesn't have big problems with his father.

But where he came from is maybe an issue because he's adopted,

but what goes through that kid's head, what

goes through anybody's head when they walk into a store

and rob it.

But this is a kid that's never-- so how do you capture that?

How do you make that come alive?

How do you make that believable?

But more than anything, how do you

get in that character's head so you feel it?

You got to put yourself there.

I mean that's one of the things.

I will write in one of my drafts,

I'll maybe half the chapters, I'll just put "be there"

at the top of the chapter.

And that means you've got to be in that scene.

You need to experience it like that character

or it ain't going to be any good.

It's useful to ask yourself, if someone

was drowning in the ocean would you really go in and save them.

Or if your character is put in a position where

they have to save somebody in the ocean, what kind

of complexity-- is there complexity.

Is it just a reflex thing with them?

If it is a reflex thing, do they get halfway out there

and go like, what the hell am I doing?

How am I going to handle this?

Do I have the skill to save this person?

You want it to be complicated.

You want it to--

You want to be able to put the reader there

in the real world, no bullshit.

I think you need to capture the complexity of that

or it just isn't terribly interesting.

I think that you would have second thoughts about going

into the ocean to try to save somebody because your own life,

for real, be there, get it, your own life is in jeopardy.

It's difficult, not impossible, but difficult

to create a hero that you want to read

about page after page after page if there isn't some complexity.

So for example, in my private series, Jack is quite bright.

But his family background, his father's been to jail.

He has a terrible relationship with his father.

He's been in the army.

He did something in the Army, a helicopter went down,

and a lot of us would think that what he did

is heroic in that he saved a couple

people from the helicopter.

But he also left somebody in the helicopter.

So he considers that a shameful-- something he just

can't get past, even though most of us

would look at what he did as heroic,

he doesn't believe that.

And that's a good flaw in that we're kind of on his side,

but he's not on his own side.

And we kind of want to shake him and go, Jack, it's OK.

You did the best you could.

You did a great thing.

I don't know that I would have gone in the burning

plane, burning helicopter, the first time or the second time.

And the fact that you didn't go in the third time, it's OK.

You did-- as we humans go-- you did very well.

But he cannot escape that.

It just continues to be something that

troubles him through his life.

I think that one of the things that really gets people

is when you have a character that seems one way,

like they're very sort of hard, and then all of a sudden you

see another side of them.

And you go, oh, OK.

He's a tough guy but he's a sweetheart, too.

And I think when you see that other side with an Alex Cross

or a Kay Scarpetta, Patricia Cornwell's lead character.

And Scarpetta can really be a jerk at times.

And then every once in a while she just reveals herself

as such a sweetheart.

And you go like, oh, I kind of like her.

And that was part of the thing with House, the TV series.

I mean he's just so nasty and unpleasant.

But every once in while you just got to kind of glimpse-- and it

was much more subtle with House.

It would just be a look with him where you just kind of go,

you know what, he's sort of thinking a human thought there.

He didn't even say anything, but you can see it in his eyes.

But I think that seeing the other side of the character,

or just more complexity, rounded characters I'll talk about.

Characters that have a lot of sides.

They're complex.

You feel you're meeting the full person.

OK, the area of villains.

What makes a worthy opponent for Alex Cross or Lindsay Boxer?

I think that they need to be, if not very smart,

at least very clever.

They need to be able to surprise you.

And I don't know.

I mean I don't think that's terribly realistic.

But it certainly makes for more interesting reading,

that the villain keeps surprising you.

I didn't see that coming, is a good thing

in these kinds of books.

I think that it's really useful if you can--

the more you humanize these characters the better.

Readers and viewers are peculiar in the sense

that you watch a movie, Silence of the Lambs.

At the end we have this guy who was running

the prison, who really, I mean he hasn't

done anything really bad.

He was unpleasant to Hannibal Lecter.

And he was a little kind of odd with Foster.

But he hasn't really done anything awful.

At the end of the movie Hannibal Lecter

is sort of-- you get this sense he's

going to chase is guy off into the jungle and eat him,

and the audience cheers.

What is that all about?

Seriously?

You're cheering for the serial killer

that's going to go kill this prison official.

It's not like the guy had done anything really awful.

And that's interesting to me.

Also, the ethics and morals of readers

and how they sort of fade away if they're really

digging the characters.

I had one villain who was a terrible murderer

and he was a house husband.

And from the point of view of the wife and his kids,

he's a neat guy.

Good father, blah, blah, blah.

They had no idea about the secret life that this guy had

and the kind of fantasies that drove

at least part of his life.

And that's interesting to me.

There's complexity when you have a house husband

and for all intents and purposes he's a good person.

But a lot of times a novelist, you'll

get those sort of cartoonish characters,

and they're not complex and they're not interesting.

And that's another one where you just want to put the book down

immediately.

A lot of the subsidiary characters

are not necessary so subsidiary.

Alex Cross' grandmother, Nana Mama

is vital to the book in that she's seen Alex right from the

get go.

She saw him when he was an orphan.

She brought him up.

She's dealt with the good and the bad.

She's seen where he's gone from a little bit of troubled life

in Washington onto an important college, into the police force.

I have had threats from readers, many threats,

that Nana Mama must not die.

Nana Mama is in her mid 90s now.

I have no choice.

She will probably live longer than I will.

Michael Bennett has 10 kids, Michael Bennett the cop.

And that creates its own sort of impossible situation

to write about.

But that's what makes it fun and that's

what makes it a challenge.

And one of the challenges is to introduce these kids slowly.

You can really-- you know that they're all there

and you know tidbits about them.

But certain books you can really highlight one of the kids.

Like Brian, who's 15, and one of Michael's-- he's really close

with Brian.

Brian's going to get into lot of trouble

in the book I'm writing now.

Jane is 14.

And she's very goofy and loving.

And she actually writes a diary about her life

in this crazy family with 10 adopted kids.

And that's kind of charming.

So a lot of these subsidiary characters

become hugely important.

And they're part of what drives the thing, the book forward.

And any time I'm going to write an outline,

one of things I'll always show, OK,

what's happening to the family, let's

say, in a Michael Bennett or an Alex Cross book in this book.

And you have to be careful with the pets

because people get ridiculously attached to the pets, even

the Bennett family.

Do not hurt Saki the cat.

Do not hurt Jasper the sheepdog.

Do not hurt Puddles the hamster.

They must not die.

What's going to happen in your book is that your readers,

they're actually going to find out more about your character

than they probably know about anybody in their life.

They will know more about your character

by the end of the book than some husbands know

about their wives in terms of their histories

in terms of how they think.

Or that wives know about their husbands.

So it's a very intimate relationship

that you're going to-- and that's one of the reasons

that people love novels.

But that's what you have to do.

You have to create that character that they're not

going to forget.

I don't mean it's going to be the most important person

in their life, but I never forgot that character

because I got to know them so well through the talent

I don't want to over stress the importance of first lines.

It's just that they can really give you an advantage.

You're reaching out from that book,

grabbing a hold of that reader, and sucking them

right into your book-- or not.

And if you pull them right in, you've got them.

You've got that agent.

You've got that editor.

You've got your reader.

Suck them right in, and insofar as

if they're staying right there and you haven't pulled them

at all, you probably lost them.

If you get them this far, that's probably good too.

OK, there now, I'm leaning.

I'm leaning with you.

You know, so far, so good.

So far, so good works.

That's OK.

If the reader is going, OK, yeah, what happens next?

I'm cool with it.

And sometimes it is just like, boom,

I am in hook, line, and sinker.

And that's the best.

Especially trying to sell that first novel.

Here we are again.

The dreaded first page-- what to do about it.

A really terrific sportswriter name Red Smith,

and he said writing is easy.

All you do is stare at a blank piece of paper

until drops of blood form on your forehead.

So that's kind of what that first page is about.

Obviously one of the keys is just the first line.

Along Came A Spider-- first Alex Cross book--

starts, "Early on the morning of December 21, 1992,

I was the picture of contentment on the sun

porch of our house on 5th Street in Washington, D.C."

That was my first line.

Yeah, it gives you a lot of information.

Not a great first line, but, you know, I'm-- so far, I'm OK.

I'm getting into it.

You've Been Warned, which was a horror book,

the first line there in the prologue,

"It's way too early in the morning for dead people."

Once again, give me an idea of what kind of book it is.

Private series about a private investigation company

and a relatively young guy that runs it.

And the first line is, "To the best of my understandably shaky

recollection, the first time I died,

it went something like this."

That's a pretty cool first line actually if I

do give myself some credit.

In Kiss The Girls, the first line is, "For three weeks,

the young killer actually lived inside the walls

of an extraordinary 15 room beach house."

For me, I'm there.

The idea of somebody living in my house--

a killer inside the walls-- and what you'll find out

in the next couple of chapters is the people are in the house

while he's living inside the walls.

That's very dramatic.

It's very scary.

It would scare the pants out of most readers.

And if it happened in real life, it'd

really scared the hell out of you.

I always feel that if I haven't given them

something in the first chapter, it's bad news.

I have to have grabbed them a bit.

Maximum Ride-- once again, in terms

of what you can do in a scene.

We open up with children, and they

range from seven years old to 14 or 15.

They're running like banshees, they're

escaping from a building.

You don't exactly know what kind of a building,

only whatever was happening in that building

is very, very bad.

The narrator is this girl, Max.

She's a feisty girl.

She has dark humor.

She's very concerned for her friends

who are running with her.

She's particularly concerned with the seven

and nine-year-olds.

And you're wondering, what the hell happened in that building?

Why are they running away?

You hear there are dogs chasing them and adults chasing them.

And they get to a cliff, and you go, oh, my God.

Here we go with the cliffs and they're

going to jump into water or something.

Well, there's no water.

It's just a disaster.

So basically, you set up a dilemma for the reader

and for these kids.

I mean, what's going to happen now?

They're cooked.

They're caught-- the dogs, the adults.

And all of a sudden, out come the wings and they fly.

They jump off the cliffs and they fly.

What happens in that scene-- one, it's thrilling in itself.

It's a very-- the chase is thrilling.

Two, you're getting exposed to the narrator's voice,

and that voice is one that you like hearing.

You like the way she's telling her story.

It's not just total panic.

You feel that she maintains a certain control and confidence.

And you're wondering why.

Why is she feeling that-- why is she feeling this confidence?

Why does she feel that all these kids can possibly get away

from these dogs and the guards, and certainly

when they get to the cliff?

And she still seemed confident.

And then you get to a very unexpected surprise and release

with the wings and flying.

Actually, what happens in the chapter is they dive off first.

So it almost feels like a mass suicide,

and then the wings come out, which is even more effective.

If you're going to kill somebody off

in the first chapter-- which happens frequently-- ideally

what you want to do is you want to write that character as

though it was the hero of your book.

You want people so goddamn interested in it

that when they die, it's like you're kidding me.

That character was so interesting,

I can't believe that the author killed that character off

because I was really interested in that character--

what he or she was going to do.

And a lot of times, that murder victim--

the same in television-- you have no-- you're

not involved in the character at all.

There's somebody in jeopardy, they run up the stairs,

they run to the-- you don't know who the hell they are.

You don't really care.

And they get thrown off the roof, and you're like, OK.

Not good.

Not good.

[? You got to ?] invest me in that person running up

the stairs if that's what you're going to start with-- a murder.

I need to be interested in that character.

Man, there's so many books that I read

and so many manuscripts where I just

read-- I'll read the first page-- the first couple

of pages of the first chapter.

And I go, this just does not work at all.

There's no tension, there's no style,

there's nothing to get me interested in this thing.

The writing is either overwritten or underwritten.

I have no interest in the character.

The action feels cliched.

Nothing happened in that first chapter

that's of any interest to me in any way shape or form.

Anybody telling a story-- I mean, you do it all the time.

It's somebody retelling a story and you

want to walk away after the first three sentences.

Like, look, I got to go to the bathroom now,

or a typical thing or at a party like that.

And if you see the person looking over your shoulder

to see who's coming in the door, then you

know they're just not buying into your story.

You don't want to just be dropping all the information

you think you need to drop.

You need to be involving me.

I mean, one, in the scene.

Where am I in a line or two, and that I want to be there.

That's one of Gresham's strengths.

[? It's ?] that he's very good in that first chapter or two in

getting you really involved with that main character.

Setting up some kind of a conflict for that character

and putting you in a scene.

Two boys are going off to sneak a couple of smokes.

They're eight and 10 years old, or however old they are,

and you're with them.

And you're following them and you can feel, oh, yeah, right.

I've been there.

I've sneaked off to do something whether it's smoking

or whatever the heck it is.

And you're involved, and then they

see something they shouldn't see, which raises the stakes.

They're little kids and they just

saw something they shouldn't see.

And so I'm in.

I'm involved.

You know, suspense-- and I'll say this over and over again.

It's about questions the reader must have answered-- must,

must, must have answered.

I-- all the time, every book-- will rewrite that first chapter

over and over again, and rewrite that first line frequently.

Not all the time, but frequently.

I'm just doing a book, Humans Bow Down,

and I've rewritten that chapter five times already

and it's been a different first line every time.

Because I want to-- I need to feel as involved

as I want the reader to feel.

I want to read that next chapter.

I want to read about that character.

I got the conflict already.

All of your key interchanges with your characters,

they're going to be good, bad, or indifferent

just because of the dialogue.

And how they talk to each other, it's

going to reveal a lot about who they are.

Who's smarter?

Who's taking advantage of who?

Who's lying?

Who's telling the truth?

Who's in charge?

Who's really in charge?

Richard Price, in Lush Life, you can see when

he's just winging this stuff.

In this scene, it's cops on patrol,

and they're following a car.

And the one cop says, "What do we got?"

And the other cop says, "Two males in front seat."

And the cop says, "What do we got?"

He's asking for more.

And the next cop says, "Neon trim

on the plate-- tinted windows-- front passenger just stuffed

something under the seat."

And the other cop says, "Thank you."

And then this one cop, Lugo, hits the misery lights--

the lights over-- and the cop car climbs up

on the Honda's rear.

And these two cops, Daley and Lugo slow

walk up on the other side of the stopped car.

And the driver is a Latin guy.

And the guy says, "Officer, what did I do?"

And the cop says, "License and registration please."

And the driver goes, "For real, what did I do?"

And the cop says, "You always drive like that?"

And this Latin guy goes, "Like what?"

And the cop says, "Signaling lane

changes-- all road courteous and shit."

And the poor Latin guy goes, "Excuse me?"

And the cop goes, "Come on.

Nobody does that unless they're nervous about something."

And then the poor Latin guy goes, "Well, I was."

And the cop goes, "Nervous?"

And the poor Latin goes, "You was following me."

And the cop goes, "A cab was following you?"

And the Latin guy goes, "Yeah, yeah, OK a cab.

All serious, officer-- and no disrespect intended.

Maybe I can learn something here-- but what did I do?"

And the cop goes, "Primary, you have neon trim on your plates."

And the Latin guy, still confused,

he goes, "Hey, I didn't put it there.

This is my sister's whip."

And the cop goes, "Secondary, your windows are too dark."

And the Latin guy goes, "I told her about that."

And the cop goes, "Tertiary, you crossed a solid line."

And the Latin guy goes, "To get around a double parked car."

And the cop goes, "Quadrary, you're sitting by a hydrant."

And the Latin guy, "That's because you just

pulled me over."

So this is a wonderful, wonderful bit

of dialogue in terms of poor guy getting pulled over, done

nothing.

And it's very comedic.

And it's tragic comic.

And it's just wonderful.

When you write stuff like that, you're

going to make a lot of money, and you don't need my advice.

But that's great dialogue.

My style-- it isn't realism.

It's heightened.

It's funnier, or wittier, or more dramatic than what people

would really say in real life.

But it feels real.

It feels real.

And then sometimes, you'll have stuff that really

is-- it is very realistic.

I think the super realistic dialogue is generally

I wouldn't want to read a lot of it.

There's a couple things you have to be careful of when you're

writing realistic dialogue.

One is it tends to be boring.

And you're not going to get any points, because, boy, that

sounded just like it happens at our breakfast table

every morning.

Mostly, people don't care about that, because they actually

can experience that for free at their breakfast table.

So that's not enough.

And you need to pick that one conversation at the breakfast

table where there was something in it that

made it really interesting and really moves your story ahead.

One of the reasons that I like kooky characters

is that they say kooky things.

And I love that.

I like it when you don't know what they're going to say.

Even if it's two people, if you get a squirly like in Invisible

where Emmy is-- you just don't know what the hell

she's going to say.

She's a total loose cannon.

A loose cannon in the FBI is really not tolerated,

but there she is.

And her voice is prickly.

And so any time she's in there, it's like,

is she going to light the bomb?

Is she going to tee them off?

And you know she is.

And actually, you're waiting for her to tee them off.

And you watch it develop through dialogue.

You can just see it coming, and you want it to come.

What's unexpected about her is not

that she's going to tee them off, but the way she does it,

which is either willful or accidental.

And it can go either way, and both ways are interesting.

She can be so caught up in her own craziness

that she doesn't even know that she's doing it,

but you know she's doing it, and the boss knows she's doing it.

Or in another case, it could be very willful,

where she just somewhere in the dialogue,

you can just feel that she's had enough of this guy,

and she's just going to torture the shit out of him.

Different writers have different feelings about how much

you attribute the conversation to somebody-- Larry said,

or more color stuff.

And that's really your choice.

Elmore Leonard kept it very simple.

He is a great dialogue writer.

He didn't really want to put in a whole lot.

Sometimes it can be confusing.

If you don't identify the speaker's occasionally,

people start to forget or lose track or what you're writing.

Confusion I don't think is a good thing for the most part.

So you want them to be able to follow

the conversation within reason.

Sometimes you want those little pieces.

One of the things that makes some movies very effective

is somebody says something, and then look

on the person's face-- that eye roll or something,

or what's in their head.

And we don't get that in the movies, but in the books

you can.

Somebody says something, and somebody

thinks what an asshole as you smile-- whatever.

That's one reason why you might want

to break up the dialogue a lot, because you

want one of the characters or both of the characters

you're thinking to be part of the fabric of that chapter.

One of the tricky things you have to be careful--

and you see it in the movies all the time--

is where for the purposes of explaining the plot

or how the story-- you put words in your characters

that they should never say, just because you

need to explain something.

Try not to do that.

They do it in the movies all the time.

Here are these two characters, and they ride in the car,

and they have this really boring conversation.

And they have to have it, because they've got

to explain this technical crap.

If it has to be done-- you've got a global situation that

needs to be explained, or relationships

between countries, or something about computers, or two

businesses and how they operate, or the inner workings of NYPD,

don't just drop the information.

And certainly, don't put it into bad dialogue

between two characters.

That would never happen in a million years.

You have to figure out a way, one, what do I need to say?

How do I say it in the quickest way?

That communication-- sometimes you

can filter it over three or four chapters

where you just drop little pieces,

or you just figure out a device, or you

have one character who's basically,

I don't want to hear about it.

I don't want-- will you please stop?

I don't want to hear about it.

Please stop.

I don't care.

I don't care about Russia and China.

Stop, yeah-- just a device that would

make it somewhat comedic or somewhat more palatable.

Any time you're writing-- if it's a section of dialogue

and you want to go from one hour to an hour

later, whatever, it's as simple as-- you don't have to write

the five pages of dialogue.

You can cut it right off and say that the night continued,

and then they talked about whatever the heck it is.

You just got to write that one line to get you there.

10 minutes passed, and then Larry

said-- that's not the way you do it,

but it's the sense of that, just a transitional line.

And some people don't know that simple trick.

It's not enough to just layout, here

is 10 minutes worth of boring.

Don't do that.

That's not going to work.

Similarly, obviously, you can skip days, or months, or years,

or whatever.

You just need a smooth-- a good transition.

And you'd like the transition to be satisfying also.

If you're going to jump ahead two years,

you'd prefer that doesn't have to be

an italicized two years later, which you see all the time.

It's not the end of the world.

But if you can make it more palatable to the reader,

it will alter the good.

Everything should be moving your story

and moving that sense of character forward.

So if you're having a piece of dialogue,

it's not just the past the time of day.

You are communicating.

Everything you write should be moving a story forward

and moving the sense of that character forward.

You should be learning something about that character,

getting more interested.

Mike Connelly, he said what Jim does

is every single chapter moves the characterization

and the action forward-- every chapter--

and turns on the movie projector in our heads.

And that's, I think, exactly what you want to do.

And that movie projector in our heads

means that I could see the scene.

I could hear the scene.

I could smell the scene.

I could taste the scene.

I was getting enough information that sets me in that scene

so I could be there with the character.

And that's really, really useful.

Some writers don't write that way,

but if you want to write commercial fiction,

that's important.

I tend, most of the time, to write in the first person

and third person limited.

Now, some people will go, well that's cheating.

Well, I don't give a shit what-- it's my creation.

I can do whatever I want to do.

There are no rules.

The 11th commandment didn't come down and say you cannot use

the first person and the third person in the same story.

Yes you can.

You can do whatever you want to do if it works.

I love to write in the first person because for some reason,

it helps me to get in touch with the scene

and what the character's thinking.

I just find it easier to get in touch, to be there,

to be in the scene with Alex Cross or Michael Bennett

or Lindsay Boxer or Maximum Ride or any of the characters

I've done.

The limitation of the first person is obvious because then,

if it's all first person, that's the only character you

can follow.

Because I like to follow the villains frequently

and I like to evolve some of the secondary characters,

I like to write in the same book in both the first person

and limited third person, and you

get the best of both worlds.

So you can get really in on the first person,

but yet you can switch off and write from another character's

point of view.

One of the things you have to deal with with every chapter

is whose point of view makes this the most interesting.

If it's a crime, is it more interesting from the victim's

point of view, the killer's point of view,

or the detective's point of view when they come on the scene

and see whatever the results of the crime is.

What's the best point of view to accomplish whatever

you want to accomplish there?

So that's where you have to think about, OK,

what's going to make this come alive the best?

And sometimes, and this happens frequently,

I might have in the outline a certain point of view,

but when I get to the chapter, I go,

you know what, this is going to be better written

from another point of view, because the other point

of view, suddenly it just becomes richer and more

mysterious, or whatever you wanted that chapter to be,

scarier.

I mean, you always should have a feeling

for emotionally, what did you want

to have happen in that chapter.

Did you want the reader to feel something?

You want him to feel scared?

You want him to feel pity for somebody?

You want him to feel sad?

You want him to feel romantic towards somebody?

You want it to be sexy?

What's going to make it sexy?

This thing about building a scene

and how you can really accomplish a whole lot

in a scene, I think it's the first chapter in 1st to Die,

which is the first of the Women's Murder Club novels.

And in this chapter, Lindsay Boxer, our detective, arrives.

There's been a murder of a couple on their honeymoon,

so I'm already leaning with you, OK,

how the hell did that happen in this hotel.

And now we're introduced to Lindsay Boxer,

and we get a feeling that she's competent,

and we like the way she looks at stuff.

She's not just competent.

She's got a little sense of flare and humor.

Then we meet the medical examiner,

who, once again, is another part of this Women's Murder Club.

And she would be there, she's the medical examiner.

And we see that she and Lindsay have a relationship.

And then we meet Jill Bernhardt, who's

an assistant district attorney.

She's been called to the scene.

And that's all logical, because assistant district attorneys

are often called to murder scenes.

So we've met three of our key characters already,

and it's very credible that they're there.

We know that they have a relationship.

We actually already know that they like each other

and are friendly.

And then we get our fourth member of the Women's Murder

Club, Cindy Thomas.

She's a young reporter.

She don't belong there, and she lies her way in and gets in.

And so now we have the whole Women's Murder Club

together in this first scene of the book.

And we know that three of them are friends,

and we know that one of them doesn't belong there

in any way, shape, or form.

But by the end of the book, they're going to be a unit.

And we've accomplished all of that in our murder scene.

So this is good shit.

I will, often when I'm writing at least one of the drafts,

just put "be there" on the tops of several of the chapters.

Be there.

And what I'm doing is putting a note to myself

to remind myself to be in that scene

because I've got to bring it alive for my reader.

And that means visually, and from my kind of writing,

quickly and succinctly and for it to range

through emotionally.

So what do we have to work with?

We have what we could see and what

our perceptions of-- the person, the protagonist,

or the villain, whoever is in the environment-- what

their perception of that space is.

We then have the sense of hearing.

What do they hear?

If that's relevant, that could be a big thing.

It could be silence.

It could be a sound that they don't want to hear.

It could be sirens coming.

We have the sense of smell.

Now obviously, when you get into murder scenes, all of those

get elevated.

The problem with that is that those murder scenes have

been described so many times and we know about the maggots,

and we know about the hideous smell,

and we know about the tricks of putting Vicks in your nose

because I'd rather smell Vicks than what you smell.

So that becomes harder to make the senses as effective

as you'd like to because so much of it has been done before.

And yet it is possible.

In the movie Seven, they did a great job

of making these horrific scenes visually fresh.

The sound was frequently really important.

You can really do incredible things with-- there are flies,

and then there is the sound of flies,

which is sometimes worse than actually seeing the flies.

So the sound becomes very important

in film or even in your book.

If you can figure out ways to describe hearing a sound,

not knowing what the hell it is, having never heard it

before in your life or the life of whoever,

the protagonist or whoever's hearing it,

that can be very effective.

What you want to do is something that's fresh that works.

Your own thing.

Make it your own.

Your own voice.

So what I want to do is I want the scene to catch me a bit.

I want the voice-- whatever that voice

is, I want that to be appealing to me.

And that can either be spectacularly good

writing sometimes, great style, or it can just

be the way-- look, if it's first person, everything

that-- I'm telling a story now, so here's

my voice, such as it is.

The same with your character in your book.

And that character, the way they're telling their story,

the way they're describing it, what they choose

to tell you about is key.

So that voice.

And usually, very early in a book,

you can begin to get a feel-- not always,

but frequently you can-- for that voice.

And that voice needs to pull you in.

One exercise you can do, and I think this is useful,

is take a story in your life that you know,

and you know it's a good story.

Write it.

Just do that.

It's a very simple thing.

It's the simplest exercise I can think of.

Write that story.

And now what's going to change that story is the voice.

Who's telling me the story?

Is it you?

Is your voice good?

If you don't have a good voice, do have

another voice you can speak in?

Can you speak as a woman if you're a male?

Can you speak as a man if you're a woman?

Can you speak as an African American

if you're an ugly white dude?

Whatever it is.

And you need to play around with that.

And it's going to feel a little schizophrenic.

When you write scenes, every chapter, really, it's

got to begin with some sharpness.

Every chapter, in my opinion, needs

to be built around a real dramatic nugget,

and it needs to get your attention in some way.

It needs to hold it and build it.

Obviously, you should be more involved

halfway through the chapter than you

were in the first paragraph.

The first paragraph's getting you in.

Then you should be getting more involved.

And at the end, something should happen that propels you

onto the next chapter.

And in my opinion, the key thing, and maybe

the only thing, is setting them up with questions

obviously with mystery and suspense.

It's all about suspense. It's constant

non-ending fireworks. It's an adventure

that starts and and and and and it's

going to hold you at the edge of your

seat right to the end. It starts big. It

gets even bigger. What happened? Who

done it? And the more questions the

better. If there are three or four

questions in the book, are these two

going to get together? Are they going to

separate? Uh uh what's going to happen

be in this family if you set up family

turmoil? Are we going to find the

missing child? Uh but it and it's got to

be genuine. If it's just if it feels

like uh just somebody throwing in

devices

like if you feel the manipulation, you

lose them there, too. If the reader's

going, "This is just crap. This is just

the usual. somebody's um you know trying

to manipulate me. They people kind of

want to be manipulated but they want it

done well.

If you're going to write something in

the genre of mystery, suspense, I think

you kind of got to be aware of what's

out there. Not to to to imitate it, to

avoid it. Uh uh because I mean one of

the things you can do, let's say you

don't really write thrillers, but you

know, I know I can do it because I'm

smart and you know, whatever, but I

never read any or I've read four. um

there's a good chance you're going to

write something that's already been

written before, you know, or it's going

to be very similar or it's going to, you

know, and you're going to think it's

great and, you know, 15 years ago it

might have been great, but so I think

it's really useful to know what's

written and not not to write stuff like

it to totally avoid it. Okay, I know

what's h what's happened in the past.

How what's a new twist on this? What's a

new twist twist on a murder mystery or a

uh a series of robberies or whatever it

is that you decide is going to be

fascinating for people to read about and

uh and fresh and new and you're going to

bring some insights to it and this is a

new kind of puzzle. I mean, look, the Da

Vinci Code, um, you know, all that, I

mean, what what was fascinating about

that was just the lengths that the

writer went in terms of creating this

unbelievably complex puzzle and and a

lot of people just found that

fascinating. And it definitely was

unique. I mean, I I haven't read that

kind of complexity in a puzzle that I

can think of anyway or it's rare. So, so

it felt very fresh to people.

And one of the things with suspense is,

in my opinion, one of the biggest

secrets of suspense is is setting up

questions that the reader must have

answered. Must must must. There's just

no way. And and in in my books, I try to

do a lot of those. When I did the first

Michael Bennett,

Step on a Crack, I mean, you you start

thinking about everything that's going

on early in that book. Um, one, which I

think is really a tremendous hook for a

story. Um, there's one of these state

funerals where all these leaders come

from all over the place and they're in

St. Patrick's Cathedral and somebody

holds up the cathedral. That to me, I

mean, imagine that happening in real

life. I mean, that's like

it makes OJ seem like a little baby

tail. I mean, you're kidding me. The

president, the vice president, uh,

president of France, you know, they're

all trapped in St. Patrick's Cathedral.

So, that's a really cool hook to me. And

then where's it going to go? Who's doing

it? How do they plan to get away with

it? So, that's a piece of it. Then we

introduces Michael Bennett. Michael

Bennett. And once again, I don't write

realism, but it's an interesting and and

I get away with it because I make

Bennett so believable as a character.

But Bennett has 10 adopted children.

Holy [ __ ] And he's detective. And he's

involved with this this uh takeover of

St. Patrick Cathedral on that particular

day. And his wife is dying. I mean, this

is insane. And it's ridiculous. I mean,

as I say it, it sounds ridiculous, but

as a story, a certain kind of story, not

realistic page turner that you're going

to make believable. I mean, I'm all

totally hooked into this thing. What's

with the 10 kids? How can that happen?

And I and I I like the kids. I like the

way he reacts to the kids. And how does

he find time in the course of these two

or three days where they're holding all

these captives to to stay in touch and

and also stay in touch with his wife

who's who's dying of cancer in in New

York Hospital? And how do you make I

mean I I think a lot of writing

professors would go don't do it. Don't

don't write that story. To me that was a

tremendous challenge in terms of no I

can do this. I can do this. I can turn

this into a coherent

kind of believable if you're willing to

go along suspend disbelief because

chapter by chapter I'm like okay okay

okay okay I'm buying it. If I step back

and tell you the whole story go oh my

god you're I actually try to pull that

off. Yeah. Yeah. I am.

You have the whole issue of uh uh of

stakes. What are the stakes in this

thing? I mean, all of the good mystery

writers are good at hooking you into

that story, hooking you into that

character, getting you interested right

away, having you feel that you're in the

scene with that character, and you love

you love the way they're they're

perceiving this room or or a bar or an

alleyway or the tenement that they have

to go up to to find somebody on the

eighth floor, whatever. Um and and and

then once that hook is is set, it just

surprises the twists that keep

happening. Cross My Heart and Hope to

Die. We have the stakes of Alice Cross's

family. The whole family goes missing.

We think they're um they're dead. Alex

thinks they may be dead, but he's got a

tiny little bit of of of hope. And

there's the stakes. And if he didn't

have a tiny bit of hope, um the stakes

are, you know, there's no stakes

anymore. He must have that. and and and

the fact that it's just a sliver makes

it even more delicious.

So, anytime I'm feeling that I'm

lagging, I'm I'm building in another

even if it's a red herring or some

misdirection or cross goes down the

wrong path that creates some new

questions that the reader, oh my god,

well, how can that be? Well, that may or

may not be accurate because as a

detective, he's he's going down some

blind alleys. But that blind alley might

really drive the reader crazy in terms

of oh my god, how can it be uh down that

alley because I I never I didn't see it

coming and I can't imagine how that's

going to lead to a solution. It's very

logical and and realistic for your

detective or protagonist or whatever to

go down wrong alleys. They do it. That's

what police work is all about. And

sometimes in going down those wrong

alleys, you create

um possibilities in the reader's mind

that really make the book a lot more

interesting. I mean, you can chase the

wrong thing. And it's fascinating for

for for the reader because that

possibility hadn't really occurred to

them. And and and one of the things you

have to be very careful of is even when

you're taking them down a wrong path

that it's not one where they go, "Oh, I

get it figured out. I don't want to read

it. I don't need to read anymore."

That's death mostly. I got it figured

out.

Closed the book. Very unsatisfying.

We we get a series of questions or

sometimes just one or two questions that

that the reader must have answered or

the viewer must have answered. And

ideally, you don't you what you

definitely don't want to do is give away

the answer very quickly. You you you you

know the the worst thing in the world is

uh you build up this thing, build up

this thing, build up this thing, and

then you give it away in two paragraphs

and the reader goes, "What?" You know,

no, that needs to be a scene. That needs

to be a satisfying scene. That needs to

even if it's a pretty good um uh reveal,

you got to milk it. You need to milk it.

And if you can give away your secret in

pieces, even better. Here's the, you

know, I don't know what it is, but

there's the first clue, and there's

another clue, and there's another little

tidbit, and there's another little

tidbit, and then voila. Now, the trick

with that is is you just have to be

careful and smart about that. You're not

giving away something where the reader

goes with 40 pages left, okay, I know

exactly where this is going and I don't

care. Sometimes when I'm when I'm

writing an outline or even even when I'm

writing different drafts of the book,

I'll write in twists. you know, it went

one way in that chapter. Okay, what if

it goes this way? And you always want to

be open. That's where you you come up

with cool stuff.

You you you keep thinking the

unthinkable, not necessarily writing the

unthinkable, but thinking it. And every

once in a while, one of those

unthinkable things you go, you know

what? I can do that and that would be

really cool and I can make it believable

and that will make for a really unusual

satisfying

uh story that people won't be able to

put down and that they'll talk about

after they finish it. And and one of the

things I've done at times is I'll do

stuff like one of the women's murder

club I I knocked her off. Uh and it was

like, "Oh, you're kidding. I don't

believe you did that. How could you kill

her?" And you know how Jill, we love

Jill. And I did it cuz it it wor that

was the story. It had to happen there.

Uh two, I didn't like the character that

much. Um and three, I really wanted to

set up the notion with my readers that

don't assume that that that anyone is

safe. Don't assume anyone's safe. Alice

Cross is not safe. He pro he's probably

safe, but he might not be.

your ending is hugely important. Um

because and this is true in movies and

it's it's it's true in books. Um because

that's what they walk they walk out of

the theater either clapping and cheering

and feeling great and spreading the word

uh about the movie or or or out of their

apartments or whatever in terms of the

book. Um and a lot of it has to do with

with with what you did at the ending,

how you pulled it all together. Uh the

surprise at the end, the the surprise

that that that that fits that's

appropriate.

Um, so you really have to make sure that

it's that it is satisfying. Uh, or

you're going to disappoint people and

you'll you won't get that good word of

mouth. Uh, you might not get published

because there's no ending. It's not just

you, it's you and a reader. And I want

you to always think about that because

when when there's a when there's a

reader in the process, it's a different

thing. the reader sitting across from

you and um and and you're playing this

game. You're playing this cat and mouse

game with that reader and and and the

other important thing about that reader

is you have to go for the highest common

denominator. I if you're going to write

a bestseller, there has to be common

denominator. It's got to work for a lot

of people, but you want to write for the

highest common denominator. That's uh

it's a really good thriller reader. It's

a really good mystery reader because you

have to satisfy that person. If you

satisfy that person, you're going to

satisfy everybody else.

It is rare. Uh, you know, I'll do the

outlines and I'm preaching outline,

outline, outline. I almost never uh do

the ending that's in the outline. I

would well at least more than 50% of the

time it's a different ending because

just in writing the book so much has

changed. So many things have happened.

The stakes get bigger and bigger and

bigger. Um the villain gets more

interesting. Um something may have

happened to the hero along the line that

was a little unexpected.

Um, and and I I it's the ending that I

write in the outline is never and I

think part of

I I think part of the problem is is the

outline is is a bit more logical than

emotional and and by the time I get to

that ending, my emotions are really

churning and I'm always feeling it just

needs more. It needs more than this. It

it just can't be about logic. It it has

to be logic and emotion. You got to feel

something in most cases. Certainly in

commercial fiction, you should feel

something. You should, you know, and

whether it's a a tragic ending, uh, in

which you go, "Oh, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no." That can be incredibly

effective and appropriate. Uh, I can't

believe, oh my god, I I got to tell

people, "Oh, Jesus." You know, that's

that's good. That's a good thing. Happy

ending. Once again, that can be terrific

if if it's honest. uh you know where

where that reader or or or the person in

the movie is going, "Oh [ __ ] man.

That's oh yeah, baby." You know, that's

good. That's a good thing.

The ending should be really satisfying,

surprising, whatever. But it's got to

it's needs to be appropriate. It's got

to flow out of the out of the rest of

the book. Set up things that are coming.

Okay? All through the book, you're going

to be, you know, something's coming. You

need to set it up a lot of times for it

to really be effective. You know, in

Honeymoon, the second chapter had to be

set up by the first chapter. Meaning

that if I hadn't seen that couple and

really loved them together, it would not

be terrific to have her show up at this

next house. Honey, I'm home. Okay. So

that chapter set up the the the the

second chapter in the book. You can be

12 chapters ahead and and beginning to

set up something that you know is going

to happen at the end of part one. And

you should do that. That's going to make

it, you know, you might be setting it up

a couple times. And even in terms of

your ending, uh uh you can be you can be

setting that up. Now, the trick with

with with setting things up is do not

give away clues and hints where the

right then the reader reads it and goes,

"Oh, okay. I know who it is." That is a

disaster. That is endgame. That is total

dissatisfaction with the novel and and

uh uh uh and and and the ending. So the

trick is how do you set it up without

giving it away or and misleading them.

That's that's another one of the things

you want to be doing. Mislead them. Have

them think it's going this way. Now the

here's the trick with misleading. You

cannot mislead to the point where they

go, I got it figured out and I hate it.

Okay? You're misleading them. But if in

misleading them they think they figured

it out and they go, "This sucks." That's

no good. That's no good. So, so much of

it is just you being really aware of

what you're doing. Um,

uh, and what the effect of that's going

to be on another person. Okay? You're

you're, as I've said, I like to pretend

I'm sitting across from somebody. I'm

telling them a story. I don't want them

to get up till I'm finished. Okay? You

have to do the same thing. You're

sitting across from somebody and it's a

cat and mouse game. It really is. At

least with with this kind of commercial

fiction, you're playing a game with

them. Don't feel bad about it because

they chose to sit there. They want to

sit there. They want to play cat-and-

mouse with you. They want that

experience. That's what they're paying

for. They're paying to to play cat-and-

mouse with you. And that's what a lot of

reviewers don't get. They're sitting

there. They want to play the game. They

want to play the game of mysteries and

puzzles and what's going to happen next.

uh and why did it happen and and and and

is it clever and is it logical? They

they want to play that game with you.

You got to play it on your side. Okay.

So So you need to be you need to be as

good or better than they are as as a

game player. It is a game.

What is a satisfying ending with Along

Came a Spider? the ending was not the

ending uh um from the outline.

Um

but but what you had there was you had

Alex really falling in love with with an

FBI agent uh um who turns out to be one

of the villains and uh there were there

were two two villains, one a real madman

and the madman

uh sort of faked insanity. Um, so he

goes away to prison and he will

eventually escape from prison.

Meanwhile, Jezi gets executed. It's just

the irony of the really really hateful

uh um bad guy kind of who's going to get

away, who's going to skate. uh and and

this crashing of Alex's romance where um

the um the person who he's trusted and

been in love with is is is going to get

executed. I mean, that's that's

satisfying, I think, just because it's

just the irony is just so incredible and

the shock is so incredible and the

surprise and just go, "Yeah, boy, that's

I didn't see that coming and it fits and

holy shit." you know, so so so so that's

that's one way to do it.

In terms of your ending, the more artful

thing is going to be some ambiguity,

some mystery, some uh something maybe

unsettling.

Uh uh and the critics will like it

better and some of your super smart

readers will like it better. And then

some of the people that that really

they're they're in a habit of what they

like from the genre are going to like it

less. Uh so you got to figure out what's

right for you. I mean, just know that

that's the reality. Uh uh some of the

the more adventurous readers are going

to really like that ambiguity. Critics

are going to like the ambiguity. Uh and

some of the people that just, you know,

I want it to be the way it should be.

You know, they're not going to like it.

A lot of people had problems with that.

ending of that first book, which was

Alice Cross's family is missing. Sorry.

Oh, the spoiler alert. Hold it. Oh, too

late. I already told the pro, you know,

spoiler alert. Um, Alice Cross's family

is missing and and and presumably dead,

which you don't know. And a lot of

people said, "Oh, I can't believe it.

You bastard. You're just trying to get

us to buy another book." Well, I really

wasn't. Uh, I felt it was a terrific

ending, a terrific ending for the thing

to to just leave it there. Um, and and

people are funny, you know, they'll

watch television shows and, you know, at

the end of the season, the whole cast is

in a plane accident and, you know, see

you in September. And they go, "Oh,

okay, fine." You know, I'm, you know,

we'll see you in September. You do it in

a book and everybody's birch. They're

writing letters and they're giving you

Fs on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and

stuff. you didn't give it an ending. So,

but I just felt it was the right ending.

A and B, I felt I had another 400page

book. So, I didn't want to write a

900page Alice Cross book, which also

would have pissed people off. I don't

want to read 900 page. Well, you usually

do them. They're 4 to 500 pages. I mean,

that's a weird thing of people. They get

used to stuff. And that's a genre

problem, too. Certain people get in and

they expect certain things in the genre,

and I don't like to do that. I don't

like to give them what they're

expecting, but I do I do some of that

anyway. It just, you know, because I

feel it's I feel it's right for me, not

not necessarily because I feel it's

right for them.

I mean, frequently there'll be an extra

ending or or an ending and then an

epilogue, uh, which may go a whole

different way. People are more forgiving

of epilogues for some reason. So you can

you can you can make that e even in a

thriller. I mean one of the tricks with

thrillers,

good thrillers

is

the best thrillers, not only do they

have pace and excitement and suspense,

but you really get involved with the

characters. Okay. the the so- so

thrillers um

are usually primarily the the pace is

good and the excitement is pretty good

and there's a suspense idea but you

really don't care that much about the

characters

are a little stock um uh but the best

thrillers you really are I mean people

really are involved with Alex Cross

they're really involved with Lindsay

Boxer and the women's murder club um

they're involved with m with Mike

Bennett and and that's really important

And that allows you, you know, once you

have a series going, uh, um, you know,

you can have the ending to the suspense

story and then you can have an epilogue

where Alice just goes back to the family

and you're just happy that they're back

together and it's a sweet scene and

that's cool. that that works for

everybody. And and and there that also

gives you that option of one of the

endings can be really ambiguous and and

and and maybe not even an ending that

you know that bad guy got away because

you want to write about that that that

that villain again. Um u but there the

readers aren't going to go nuts. They'll

they'll accept

um as long as that ending ending, the

last one in the book is something where

they can go, "Okay, yeah, I'm cool with

that. Lindsay Boxer had her baby."

whatever the hell it is.

You saw a movie, what worked, what

didn't work. You watched a TV show, what

worked, what didn't work. Uh analyze

stuff yourself. I mean, just sit there,

you know, every ending you watch I if

you if you felt good about it, why what

happened there that that made you feel

good about it? Uh um and and and then

there's no I don't think there are any

rule. Maybe there are maybe somebody's

figured out some rules. you got to go to

somebody else's class for it. Um, but

but do study, not to copy the stuff.

Don't copy it, but but you know, you

should be taking notes in your head

about what's working, what isn't

working, why did you feel satisfied? You

know, go through anything you can

remember. Why did that work for you?

What what happened there?

Now, here's the real secret, okay? uh to

endings. And and this is one of these

pieces that's worth the price of

admission to to the class.

When when it comes to endings, and this

can be endings of chapters or or the

endings of of the book, write down

everything that could possibly happen.

Absolutely everything. I don't care how

ridiculous it is. Just keep writing down

this could happen. This could happen.

Oh, let me see what else. This could

happen. Think through all the

characters. Just think through

everything that's happened in the book.

Think through everything that hasn't

happened in the book. What could

possibly happen here? Bullet after

bullet after bullet after bullet. Then

pick the most outrageous one of them

that makes sense. It's got to make

sense. It's got a track with the book,

but the most outrageous one is going to

be the best one in my opinion.

For me and for a lot of writers, and I think for most of you,

editing, polishing-- and I'm talking

about what you're doing yourself,

not when the book gets to a publishing house.

It's the whole ball of wax.

It's not writing.

It's rewriting, and it's rewriting, and it's rewriting.

I like to do many drafts.

I've done as many as nine or ten drafts.

But I do the drafts very quickly.

I don't get constipated.

I

Don't get worried.

I just keep going.

I just-- let's do it again, let's do it again,

let's do it again.

And this has been true whether I'm writing a 400-page book

or when I was in advertising, doing a 30-second television

spot.

Write it again, write it again, write it again.

Look at it sideways.

Look at it upside down.

Turn it around.

There's nothing wrong.

You should be considering every possibility.

The rewriting-- there's so many different pieces of it.

There is the getting a story even better,

getting those chapters closer to where you want them to be.

You might do that a couple times-- might

be two months, a month and a month,

where you just work on the chapters.

Or it may be a two or three-month thing

where you just work on just getting that scene right.

And the first rewrite, I might just

be trying to get those chapters, that story,

to be more coherent, clearer, just

trying to make sure I really got the heart of it correctly.

And that's very important.

That's the most important thing.

Once again, it's always that same thing

of moving the story and characterization forward.

And if you keep simple things like that in your head,

and I repeat them, but you should repeat them

for the rest of your writing life, because that's all it is.

And it's unbelievable how quickly you forget that,

because there you are in your writing,

and it's not happening.

And you're not realizing that to it's

the rewriting and rewriting and the rewriting,

and remembering those things about what am I trying to do?

Trying to hold the reader.

And that's it.

I mean, you may get so good that that's just an automatic,

but I don't know if that happens with many writers.

And that's why you'll find certain writers

where every other book seems to be a dud.

It seems like they kind of forget it for a whole book.

And that happens.

I mean, I don't know if I forgotten it for a whole book,

but I've certainly forgotten it for sections.

But then I'll read it, and go, like, man this sucks.

This is just not happening.

OK, what did I do wrong here?

And invariably the big thing I did wrong

was I'm not moving the thing forward.

It's sitting there for 40 pages, just sitting there.

That does not work-- doesn't work for the reader.

What happened?

It sat there, sat there for 50 pages.

No, story can't sit there.

Consider not polishing the book until you've written it,

at least one draft.

Because if you don't do it that way, what happens is you'll

write all these cool sentences, and paragraphs,

and pages, and sometimes chapters that

shouldn't be in the book.

And you've got to cut those fuckers out.

And if you love the sentence, or you love the paragraph,

or you love the chapter, you'll have a lot of trouble

cutting it, but it should go.

It's almost a discipline of poetry in terms

of writing those scenes.

You eliminate everything that doesn't really

make that scene work, ideally.

So if it's supposed to be a fresh, scarier than hell

whatever thing it is, anything that distracts from that

is out.

The greatest joke in the world-- no.

Description of the woods that is-- no.

If it doesn't really get at that core of what

that scene should be, it goes.

One of the writers that I work with, Marshall Karp,

is very fricking funny.

And when we're working together, one of the tricks

there is, if we're into a part of that book

where it's supposed to be suspenseful,

the funny gets in the way.

The funny got to go, because it's diminishing

the impact of those chapters.

Look, we all fall in love with-- we'll start writing something.

Oh, this is so, I've never-- this

is the most lyrical writing I've ever done, dadada.

And you know what?

Sometimes it's just boring.

You go, this is really beautifully written,

but who cares?

It's just not that beautifully written.

Look, I mean, you may be the greatest stylist in the world.

And if you are, you can write anything.

But if you're not, you should listen

to some of the things we're talking about.

Everything communicates.

Everything communicates.

And you just have to be so aware.

And that's another thing where that, when you polish,

you've got to take out stuff that just isn't right on point.

The dialogue is a piece of the puzzle,

and an important piece of the puzzle in most cases.

Occasionally, you'll read a book that doesn't

have a lot of dialogue in it.

I think those are really hard to do.

And like the rest of the book, it really-- you do

need, and I think in particular, edit.

Because when you write dialogue, it just tends to flow,

I think, for most people.

Once you get a conversation going,

he said, she said, dadada it'll just kind of flow out,

and unlike maybe writing some of the description,

which might be a little more of a labor.

So really it's important you go back and rewrite it, and edit

it.

And then edit it again, and edit it again.

Because you just keep taking out lines

that either don't ring true, or shouldn't be in there

in the first place.

And sometimes, if you look a chapter and you go,

boy, this thing is really dragging.

And one of things you want to look at

is, OK, here's these three pages of dialogue.

And maybe it should have been a page.

I have a relatively short attention span.

I like things to happen quickly.

I like to get to the point.

In life, I've sort of figured out what I really enjoy doing.

So I try to mostly just do that.

And I think that is one of the reasons why

the stuff that I write is so fast paced, because I

want to just keep it going.

I want to know what happens next, what happens next.

If you're on a roll, and its I'm really hooked into this thing,

don't let them off.

Don't stop.

And I see that all the time, even when

I cowrite with somebody, and they'll do a draft.

And I'm going, oh, man, this thing was rolling.

And then all of a sudden, why did you

have the guy go play the flute for awhile?

Not now.

I mean, I'm totally into the story.

And suddenly it was like did you forget how well you have

people involved in the story?

Writers do that all the time.

And pace will pay the electric bills, by the way.

If you have books that people can't put down,

and they keep turning those pages-- in England,

I think the line they use with my books is,

"the pages turn themselves."

It can seem overwhelming until you realize--

and this is a kind of anything you learn-- you need

to break it down into parts.

The parts are manageable.

You can conquer the parts.

You can conquer the chapter.

You can conquer Part One.

You can conquer creating that character, and then

the next character.

But if you try to look at the whole thing,

it can be overwhelming.

You go, oh, I can't do this.

You need to be confident that as you're rewriting,

it's a good thing.

It's getting better.

It's not that you made mistakes.

And I think that's an important distinction for you to make.

You shouldn't be wringing, oh, my god,

I made all these mistakes.

No, you didn't make mistakes.

You're just making it better.

You're making it better, you're making it better,

you're making it better, you're making it tighter.

You're getting closer to what it should be.

You had a vague image in your head of what

it should be-- really vague.

And this image is just getting tighter and tighter,

and you're getting closer and closer and closer

to what the book needs to be.

But please don't beat yourself up.

And don't think-- you're not making mistakes because you

have to keep fixing things.

Some people are not comfortable with this idea of co-authors

or collaborating, and I think it's

a much bigger deal than it is.

So here's what I have to say to those people.

Lennon and McCartney, Simon and Garfunkel,

Stephen King and Peter Strauss, Rodgers and Hammerstein,

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child,

Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, Gilbert and Sullivan, Woodward

and Bernstein, Joel and Ethan Coen,

Matt Stone and Trey Parker.

What's great about working with co-writers

is that you get two talents.

Collaboration is a good thing.

I know we have this thing about the American,

we just go out and do everything by ourselves.

And that's OK, but collaboration is really good.

Combining strengths is really good.

[CELLO SOLO]

What I look for in a co-writer are

people that can write convincing scenes, because the outline is

going to lay out the scenes.

Now we may add scenes.

They may add scenes on their own, which is just fine.

But they have to be able to write convincing scenes.

We know what it's supposed to do.

We knew what that scene in Honeymoon was supposed to do.

We knew that it had to make us feel great about both

of those main characters.

So I'm looking for somebody, for people that can do that.

Secondly, it has to be people that know that this is a James

Patterson novel.

It's going to be pace-y.

It's going to be maybe faster than they

would write their own work.

It's going to really move along.

And if they're comfortable doing that and like doing it

and enjoy doing it.

All the co-writers I think enjoy what they're

doing, which is important.

I think they look forward to getting up and writing

this stuff.

And it's important that I make them feel invested enough

in each book.

[CELLO SOLO]

I love working with Jim.

The process is terrific.

I don't know how it works for other people

or if we do it differently, but for me is fantastic.

He gives me an outline and I read the outline

and I get the story.

And then I'm asked to contribute to the outline,

because, as he says, you've got to write this stuff.

So I really try to imagine how it's

going to go during the length of the book.

And I send him back some notes and then he agrees or disagrees

and then we have a working plan for the entire novel.

And the way that works for me is they will get the outline.

I then try to-- I want them involved

in terms of contributing to the outline for a couple reasons.

One is that they might have some good ideas.

And secondly, it invests them in the process.

Even if they only add a small amount,

it's incredible how they feel invested

and they'll go like, that fixed everything.

And maybe it did, maybe didn't, but the important thing

is in their heads they're invested.

[CELLO SOLO]

But one of the things that's interesting about co-writers

or even people writing a series, once the voice

of the characters are there, you'll

find so your basic series might over the course of the series

have 9, 10, 15 different writers,

and they're all capable.

Let's say the series is House.

They know how House talks, they know how he thinks,

and they can write that stuff.

The hard part is whoever put down that first thing

where they've established how House talks and thinks.

That's the real hard thing.

The hardest part any project is finding the voice.

How is this book going to talk to you?

For instance.

When we started working on iFunny books

for middle graders, finding that right voice.

Like we didn't want it to sound like Henny Youngman talking

to you, hey, hey, boom, boom, here's

another joke, because that would get annoying after like three

pages.

So it took us a little while to find Jamie's voice.

But once you find it, then you can go off and running.

But once it's down, it apparently

is a lot easier for writers to mimic that.

So once the series is going, it becomes easier for the writer.

They know how Michael Bennett talks and thinks.

[CELLO SOLO]

The way publishers work, I don't really think it's the best.

They'll say, go write your book.

And then it comes in and they go, oh gee,

this isn't what I was thinking it was going to be.

Or, this isn't what I was looking for.

Or, gee, we got a lot of work to do.

I really want to see stuff every couple of weeks.

And I generally write about 10 chapters in a flight.

And when I've written the 10 chapters I send them Jim.

Now he doesn't use a coomputer, so it goes first

to his assistant, Mary.

And then Mary sends it to Jim, Jim reads

and he calls me back the next day, which is so phenomenal.

I just think it's very unusual in a very good way

to get such a quick response.

And I'm waiting for it.

We joke, you know, is it OK to go to the bathroom

while we wait, because Jim might call.

I'm very quick about I will get pages and a lot of people

can't do this or won't do this.

I'm actually reading and taking notes as I go.

I'll just be writing notes right on the side of the page.

The same when I get scripts from Hollywood.

I'm making my notes as I go and suggestions

if it's appropriate.

When he calls back, I tape record what he says.

He knows it.

This is not a secret.

And I do that so I can play back what

he has told me about the pages I have given him.

And also I attach an outline, part of the outline

for the next 10 chapters.

And I do that so we can see if anything has changed

since the first 10 chapters were written

or if there's anything we want to add

or some big new idea that comes.

Normally, it's as written, and then

I write the next 10 chapters and send them to Jim

and so it goes so that he can comment and stop things

if it's going wrong.

And he can encourage me and tell me it's going great

if it's going great.

And I'll read it and get back to the people

immediately, like usually that day, and go, I read it.

Keep going.

This is wonderful.

Or hold it.

We're off the tracks.

We've lost it in terms of pace of I've lost a character

or it's flat or whatever I think the problems are.

And usually it will be you'll start with something

very generic like that.

There's no pace to this.

It just all of a sudden it just stopped.

The whole book stopped.

Or this isn't the character that started the book.

Something is changed.

Or the writing is very flat for whatever reason.

And we'll talk about that.

And sometimes I'll go through every chapter

and go here are my suggestions in terms

of how I think it should work.

[CELLO SOLO]

The interesting thing with Maxine, Maxine and I

knew each other for a long time.

She actually was an advertising headhunter

who I met who never got me a job but I

didn't know that against her.

And then she started writing your own stuff.

Wrote a couple of novels.

One of them did fairly well.

And then she started writing a lot of magazine articles, which

I thought were pretty clever and neat.

And she worked a little bit doing some research

and then we tried something together,

and it wasn't really cooking.

I couldn't figure out why.

And eventually it struck me and what I asked Maxine to do

and what she does now just beautifully and does it

constantly-- I ask all the other writers

to do the same thing-- is research everything.

Jim said this to me back in the early days.

If you're blocked, it's because you don't have enough research.

And boy is that true.

I mean if you don't know what you're writing,

you don't have enough information.

If you get information, even if it's wrong information,

it can lead you to the right information.

You research a certain town.

The town doesn't work, but something about that town

might put an idea in your head that will work

for the chapter you're doing.

So he told me once research everything

right down to the bee sting, and I do that.

So with Maxine that was pivotal, and it changed from stuff

that I couldn't use to her being the ideal co-writer.

I mean we work great together.

But the thing with Chris is the big strength

is he's just frickin' hilarious.

And it just goes on and on and on.

The only thing we always have to be careful of

is too many jokes totally overwhelming the story.

OK, it's like you just the story just stopped because we just

got into this joke after joke after joke after joke

after joke.

And hold it there's no story anymore.

You know I think iFunny would be a completely different book

if it was just jokes.

Joke, joke, joke, joke, joke.

But what makes that work is Jim put the humor and the heart

together, and he has this incredible ability

to like we'll have some really silly scenes going

on just the craziest stuff.

And then there'll be one, the kids write to me

and they say they cried when they read that book.

There's a couple scenes in iFunny

when we find out what put Jamie is wheelchair and stuff.

There's a mystery.

There's always a mystery.

Pull people through.

Why does this kid get in a wheelchair?

We're getting hints about it, but why

is he living with his aunt and uncle?

What happened to him?

And then when you finally reveal it,

it really can just warm your heart.

And it's like you want to do that nicely and quickly and not

like make it all sappy and sentimental,

but you want to put some heart in everything you do.

So the balancing act that we always

play is, OK, let's hold it because the story just

stopped for the last seven chapters.

And it stopped because we stopped being aware

of it moving forward and we got so in love

with the writing and the jokes that the story stopped.

So that's always a balance with Chris, who is very funny

and a very good writer.

[CELLO SOLO]

When I first started working for Jim,

he would always try to put me in the mood for the chapters.

And he told me when this man goes into the house,

pretend it's the prettiest little house

in the town in which you live.

Pretend that he's setting fire to your house, which

was a really terrifying notion.

But Jim was right.

So I put my killer in house.

He went in, he killed a mother.

He went in, he killed the father.

He went upstairs.

He screwed the gun into the ears of the little children.

He killed them, too.

On the way out he shot the cat and then

he set fire to the whole house.

And when it was over, Jim said to me,

I really didn't know you were this blood-thirsty.

And I thought me?

You sent me on this mission.

I killed a lot of people in that book.

And at the same time I brought the lovers together

in the last scene.

So when I say I, I want everybody to know it's also we.

We're collaborating during the whole course of this book.

And gee, I love to collaborate.

I love it.

And it's especially great to collaborate with Jim,

because he knows where he's going.

He knows what he wants.

He knows it when he sees it, and he's

a tremendous sounding board and co-laborator.

[CELLO SOLO]

Basically the co-writing is a one-draft process.

At the end of the draft, depending

on the co-writer and depending on how well it's turned out,

I will do rewriting.

And then as they will tell you, I fucked it all up

by kind of rewriting it.

I find that by and large people think either

that Jim writes the whole book and then he

lets us put our name on it, or that we write the whole book

and we let him put his picture on the back.

And in fact it's a real collaboration.

I say this absolutely from my heart.

It's a combined effort.

He's the mastermind, comes up with the big idea.

I write a lot of words between the covers,

and he takes a book when it's over.

But it is a genuine collaboration.

We're always in each other's thoughts, words,

I've been through the pain of trying to get an agent,

trying to get a publisher, trying to get a good editor,

so I know what you're going through,

and the best thing I can tell you

is one word, which is "persistence."

And just be prepared and don't take it personally.

My first book turned down by 31 publishers.

You're going to get a lot of rejection here, and a lot of it

may have nothing to do with your book.

[CELLO SOLO]

The first novel that I wrote was The Thomas Berryman Number,

and I sent it out to a few agents and publishers myself.

I got back some rejections, form notices, half-page whatever.

A couple of publishers, one publisher,

William Morris actually, held it for quite awhile.

And I'm like, oh my god, oh my god,

William Morris is going to publish it.

Then they rejected it.

And at that point I just happened

to read a little piece in The New York Times Book Review

about an agent who was taking on young writers.

So I sent it over to that agent and like two days later

I get a phone call, and I'm like, I

can't believe this agent's turned it down that quickly

and the agent actually said, no, no.

I want to handle you.

And this may happen to you.

The agent said, "This is a terrific book.

We're going to sell it.

You've done a great job.

But there are some changes that should be made."

And he said, "I have an editor who I work with sometimes

who's really good at working with young writers, Jay Acton,

and let me send it over to Jay and see

if Jay wants to work with you."

OK, so I go over and meet Jay Acton.

A nice guy, a smart guy.

He has some thoughts.

I go back and rewrite for a month or so.

We submit it back to Jay.

Jay rejects it.

I'm heartbroken.

The agent says, "Don't worry.

This book is in great shape now.

We're going to sell it."

They got like four offers within the week

for The Thomas Berryman Number.

Then I went in and this actually was so much fun.

Little, Brown wanted it the most.

In those days Little, Brown was still in Boston,

and I went up on Beacon Hill and went to their offices.

And I'm sitting in this room filled

with all the books they've published

in there's Catcher in the Rye, and there's

Herman Wouk, Youngblood Hawke, and all this stuff.

And the fire's burning in a fireplace.

It's real old-time stuff.

And it was the best.

I mean I'll never forget being in that office and thinking,

oh my god, they're going to publish my damn book.

[CELLO SOLO]

You need to reach out.

You need to reach out to mentors.

Just trying to get some contacts.

Contacts are really important.

Introductions are important.

If you can get introduced to an editor or publishing

executive or an agent somehow, or any kind of an introduction,

it helps.

A former professor, a writing teacher,

writer friends with published books,

media executives, lawyers in the space.

Those are all useful in terms of you're just

going to have to pester them a little,

but hopefully do it in a way that's

not going to irritate them.

Persistence without being irritating,

because people swat away irritants.

You want to be the kind of persistent person

where they get on your side ultimately.

If you don't have those kinds of people in your life,

you have to try and find them.

One of the things you can do in terms of looking for leads

is scan the acknowledgment sections

of books by authors admire, or even authors you don't admire,

who are relevant maybe in the genre.

You can actually do this at a bookstore

or buy the books or at the library.

And look for the author's agent's names.

That's one place.

If you have an author and you see

that their agent is such and such,

there's some indication that that agent

handles writers in the genre you want to write in.

[CELLO SOLO]

You're going to have to send the agent a query letter.

And this can be the publisher as well,

but you're better off with an agent.

If you can get an agent, it's usually important,

because the agent is that liaison

between you and the publishers.

And the agent, their reputation is based on their relationships

with publishers and editors, so they're not

going to send out something that they don't believe in.

But in terms of writing to an agent,

or if you're going to go to a publisher,

that query letter is essential, because it's not

only a sample of your writing, which is important,

I mean you need to really craft that letter,

it's also-- and outline the letter.

Outline the letter.

What are the bullet points?

What do you want to accomplish with this letter?

What are the selling points for your book?

Outline it.

Just put down bullets-- boom, boom, boom, boom, boom--

and then what's the perfect order for that?

The first line, same with when you're writing the book,

it's got to hook that editor or agent where they're going,

OK, I'm hooked right from the get-go here.

So if it's just some boring piece

about biography, your autobiography,

that's not going to make it.

What's the real hook for the editor or the agent.

Why should they take on your book?

You might go back to the chapter where

we talked about first lines.

First lines are really important in this query letter.

And that first line you're communicating

to another human being, asking them

to do something that's really going to be difficult for them.

They're going to have to spend six or seven

hours with your manuscript.

They do not want to do this unless you have really

convinced them that this is something

that either they can make money with or do just a great thing.

In other words, the kind of book that you

might get spectacular reviews and maybe not

make a lot of money.

And a lot of agents are cool with that, too.

And that's another thing in terms of deciding what kind

of an agent you want to go to.

If you look through the literature,

you'll be able to get a client list for most of the agents.

You'll be able to see who else they handle.

That's also useful for you to look at.

Obviously you can send a query letter.

You could conceivably send a query letter and a chapter.

You could do that if you think the chapter's absolutely

going to sell them.

So the query letter, if it's a great you query letter

and they're really fascinated by the query later,

if you actually sent the chapter with it, one of two things

that's going to happen.

They're either going to throw it all in the garbage,

or the query letter will drive them to the chapter,

and that can work.

That can actually begin to seal the deal.

[CELLO SOLO]

And be prepared for once again we go back to persistence.

A lot of the letters you're going to write you're

not going to get anything back from them.

When The Thomas Berryman Number, my first book,

when that one out, and was rejected by several publishers,

even though a couple of the letters were encouraging,

that is tough.

Previous to that, I had sent out several short stories

and you just get the little form note back.

That's really tough, because at that point,

and I'm sure a lot of you're going through this,

you just questioning can I do this?

Am I any good at it?

Is this is a joke?

Am I kidding myself?

And most of you aren't, but you have to realize how hard it is

and how much you have to practice

and how hard you have to be on yourself without driving

yourself insane.

You're going to get rejections.

Live with it.

It's just part of the process.

And I just recently, you know I'm James Patterson,

I recently sent out letters to half a dozen--

I'm doing this documentary series,

and I did the first documentary myself.

It's about hometowns-- and I sent out to five or six writers

and actors or whatever and nobody wrote back to me.

Not even assistants.

It's like, huh?

If you send me a letter, I'm going to write back to you.

So just get used to it.

Even at this stage I'm getting it

[CELLO SOLO]

When I walked out of the Little, Brown offices up

on Beacon Hill initially, way up in Boston, I'm floating.

I can still remember.

I can still remember their offices.

I can still remember Ned Bradford coming

into the room, my editor.

I can still remember leaving the place and just walking around

and people looking at me because I

was like six inches above the sidewalk floating.

And people look at people when they're

floating above the sidewalk.

But just that feeling and then taking the shuttle back

to New York.

And it's just it's the greatest.

I mean it's just-- and I think one

of the things that is important I think

and useful is to learn to really revel

in all of the good pieces, because there

are going to be setbacks and stuff's going to happen.

So you give it to your spouse and they love it.

Revel in that.

You give it to a friend who you trust and they like it.

Really enjoy that, because all that's-- one,

it makes your life better.

It's funny with people.

People are strange to me.

If you offered me two cups, one is a couple of joy

and one is a cup of pain, I'm taken a frigging cup of joy

every time.

Some people sit there and go, oh, I don't know.

On the one hand-- And I go, what are you, fucking nuts?

Take the couple of joy.

Take the cup of joy.

No book has ever been bought that wasn't picked up, OK?

And to some extent what makes you pick it up is the cover.

It needs to immediately tell people

that that's that genre that they love.

Oh, I love mystery, oh I love Noir mysteries.

It looks like a Noir mystery.

But then, it needs to look like a unique Noir mystery, one

I haven't read before.

It's not just an issue of, boy that's

a beautiful design, or that's cool, or that's innovative,

or that's new, or I haven't seen that before.

It really is a major communication

about what's inside.

All right, so this is my break out novel.

The first title on this one was Remember Maggie Rose,

and the girl who gets kidnapped, her name is Maggie Rose.

So that was the first title.

It's not a bad title.

One of the issues with it, there's

a couple issues with the title.

One is, is it really good to be writing a book, that you want

to really sell well, about a missing child

to make that the key selling point, question mark.

Secondly, when I sold this book, part of the deal

was that they wanted a second book about Alex Cross.

And I hadn't been thinking of a series,

it was just going to be this one book.

But the publisher wanted a second book.

So then, we came into, OK, what can help people

to identify that it's a series.

And what I came up with was nursery rhyme titles, which

hadn't been used in a big way.

So Along Came A Spider, kind of scary,

I can tell that it's going to be thrilling,

it's going to be a little scary, but it's

not a turn off, and especially in terms of the look of this.

Art directors don't particularly like a lot of big type covers.

But sometimes they're very, very effective.

All of the Robert Ludlums were big type covers,

all of the John Le Carre.

People just go, OK, I get it, it's probably

going to be a mystery thriller, it's probably

going to be a page turner.

So this is a real mass cover and it's the beginning of a series.

And I don't know if it's brilliant brilliant,

but it worked very well.

Now, here, once again, the Little Brown

really went all out for this.

They got quotes from Nelson DeMille, and Clive Cussler,

Ed McBain, Ann Rule, and Sidney Sheldon.

So they really went for it in terms of-- you read this

and you go, OK well, obviously, there's some-- One,

if you like some of the authors you go, oh Nelson DeMille,

I like him, he's smart.

If he says it's good I'm going to kind of believe it.

If you've got five big authors, it's communicating, obviously,

there's a lot of enthusiasm about this book.

So I'm feeling I'm feeling good about spending

my money on this.

No picture, which as you can see by looking at me,

is a good idea.

Honeymoon is a good title.

Most people have either experienced it

or want to experience it, it's a very emotional time.

Nothing bad should happen on your honeymoon, nothing tragic,

nothing horrifying.

So the notion of writing a thriller about honeymoons

is, I think, a rich one.

Now, how do we make it fresh?

And Little Brown went through a lot of covers here.

And eventually, it became, let's put a honeymoon image on there

that's really engaging and visual

and they originally had a photograph--

and for some reason, and once again this is just emotional,

I just felt that-- I looked at the thing

and I went I'm not feeling it, I don't feel the magic here.

It's just not really turning me on.

I said, let's try to paint it.

Let's try to take a photograph of a sailboat

and painted it instead.

And, I think, if we do that correctly,

it'll be fresher and more engaging.

So actually, the art director painted it, the art director

for the for the book cover.

And, I think, that the end result was terrific.

I think, it's a very handsome cover.

It's just one of those covers that just

says, pick me up and buy me.

And I've talked all along about this notion

of suspense being built around questions

that have to be answered.

And this is a little bit of a storytelling cover in that,

for instance, something bad is happening out there,

something very bad.

So it's kind of sucking you in a little bit,

I'm kind of interested.

So on some level we also have this--

we're posing a question right now.

What does Zoo possibly have to do with the city of Paris?

The whole thing in the store is you've

got to get their attention.

This is attention getting and then, you

have to get them to pick it up.

Nobody buys a book that they don't pick up.

In the advertising business-- and they bring new people

into the agency-- one of the things I would

do in terms of trying to explain, how can you make it,

how can you stay in the business,

how can you get famous doing it?

I would stand up there with a cream pie in my hand,

and I'd look around the room, and I'd invite somebody up,

and they would stand by me, and I got this cream pie,

and I'm looking at them, I'm looking at them,

And then I-- and I'm the chairman,

CEO of the company-- I hand them the cream plan and I go,

hit me.

They would hit me with the cream pie

and I'd say-- with the cream pie all over my face-- I would say,

this is the whole secret.

Hit the consumer in the face with the cream pie,

while you have their attention, say something really smart.

There's nothing else, that's the whole business, OK?

And that's the cover.

Him them in the face with the cream pie

and then say something smart.

Same thing if you have little displays in the store,

it's the same thing.

Bizarrely, there is a Harvard case study on me,

and I think one of things that the professors found

interesting is that they could write

about me the way they write about Coca Cola as a brand.

I don't particularly think of myself as a brand,

but they at least found that angle to be interesting.

It's been written that I've changed publishing somewhat.

I think what I changed was just common sense things.

Like a lot of businesses, once it gets into a groove,

new people come in and they don't change with the times.

They just kind of keep doing what they've been doing.

And in a lot of cases I just question everything.

It's not necessarily that I want to change anything.

[CELLO SOLO]

There was always this thing you should just publish the one

book every year and you publish it the same month

and that became a model.

And it worked for a publisher, Putnam, for a number of years,

and it just became this little machine.

And here was Robin Cook, and every April or whatever

the month was he would publish the next novel.

I said I don't really understand why that should be,

and I remember going into the publisher one point I said,

I want to do three novels this year,

and it was like oh, I don't know about that.

I said, Well, let me tell you the books.

I gave him the idea for Beach House, which was a thriller set

out in the Hamptons.

And then I gave them an idea for a couple a book called

Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas, and when

I went through that story the publisher actually

cried when I was telling the story.

And then afterward he said, OK, we want to do Beach House,

but we don't want to do Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas

because we don't think it's your brand.

And I said, look not that I know everything about brands,

but such as it is, here's what I think a brand is.

A brand is a relationship between a product

or in this case me and customers.

It's just a relationship.

I know that Crest toothpaste gets my teeth clear,

or acceptably clean, or I think it

does, and does a little something for my breath.

So I have a relationship.

I've been using it since I've been a kid,

and I don't really want to think about toothpaste so much,

and that's just fine.

In the case of my books, I think the relationship that I have is

I know that if James Patterson writes a book

the pages are going to turn themselves.

That's the relationship.

That's the expectation.

That's what I'm going to deliver.

So that's my opinion about what a brand is,

and the fact that I could write in different genres

was kind of mind-blowing for a lot of publishers.

Then the notion of oh, he's writing two books a year.

Oh my god, he's writing four books a year.

Oh my god, 10 books a year.

If I stop writing 10 books a year at this point,

a lot of people at the publishing house

would have heart attacks.

So we've gone from like, how can you do that?

To please don't stop.

[CELLO SOLO]

Tragically, because of my lurid past in advertising,

I do get sucked into the marketing advertising process,

including certainly looking at the tag

lines that are being written for the books or for the ads.

And you always come down to like what's going

to be a particularly good one.

For Along Came a Spider-- and this was one that I wrote,

and what it was is, "You can stop

waiting for the next Silence of the Lambs.

And this was about five or six years

after Silence of the Lambs, and it took a long time

to do the sequel and you knew the people are going, oh yeah,

we can't wait.

So that notion of at least getting

people's attention and the promise of maybe this

is a pretty good one, that's a rich line.

It gives me the genre.

It gives me a promise.

I know I'm interested.

[CELLO SOLO]

And then you're going to get into the area of print

advertising, radio advertising, possibly

television advertising.

And in terms of print, it's the same thing.

Here's this space in a newspaper, this space

or whatever the space is, that I'm going to notice it

and that I'm going to be motivated by it.

It's kind of that simple.

There's an awful lot of stuff that shows up a newspaper

and you're just kind of flipping,

and it's got to be where you go, oh, it's upside down.

Don't do that, but I mean I notice it.

I'd notice it and go, this is a stupid gimmick,

unless it was the upside down book.

But what's going to get my attention and then what's

going to put it on my wavelength, where I'm going,

OK, that sounds kind of cool.

I know like mysteries or whatever

and this sounds like a really good one.

[CELLO SOLO]

OK social media obviously becoming important.

There you can help yourself to some extent.

You can get a Facebook page.

You can use Twitter.

The issue is how do you get a lot of people paying attention

to your message?

And some of it is the same thing.

You've got to put something out there

that get's their attention and gets them curious.

And then they might go to your page.

And so it's the same principle.

What am I going to do?

Where's my cream pie?

What am I going to put out there that gets them to my page?

And then when you get them there,

what are you saying that's compelling to them?

[CELLO SOLO]

The most important things about marketing your book, especially

your first novel, is that whatever

the passion that they brought, whatever

the reason they bought that book, that passion,

that excitement, that that gets communicated

to the potential buyer.

So now how does that get communicated?

One, by how they go out to reviewers.

Are they going out with that same passion?

Have they figured out a way, in a sentence or two,

to communicate what they feel about it?

If they just babble about it, oh this that and the other thing,

then they haven't figured out a way

to put that in the sentence or two,

which is the way that you're going to get reviewers

to pay attention to the thing.

And also it will influence the reviews.

When the book is coming out, it's

going to be probably a year or so after they bought it,

and they kind of forget how enthusiastic they are.

And they forget that same enthusiasm

has to be communicated to the bookstores

so that they stock the thing, to the reviewers so they review

it, and to the public so that when they see it in the store

Before I answer this I got to take a shot.

Hollywood.

So what do you do?

You're home, you're poor, knock, knock, knock,

it's Hollywood or jingle jangle jingle.

And I got to tell you, if they want your book,

you can't believe how nice they're going to be.

You have written the best book we've ever-- this is so good.

We're going to make the best move.

We're going to start shooting next week.

Blah, blah, blah, blah.

It's all lies.

For years I don't know where this-- I thought

it was my line, but the line I'd use for my Hollywood novel--

the first line is hello, I lied.

And a lot of people add their lie for no reason.

I don't get it.

I mean, it's just-- you don't have to-- just say we

kind of like your book, and we'll

do our best we can with it, and 80% of books we buy

don't get made, but we really like it,

and we're going to really do our-- And that would be great.

You'd be going holy shit.

They want my book.

It's kind of take the money and run,

or take the money and pray.

That's probably the better thing.

Take the money, and run, and pray.

That's the best advice I can give you.

Having warned you against all of this over and over again,

how do you make it happen?

A lot of it is luck.

I mean, it kind of comes at you.

You have a literary agent.

The literary agent may also be the Hollywood agent

depending on who you're with.

If you're with William Morris they'll

do the books and movies, presumably.

Creative artists might do both.

ICM might do both.

My agent is a lawyer in Washington,

and it's kind of weird.

I mean, I don't pay 15%, or 10%, or whatever.

I just pay him by the hour.

He does Clinton's, he does Mary Higgins Clark,

he's done some of the Reagan stuff, he does Bob Woodward,

so that's kind of how I operate.

He doesn't really operate in Hollywood.

He has the same feeling about Hollywood that I do.

He just doesn't want to spend too much time

dealing with them.

But generally, your literary agent

will either have a Hollywood connection

or if it's a big enough group.

And if they think it's a property

they'll go out and try to sell it.

You're not going to have any power.

That I can almost guarantee unless they want it

so much and about three, or four, or five

people are bidding for it.

And they try not to get into these bidding things now.

That's the latest.

It's rare that you'll have more than one place

bidding for something.

It used to be the norm.

That's the way the agents operate.

They don't operate that way too much anymore.

OK, so let's say that you get lucky

and they're actually going to shoot this movie.

It's a head trip.

I mean, it's just great.

You're there and you won't believe how many people.

I mean, we're doing this thing, and there are a lot of people

here.

This is kind of bizarre with the puppet strings,

and they move my mouth and my eye.

But if it's a big movie, there's just so many people,

and you're-- And also the famous actors, probably.

On my first movie it was Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd,

even though Ashley wasn't that famous at that point.

And you're going to be going, oh, my God.

I can't believe that I had something

to do with this insanity.

But impressive and cool.

So it's a big thrill.

Definitely try to get to the shoot.

On that movie shoot.

On the Kiss the Girl shoot, that where I realized the fact

that I had nothing to do with anything in everybody's mind,

and that the novelist ranks somewhere below the caterer

on the movie shoot.

They know why they caterer's there,

but they have no idea why the novelist is there.

Remember going out there once and went to Paramount.

They didn't like the screenplay of the new Alex Cross movie.

We had done Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider.

They were having a lot of trouble

doing a third, even though the first two movies did very well.

And this is the honest to God truth.

The only thing in the screenplay that was in the novel

was Alex Cross' name.

They changed literally everything in the book.

Every single thing.

So I'm sitting there and I said to this guy from Paramount,

I said, look, let me just tell you one piece of the novel

that I think is very cool and I think could be a movie.

And I told him-- I wasn't really pitching but I guess I was.

So I pitched this one part of the novel,

and he jumps up and goes, I love it, love it, I love it.

And he pays me $250,000 right there for that idea on a book

that they already owned, and I just couldn't believe it.

I'm overstating this to be humorous,

but there's a lot of truth to it sadly.

My best Hollywood experience was-- I was on the Simpsons.

I was a cartoon character.

As you can tell, I am a cartoon character.

And in this scene-- and it was a lot of fun.

I went and did the voice over and blah, blah, blah,

posed for the cartoon.

But in this scene, Marge is on the beach

and she's reading Kiss the Girls, and she's going,

oh, I just love James Patterson.

And then we cut, and there's a white horse.

I'm riding on a white horse on the beach behind her,

and then Marge is on the back of the white horse with me.

We're riding along and she's going,

oh, James let's do some nursery rhyme titles for your books,

because of some of the early Alex Cross had nursery rhyme

titles.

And I go, Marge, I think there's a lot more interesting things

we could do than that.

And then an alarm sounds and my cartoon eyes go brr.

And then we're in their bedroom.

And Homer comes in and Marge is in bed,

and Homer says, that was great last night Marge,

but why did you keep calling me James?

So that's been the highlight of my career in general,

but definitely of my Hollywood career so far.

I haven't particularly liked any of the movies yet.

Morgan Freeman's great, so he's a really terrific-- even

though he's not the Alex Cross from the books,

you can't argue with him.

He's so good.

Kiss the Girls had its moments.

I thought the end scene was terrific in the kitchen.

That was terrific.

Wasn't in the book.

I don't care.

The funny thing with-- they have these press junkets for movies.

You write a book in this say and age,

you can't find a journalist for the most part.

No reviews.

Out comes Son of Chucky 6 and literally every newspaper

in the country has a fricken review of it.

It's insane.

And they'll have these press junkets for every movie.

Son of Chucky 6, Kiss the Girls, Along Came a Spider.

So Paramount invited me out.

They always invite the writer out of respect

or whatever it is.

Tradition.

They'll invite the novelist out for the press junket.

And so they invite me out for the press junket for Along Came

a Spider, and they go, I guess we better

let Jim see the movie because the press is going to ask him

what he thinks of it.

So I'm watching this movie from a book

that I write, and I watch the first scene

and I go, all right, well, that wasn't in the book.

And I watch the second scene and Alex Cross

is building a ship in a bottle.

I'm going, I don't know.

It doesn't seem that cinematic to me,

and it wasn't in the book either.

And then this woman comes in, and she basically

tells Morgan Freeman-- Alex Cross-- stop

with the ships in the bottle.

Go on out and get yourself shot at

or something because this is supposed

to be an adventure movie.

I mean, she doesn't literally say that,

but that's the spirit of it.

And I'm watching this thing from a book I wrote and I'm going,

who the fuck is that lady?

It's not his grandmother and it's

not-- I don't know who the hell she is and I wrote the book.

I'm mystified.

So I see Morgan Freeman a little later in the press junket.

I go, Morgan, who is the woman in the second scene

in the movie because she never comes back?

She just appears in that one scene

and then she never comes back in the movie,

which is bizarre in itself.

Obviously the editing room floor.

And Morgan looks at me and he goes, oh, that's

Alex Cross' sister.

I said, oh, I didn't know Alex had a sister.

So that's Hollywood, and that's what you're going to deal with.

And the other advice I can give to you,

and this is the best advice and you just saw it there.

Start laughing, dudes and dudettes.

Laugh.

You just got to laugh at this stuff.

It's very funny if you can have a sense of humor

about your own work, and you better if you're

I don't think I ever had aspirations in terms of one,

being a writer, or secondly, what would happen with it.

It just seemed to me to be I don't

know, overstepping to do that.

I came from a background, people just

didn't make it out of my hometown.

I was never a stylist as a writer and I'm still not,

so I don't think I ever expected that things would happen,

and I still don't.

I mean I don't think about it.

I don't think about selling a lot of books,

or supposedly I'm the bestselling author

in the world.

I don't really-- I love that, but I don't think about it.

I grew up in Newburgh, New York.

Tough little river town about 60 miles north of New York City.

A real mix, which was kind of cool.

You had the city itself was pretty tough.

Then on the outskirts, you had a lot of farm,

so you had kind of city kids, and then had farm kids,

and then we had an Air Force Base, Stewart Air Force Base.

So in the schools, we had city kids, we farm kids,

and then we a kids who had been all around the world,

so it was a nice mix of a different kind

of ways of looking at stuff, and I think that was useful.

My father was brought up in the Newburgh poor house, called

the [? poogy. ?]

His mother was [? char ?] woman there,

and that means that she basically

cleaned up the bathrooms for the poor people who lived there.

And for doing that job, she and my father

got one room, and that was his background.

Bright guy.

Somehow got out of that situation

and went to Hamilton College, which is a very good college.

So that was a real-- from the poor house

to Hamilton College showed that he had a lot of smarts.

My mother was a school teacher for about 50 years.

Went to Catholic schools, which are very disciplined.

When I was in high school, we had the same brother,

and nobody-- people can't even believe that this shit happen

back then, but we had the same brother for math and science

sophomore and junior year.

Every day he would walk in, he'd say, gentleman,

anyone who doesn't have their homework please stand.

So let's say I stand.

Mr. Patterson.

Yes, brother.

Do you know what's going to happen?

Yes, brother.

Do you know why?

Yes, brother.

From the floor, boom.

Across your face.

Every class.

As I went through life, I found that college and advertising

were both nothing compared to how difficult high school was

in terms of that environment.

It was like advertising, big deal, nobody's hitting you.

It's all right.

I generally write about strong women

and I had strong women in my life.

My grandmother in particular very strong, very strong

willed.

I can remember, she's 80 years old and I'd go up,

I was living in New York City at the time,

and I would travel up to 60 miles to see her,

and I can remember like where the hell is she,

and I go in the back and she's like 80 years old

and she shimmying a refrigerator down a mountainside

to this cabin that she also owned.

And I wouldn't do that.

If I had three of my best friends there,

shimmying a refrigerator down on an oil cloth,

and that's just the way she was.

Could be very sweet, very encouraging.

She always had total confidence.

She said I was a pretty good basketball player.

She said, you're not going anywhere

as a basketball player.

You're not fast enough and you're too little.

But there are a lot of things you can do,

so if she really built that confidence.

You can do a lot of things.

If you talk to any the kids I went to high school

with they'd say Jim's going to be a doctor or a lawyer

or something.

But neither one of those appealed to me.

Blood, I'm really squeamish about blood,

and the law thing really seemed like a horrifying thing

to do with my life.

And I just started scribbling when I was around 19.

I was working my way through college

at a mental institution.

I wasn't a patient, honest.

And I just found that I love scribbling.

I just loved writing these stories.

Somewhere in there I think I read Day of the Jackal

and then Exorcist.

And those stimulated me to think, you know what?

These things are really fast paced.

I really enjoyed them.

It's another kind of writing.

I think at that stage I was a bit of an elitist snob in terms

of what I would read.

But I read those and I said these are really good

and I think I can do something like this.

And that's what stimulated me to do The Thomas Berryman Number.

Now The Thomas Berryman Number, that first book,

it's really well written.

The characters are pretty good.

It doesn't have good pace.

So it had some of the things going for it.

It didn't have enough.

It wasn't a best seller.

It didn't deserve to be a best seller.

It deserved to be a very well received first novel.

It was very well received.

I was very lucky.

One of the exciting things about when you finally

get that book published is going into a bookstore

and seeing your books there.

I went to this, we call it a drive by signing.

It wasn't official.

And I arrived at the store and I was just

going to sign books in the back, no audience or anything.

And there's three or four people from the store in the front

and they go, oh my God, Mr. Patterson, this is so cool.

You're one of our favorites, and we're slapping low fives,

and slapping high fives going through the store.

And they said, we got 100s of your books in the back.

I get to the back and they've got

table's filled with Richard North Patterson novels.

So I signed them.

When Along Came a Spider came out,

I picked up the New York Times Book Review

and there it was, number six.

And I couldn't believe it.

It seemed like it was impossible.

So I went to the local Barnes & Noble in the neighborhood.

And if we go into the store, well first of all,

we'll count the books.

We'll go, used to be 12, now there's nine,

the book actually seems to be selling.

And then, if we're in there and you pick up our book,

we're watching and we will watch you.

If you put the book down, it breaks our heart.

It ruins the day.

To this day, if I'm in an airport

and somebody puts my book down, I'm like, damn,

what did I do wrong?

What did the publisher do wrong with the cover?

So anyway, so I'm in this book store

and this woman picks up the book and I'm watching her

and then she puts it under her arm,

and she's walking down the aisle and I'm flying man.

She's buying the book.

She gets about halfway down the aisle.

She slides it into her pocketbook.

She stole it.

I can't believe it.

And all I'm thinking, does that count as a sale?

Edgars are the mystery writers of America

and they have these award dinner and this woman's on the phone

and she says, are you James Patterson?

I said, yes.

She said, we've been trying to reach you for over a month.

All right, OK, here I am.

And the woman said, you have to come to the mystery writers

award dinner at the Commodore Hotel,

I think it was a Commodore.

And I said I can't go.

I said, I'm sorry I'm sorry I can't go.

She says, what do you mean you can't go?

I can't remember what the problem was,

there was something that I had to do.

And then finally, after a couple of minutes she goes,

well you have to go because you won.

Oh, I said, OK, well, I'm going to find a way to go.

So I go to this award dinner.

Now this is a book that's been turned down by 31 publishers.

And I now know it's going to win the Edgar as the best

first mystery in America, this book that was turned down

by 31 publishers.

So this is kind of cool.

But I'm sitting there in the audience

and this is like the Academy Awards for mystery writers,

and you know how nervous people get,

and they've told me that I won, but I'm still nervous.

I'm going maybe she lied to me.

Maybe see lied to me.

So until they actually call my name.

And so then I go up and I have to give a little speech.

And what I said, I remember was something to the effect of,

and I'm very shy at this point, I

would not be able to do just shoot the breeze like I do now.

But I say, I guess I'm a writer now.

And what that meant, I think, and I think a lot of you

who haven't published a book go through this, that insecurity.

And I actually felt at that point

that OK, this is for real, I'm really an author,

I'm really a writer because I've won this Edgar for writing

the best first mystery.

For me, and I'm not trying to be corny here,

family really does come first and my relationships

inside the house are my primary thing.

And I always think that this notion of you

kind of do the right thing as much as you can and then

and then you can spread it out, but it

has to start with your house.

So people that are there and they're

going down to Haiti, which is a nice thing to do,

and their house is a shambles.

I don't mean physically, but just emotionally, I'm

going like the fix your house.

My dad was an interesting guy in a sense

that he never really met his father

and he grew up in this strange environment in this poor house

living with his mother in one room.

So he wasn't familiar really with the family experience.

So he had a kind of learn it, invent it, whatever,

and I think he did the best he can.

I mean, he worked very hard.

He was little more competitive with me then supportive.

I don't think that was ideal and I've tired not to do it.

The only time my father ever hugged me was on his deathbed.

And you know and I certainly brought that to my son.

I give my son a hug and a kiss every night,

every night he's home.

And he welcomes it.

I can give Jack a hug at school and fine.

I don't care what my friends thank.

You my proudest thing-- I'm really proud of Jack.

I mean, so far, so good.

He's a neat guy.

He has a good spirit.

And so that's, I would say, that's

my proudest accomplishment.

My life is very circumscribed and I think both now

and when I was younger, I find things

that I like and I do them.

So I found I love to write.

I love to write stories.

I like to write different kinds of stories from young adult,

to little kid books, to suspense,

occasional historical.

I just really get a kick out of it.

I really love my wife.

I really love my son.

I like to go out and eat sometimes.

I like to be with very good friends.

So when I turned 60, I had, I don't know,

21 friends that go back to grade school,

not all from grade school, but along the way,

and those are my close friends.

I don't like to spend time with casual friends.

My life is incredibly efficient in a joyful way.

I mean I love what I'm doing.

I'm not driven to-- I don't do things that I find very,

or try not to, painful, laborious.

And I like new challenging things.

So a piece of why I'm doing this is I haven't done it before.