Interview Highlights
Dean Koontz has published more than 140 novels, 74 works of short fiction, and sold more than 500 million books.
Simply put, he’s one of the most prolific writers alive today. Here are some highlights from our chat:
Dare to love the English language.
Characters come alive when they're given free will. Instead of constraining them in an outline, let them go where they want. You know they’re alive once they start surprising you. He says: “I give the characters free will like God gave it to us.”
Everything a writer believes about life and death, culture and society, relationships and the self, God and nature will wind up in their books. A writer’s body of work, therefore, reveals the intellectual and emotional progress of its creator, and over time, becomes a map of their soul.
To think you understand the world is to be foolish in the extreme. The world is too complex for us to understand it. To see reality clearly is to be utterly enchanted by its staggering complexity.
Where should you look? Well, the supernatural enters the world in mundane ways, and rarely the great and glorious flashes of drama.
Dean writes his novels page-by-page, and doesn’t move onto the next page until he nails the existing one. There’s no messy first draft. Because of that, he’s basically done with his novels once he finishes the final page.
Where does a unique writing voice come from? Three places: style, perspective, and a philosophy of life.
Be skeptical of conventional wisdom. There’s an encyclopedia of common wisdom in publishing. All of it is common and none of it is wise. You have to become aware of that, go your own way, and just stick with it because there are so many ways you can be sent wrong based on "that's the way we always do it."
The aesthetic plainness of contemporary writing is destroying our souls.
Contemporary fiction is suffering from plainness too. It started when writers started imitating Hemingway (who stripped his prose down but kept the mystery and underlying strangeness of the world by implication). But the imitations that came later stripped the prose down while also removing the underlying depth that made Hemingway so great.
Koontz Law of Writing #1: Never go inside more than one character's mind in a scene. Each one should come from a singular viewpoint.
Koontz Law of Writing #2: Metaphors aren't meant to dazzle readers, but to seduce them into a more intimate relationship with the story.
Koontz Law of Writing #3: Metaphors and similes describe a scene more colorfully than a chain of adjectives — while reinforcing the mood. The point is that you can create depth by describing things metaphorically instead of using blunt adjectives. That’s what poetry does: it uses words to say more than the word itself says, which creates a mood.
Great prose doesn't come from piling on adjectives. It comes from finding the perfect metaphor that does triple duty: describes the scene, reinforces the mood, and reveals something about the character.
The goal is for metaphors not to pop out like showmanship, but to flow into the music of the language.
Develop an ear for the musicality of language.
A book can succeed with a mediocre plot if the characters are compelling. Character is the center of good fiction. If the characters work, the story works.
Don’t confuse sentiment with sentimentality. Avoid sentimentality. Strive for sentiment instead. Here’s a hint: If you push excessively to get an emotional reaction, you're likely doing it wrong. You shouldn't have to push for the reaction; it should simply come from the character's condition and their place in life. It should be something you can identify with as a human being without excessive flowery language. When the writing moves you naturally, that is sentiment.
From the afterword of his book, Watchers: “We have within us the ability to change for the better and to find dignity as individuals rather than as drones in one mass movement or another. We have the ability to love, the need to be loved, and the willingness to put our own lives on the line to protect those we love, and it is in these aspects of ourselves that we can glimpse the face of God; and through the exercise of these qualities, we come closest to a Godlike state.”
Transcript
Table of Contents
00:00:00 Intro
00:00:34 Why I Stopped Outlining My Writing
00:14:10 Dealing With Publishers
00:18:42 How to Develop Your Voice
00:22:13 How Childhood Trauma Shaped My Creative Process
00:29:35 Where Do Original Ideas Really Come From
00:36:09 Why Great Characters Matter More Than Plot
00:48:25 The Secret to Better Editing
00:53:27 The Authors That Influenced My Writing
00:59:47 What Actually Builds Real Suspense in a Novel
01:07:30 Why Slow Writing Makes Better Stories
01:09:13 The 4 Rules of Writing
01:13:38 How to Balance Faith, Science, and Storytelling
01:18:48 Is Self-Doubt a Writer's Superpower?
01:21:28 John D. MacDonald: Character Over Plot
01:23:33 T.S. Eliot's Use of Language Is Mind-Blowing
01:26:52 How Ray Bradbury Turned Joy Into Language
01:31:45 Charles Dickens Wasn't Afraid of Emotion
01:34:41 Sentiment Is Confused With Sentimentality
01:37:33 Dean Koontz's Home and Library
01:41:31 Why Metaphysics Is the Central Issue in a Writer's Career
—
David [00:00 - 00:17]:
We're here in your insanely magnificent home library. I want to start by asking why you decided to stop outlining and just start writing.
Dean [00:18 - 01:52]:
I started writing when you were encouraged to outline. The publisher would buy the book based on the outline and pay half the advance upfront, giving you money to live on while you wrote. I did that for several years.
At one point, things weren't working to the level I wanted. I became dissatisfied with publishers' reactions to the finished book. They had the outline, but in a creative process, you don't stick rigidly to an outline. Better ideas emerge.
Sticking to the outline produces a lower-quality book than letting creativity flow. I would get excited because the book improved beyond the outline. But when I delivered it, the publisher would be disappointed it wasn't exactly like the outline.
I recognized this was a dead end. They'd say, "We thought we were getting this, but we're getting that." I would argue, "Yes, but what you're getting is better." They weren't happy.
That’s when I decided not to work that way anymore. By then, characters were already beginning to drive the fiction for me.
David [01:52 - 01:53]:
What do you mean by that?
Dean [01:53 - 02:47]:
If you give characters free will, much like we have, they go places you don't anticipate. Young writers sometimes ask how that works, arguing, "You're creating these characters; they don't have free will. You're telling them what to do."
That's true to a point. But if you, as the writer, stop dictating their actions and instead step back, think about the story's possibilities, and let the characters guide the flow, things change.
Let them suggest where the story goes. If the characters are truly characters and not just puppets, they begin to have their own thoughts that surprise you.
David [02:47 - 02:55]:
Do you sometimes feel your characters say and do things where you think, "That wasn't me writing; that was the character"?
Dean [02:55 - 04:21]:
Yes, you feel that, and that's when you know it's working. It can be quite exciting and sometimes very strange.
You might be typing along, immersed in the character, and the character says something. You type it and laugh because it's a funny line, but it implies a course of action you hadn't foreseen.
I used to stop and resist, thinking, "That's not where the story was going." But over the years, I learned to trust the character.
When something unexpected happens that seems to throw everything off the rails, embrace it. Let the character make that choice, even if you don't know where it leads initially. That uncertainty is actually better. Then you figure out where the story goes from that new point.
In a way, you're talking to your subconscious. I don't think characters are actually real people, but if you treat them as if they are, let them breathe, and don't constantly preconceive their actions, they will do things you never contemplated. It always leads to a better novel.
David [04:23 - 04:48]:
With your writing method, you focus on getting each page right before moving to the next, rather than drafting the whole book and then revising.
Sometimes, when I'm telling a story casually, I keep going and end up in a place I don't like. Does that ever happen with your writing?
Or does moving page by page prevent that issue?
Dean [04:49 - 04:55]:
I know other writers, and my working method is very unusual.
David [04:55 - 04:56]:
No kidding.
Dean [04:56 - 05:06]:
I've had people say I have no momentum because I have such self-doubt. I always have; I've never gotten rid of it.
David [05:06 - 05:07]:
You still have it?
Dean [05:07 - 07:02]:
Oh yes. When I start a book, I focus on the first page. I have to get that page to what I consider perfection. Someone better than me might not think it's perfect, but I have to reach a point where I feel I can't make that page, the language, or the imagery any better. I can't do anything more to improve it.
Then I move on to the next page. The self-doubt comes back, and I go through that page the same way, doing 10 or 20 drafts per page. I move very methodically, page by page, through the book.
At the end of a chapter, I print it out and read it, because you see things in a printout that you don't see on the screen. I do that a couple of times. But after finishing a chapter, I rarely go back.
I once said I move through a book like a coral reef is built—on all the dead bodies of those little creatures. I just pile it up over time, and it goes where it goes. It works for me, though sometimes it feels like being on a cliff's edge.
I just delivered a book—my publisher is about to receive it today. My agents liked it, and my wife liked it. But it's very unusual. The narrator is a man whose IQ is about 75.
He's a very admirable and enchanting character, or he should be if I did it right. Writing about him required creating a syntax and grammar commensurate with his IQ. But it also had to be something the reader could flow with, something they wouldn't be hampered by.
David [07:02 - 07:03]:
Right.
Dean [07:03 - 07:32]:
It had to get beyond mere functionality. There has to come a point where the reader absolutely falls in love with his character. To achieve that, they not only need to follow his narration effortlessly, but his way of speaking has to become almost more enchanting than regular English.
That was something I'd never tried before. It's always fun to try something new, but it's also like leaping out of a plane without a parachute.
David [07:32 - 07:41]:
How did you go about developing that language? Did you watch movies? Go to a state fair and talk to the stupidest people you could find? What did you do?
Dean [07:42 - 09:11]:
You get into the head of the character. You read, you do your research. You read about someone in that position in life.
One of the points of this book is that even lives that seem of no consequence to many people do have consequences for the rest of us. There is no life without meaning. You can throw your meaning away by your behavior, but simply having an IQ of 75—what once would have been called a moron—doesn't mean you won't positively affect the people around you.
That's what this character does throughout the book. He sort of enchants people and changes lives without quite knowing he's doing it, just because of who he is and how he sees the world. That affects other people.
I will say it was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. I had to keep going through the book, asking, "Okay, that line—is he too self-aware? Is he too this or that?"
But it is challenges like that that really make writing exciting. Otherwise, you're just sitting in a room at a keyboard, and that's not exciting. What you create is what makes you excited. It has to be something you're afraid you're going to screw up big time.
David [09:12 - 09:25]:
Make this concrete for me. Can you walk me through a scene or a series of dialogues showing what that conversation might look like normally, the intuitive way, versus how it looks with a character having a 75 IQ?
Dean [09:25 - 12:06]:
This is from page one of the manuscript. I'll skip the first paragraph. The character is talking this whole novel into a machine because he can neither read nor write.
He says: For a while back in the day, after it happened so terrible like it did, there were things I wished I could sweep out of my mind. But Mama would call that chicken thinking. When bad things happen, like when folks are mean to you and calling you names that aren't your real name but just words said to hurt your feelings, then you want to forget.
But when you want to forget, you need to think about a chicken and her eggs and don't fall into chicken thinking. The chicken lays her eggs and means to hatch a chick. But all of a sudden, the egg is gone. She doesn't go looking for the egg. Maybe she wonders what the heck happened to it. Maybe she even saw us take the egg from the coop.
But it's easy for her to lay new eggs. So she says to herself, "I don't want to know what happened to my little egg because I'll be sad, so I'll just forget about it and lay more." We keep taking away her eggs and she keeps laying more. She doesn't ever hatch a chick, never has a brood of her own, and never knows why.
What kind of life is that? If we never know why things happen, we'll never be as happy as we could be. That's what Mama says. Mama says finding out why things happen will for sure make you sad sometimes. But you have to know some sad if you're going to know the why of things.
You can't know the why of it all if you don't know being happy, if all you've known is being happy. That sounds hard, but it's just the way the world is. You can't change the world, so get over it. The story I've got to tell into this machine starts out hard and sad, but it won't ever stay that way.
So, it's grammar as we understand it, except the verbs, tenses, and connections are very different. But if they're consistent, then the reader falls into that difference. I fell in love with the voice. He's very funny—sometimes aware that he's funny and sometimes not.
The key is you never laugh *at* the character; otherwise, that destroys everything. You have to laugh *with* him, even in the sadness of his condition.
## [12:07] Hen's Sadness & Knowing Why
David [12:07 - 12:21]:
That passage contains deeper points of wisdom that are extremely simple. It reminds me of the bell curve IQ meme; there's a deep wisdom on the left side of the bell curve that I think you're getting at there.
Dean [12:21 - 12:28]:
That's exactly it. He becomes, in many ways, the wisest person in the novel.
David [12:30 - 13:04]:
When you write an intro like the one for *The Big Dark Sky*: "In every life, there are strange coincidences, occurrences that we find inexplicable, and even moments that seem supernatural. On this occasion, in the lonely vastness of Montana, the heavens were moonless, the blind face of the night pressed against the windows. The only light in the room issued from a television, and a young girl sat in communion with the dead."
Did you write that and then just keep going throughout the whole book, or do you come back and revisit it?
Dean [13:05 - 15:14]:
There are rare cases where you get into a book and something occurs that will necessitate going back and adjusting certain things. But because of the way I work, I rarely have to go back.
Now, that sounds like it's one draft, but it's not. It's 20 or 30 drafts a page. It's the way that's worked best for me. The first time I worked this way was a book called Strangers, which was the first hardcover bestseller I ever had.
I began to find something. There's this thing I sometimes say when writers ask me for advice, tending to be younger writers or somewhat older writers who are struggling. I've learned that just because you've had success and they want advice from you doesn't mean they'll ever take it. So I tend not to give it so much anymore.
But one thing I say to them is that we all do this when we're starting out in a career: we want to scope the industry. We want to know what we're supposed to do, what is supposed to work, and what you're not supposed to do. That leads to a problem.
I've said there is an encyclopedia of common wisdom in publishing. All of it is common and none of it is wise. You have to become aware of that, go your own way, and just stick with it because there are so many ways you can be sent wrong based on "that's the way we always do it."
If I've seen anything in my career, it's arguments with publishers over things like, "You can't do that." And then you say, "Why not?" The answer is often, "Nobody has done that. Nobody does that." Or, "If somebody did that, it didn't work."
David [15:14 - 15:16]:
What's an example of that?
Dean [15:16 - 18:32]:
My book *Strangers* was a hardcover bestseller, followed by *Watchers*, which went further up the list. Then I delivered *Lightning*.
My publisher had been telling me that I would never be a hardcover bestseller, only a paperback bestseller. I never could get an explanation why; it was just common wisdom. Since I started in paperback, conventional thinking dictated I would stay there.
When I delivered *Lightning*, my publisher hated it. She said, "We have to put this book on the shelf for seven years. If your career keeps building, we can publish it then, and it won't destroy it. But if you publish it now, it'll destroy your career."
I felt the complete opposite. I asked what was wrong with the book. The first argument was it had too much comic element for a suspenseful, scary story. For decades, I argued that I could write humor within a suspenseful story without diminishing the suspense.
The bigger issue for her was the protagonist. "Your character is a child for the first third of the novel and then comes of age. That makes it a young adult novel," she said. "You have an adult audience. They won't buy a novel if they think the character is a child."
I countered by naming novels like *Oliver Twist* where the characters are children. It didn't matter; the wisdom was that this approach was a career killer. We argued for six months.
Finally, I said, "Look, we're having success, we're moving up. *Lightning* has to be the next book published, or I have to go somewhere else and publish it."
*Lightning* went to number three on the bestseller list. It went through 20 printings in hardcover and became number one in paperback. The very next book after that became my first number one hardcover. Clearly, people liked *Lightning*.
But the prevailing wisdom was that what I was doing would destroy my career. You're dealing with successful people in publishing, not stupid people. You have to develop the ability to tell the difference between something they believe simply because they've always believed it and something they're actually right about. That's the hardest thing for a young writer to figure out.
David [18:33 - 19:02]:
How did you think about developing your voice as a writer over the years? You've sold an insane amount of books, over 500 million. How much of developing that voice was dictated by the market versus your internal sense of taste?
Dean [19:02 - 19:32]:
It was all internal. I started out as a science fiction writer in paperbacks because that's largely what I read as a teenager into my early 20s. I realized one day that although I was selling, I wasn't suited to write at the top of that field.
David [19:33 - 19:33]:
Wow.
Dean [19:34 - 19:46]:
So I had to move. The first thing I did was write a comic novel called *Hanging On*. It was published to very good reviews, but it didn't sell particularly well.
David [19:46 - 19:49]:
Were we talking the 70s or the 80s at this point?
Dean [19:51 - 21:33]:
Early 70s.
The publisher said, "We love the book, but why would you expect it to sell very well?" I replied, "Well, you published it." He said, "Yes, we loved it, but we're looking toward your future. Comic novels don't sell."
I thought, "Somebody should have told me that earlier." So I moved towards suspense, which was moving with the market. I was also reading authors in that field whom I liked and respected.
Examples include Donald Westlake, who wrote very serious suspense and sometimes very comic suspense. Elmore Leonard's novels were selling for $4.95 in those days, before anyone knew of him. He didn't become a success until his mid-to-late 50s, but he was writing wonderful books even then. I read John D. MacDonald, my favorite modern author.
So I started moving in that direction. But inevitably, my sense of humor—I was the class clown in high school—kept influencing my writing. My wife and I have been married all this time because we both have a pretty absurd sense of humor.
That humor kept leaking into the books. When I was told I couldn't incorporate humor into that kind of fiction, it only made me want to find a way to do it even more. The more I'm told I can't do something, the more determined I become.
David [21:33 - 21:33]:
Of course.
Dean [21:34 - 22:08]:
Exactly. So the voice evolved almost out of rebellion against what I was supposed to be doing.
I was aware of this consciously and, perhaps more extremely, subconsciously. I would write things knowing that if I stopped to analyze them, I'd realize the publisher would say, "We have a big problem with this."
So, I often wouldn't think about the implications until the book was half done.
## [22:08] Developing a Rebellious, Magical Voice
David [22:08 - 22:29]:
You've used the words 'enchanted' and 'mystery' a few times. How did you develop that aspect of your work?
Even just being with you, it's clear you have a great appreciation—you used the word 'magic' earlier—for those parts of reality that are absolutely real but beyond our rational understanding.
Dean [22:31 - 27:48]:
You've expressed something I've been hesitant to talk about. I've had things happen in my life that are so strange they suggest something profound, and not just to me.
There were several months when things were happening to me that I didn't even tell my wife about. Our marriage has been long and wonderful, but I thought she would think I was nuts. One day, she said, "Some things are happening I have to talk to you about." It turned out they were the same things happening to me.
Someday I'm going to write about this, because it showed me we do not understand the world. There is something much stranger about it than we normally perceive. This period passed, and those things didn't happen again for a long time.
Later, it made me wonder if I imagined it. But I know I didn't, because fortunately, we both had the same experiences. All my life, I've had these sorts of strange experiences.
I think it might stem from my difficult childhood—poverty, my dad's alcoholism and violence, my mother's sickliness. It took me until I was in my 40s to understand. I used to say the poverty and my father's violence were what really shaped me.
Then, in my 40s, I had an epiphany. The real effect wasn't his violence, the poverty, or the fear about having a roof over our heads. It was the perpetual humiliation of living in a small town where everyone knew my dad was the town drunk, gambler, and womanizer. That was the most powerful effect on my childhood.
Realizing this was eye-opening because the humiliation was constant. Everybody knew who my father was and what he did. Even my aunts would say, "You're just like your father," though I knew I was nothing like him.
I realized all of that had a profound effect, driving me to live very much within myself. My mother was a wonderful person, but somewhat beyond my understanding. The things that interested me as a child were different from her world, and I'll never understand why she endured the life she had.
As a consequence, I grew up very internally. I had only a couple of friends. Both of those friends were a little strange, like me.
There's something about growing up internally, watching the world more than participating, that makes you see and wonder about things you might otherwise miss. If I'd been on the football team or in the right cliques, I don't think I'd have had the same perspective.
From a very young age, I began to notice things about life that seemed very strange and didn't make sense. Some of it was people's behavior, but much of it involved moments when things happened unexpectedly, sometimes to my benefit.
You stop and think, "What was that? Why did that happen? It seems against the flow of reality." Conversely, sometimes something seemingly bad happens, but it triggers a valuable thought process.
I've come to believe there's a guiding influence in life if you remain aware of it.
I know many good artists who would trade their art to be able to write novels. And I know many novelists, myself included, who wish they could have been visual artists.
When I was in college, I painted and sold my paintings, and for a while, I thought that's what I wanted to do. But I didn't pursue that path. I listened to some of that guidance we often receive but tend to ignore.
David [27:48 - 28:20]:
It's interesting you say that because I'm thinking about the writing I've read from you. You're painting with words. As I was reading, I thought, "Wow, you're so descriptive and have a way of taking a scene and bringing it to life."
Now that I know that about you, I almost see the envy you have for visual artists, as if you're thinking, "I wasn't given that gift, so now I'm going to put it into my language."
Dean [28:20 - 28:40]:
I have counseled friends whose art careers never went where they should have because they didn't appreciate the gift they possessed. I've told a couple of people, "It's the gift you've got. Go for it."
Dean [28:41 - 28:52]:
Do everything you can think to do with it. Talent of any kind is a gift. It's unearned; you're born with it.
David [28:52 - 28:53]:
That's what a gift is.
David [28:54 - 28:58]:
A gift is not something you get; it's something given to you that you receive.
Dean [28:58 - 29:14]:
That comes with a responsibility to use it to the best of your ability and see what you can do with it. That’s why I got out of science fiction; I realized I didn't have what it takes to do it correctly.
Dean [29:15 - 29:30]:
I could write and sell, but it wasn't at the level I wanted to work at, and it didn't use the gift to the extent I could. That becomes a search: how do you use what you've got to do the best you can?
David [29:30 - 29:52]:
You also seem to be given certain ideas that just appear, perhaps in dreams.
You seem to become a steward or a custodian of an idea given to you from God or some other source.
Dean [29:54 - 30:10]:
Some ideas, you know where they come from, though they're still somewhat inexplicable. For example, I was coming home from a studio meeting that had not gone well—they almost never do—so I was not in a good mood.
David [30:10 - 30:11]:
A movie studio?
Dean [30:11 - 30:11]:
Yes.
Dean [30:12 - 34:47]:
I was driving my wife's SUV, back when cars had six-CD changers. She had Simon & Garfunkel and Paul Simon loaded. We both agree Paul Simon may be the greatest living songwriter; I can listen to him endlessly.
I was driving home in a particular mood, listening, and the song "Patterns" came on—a song I knew perfectly well. A line struck me: "My life is made of patterns that can scarcely be controlled." It hit me like an arrow.
Sitting there in the car, within 15 minutes, I had the idea for a novel called *Life Expectancy*. I think it's one of the best things I've ever done. My editor at the time thought it was the very best thing I'd ever done. It sold extremely well, and I love that novel.
I know exactly where that idea came from. But for other novels, I have no idea where the idea originated. Two actually came from dreams, though people often mistakenly think most ideas come that way. Not the case.
Some ideas seem to come from nowhere. I have a novel coming out next year called *The Friend of the Family*, and I have no idea where that came from. I was just at the keyboard, typing from a character's point of view, not thinking it was a novel, and it became one.
My wife is always my first reader. She gets the manuscript at the same time as the agents, but she reads faster. For all these years, after she reads a book, she comes to me, and we talk about it. I value her feedback immensely.
With *The Friend of the Family*, it was different. I know how quickly she reads. She got the book around 6:00 PM on a Friday. It was almost 400 pages, so I knew she couldn't finish it that day. I figured she'd finish by noon on Saturday.
I was in my office Saturday, and noon passed with no word from her. Then 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, 4:00. I started to worry, thinking she didn't want to talk to me about this book. Then I heard pots and pans banging around in the kitchen.
I decided to face it. I went into the kitchen and asked, "Well, you're finished?"
"Yes," she said.
"Is it that bad?" I asked.
She replied, "No, I just don't know how to talk about it."
We've been married 59 years, and this had never happened. "What do you mean you don't know how to talk about it?" I asked.
"I need more time," she said. "I'll just say I used two boxes of Kleenex." The book is meant to shake you, and it clearly did. I'm still not sure where that story came from.
Another time, I was working on a book called *The Face*. The line "My name is Odd Thomas. I lead an unusual life" popped into my head. I stopped and thought, "What is that? It has nothing to do with what I'm working on."
I started writing it down so I wouldn't forget it. For the first and last time ever, I wrote out about 30 pages by hand. That became the first chapter of the Odd Thomas novel. I've never done that before or since.
I put those pages aside, finished *The Face*, and told myself, "That's going to be crap when I go back to it." I'd never written anything substantial by hand, but it had flowed so easily.
When I went back and read it, I thought, "This is good." Where did that come from? Why did that name pop into my head? Why did that whole story come to me almost instantly?
That's the great mystery of writing. It's one of the things that makes it so exciting when it happens. It is truly mysterious.
## [34:47] Odd Thomas's Unexpected Origin Story
David [34:47 - 35:13]:
What's unique about you is a great appreciation for the mystery of reality combined with extreme discipline.
You sit down every single day, from sunrise to sunset, and write consistently. Usually, those two qualities seem uncorrelated, but you possess both in spades.
Dean [35:13 - 36:05]:
The reason I can sit there is because I love it. I love the writing process itself.
Some writers only like *having* written; for them, the process is painful, but they get it done. Then come the interviews, book signings, and the back-and-forth with the editor.
I enjoy the writing part most; the rest is less interesting to me.
At my age, I might have expected to burn out, which is possible in this field. However, the ideas keep coming, and I believe they're as good as the ones I had before. Facility with character only improves with time.
David [36:05 - 36:06]:
Tell me about that.
Dean [36:06 - 38:31]:
A great plot is important, but a book can be a huge success with a mediocre plot if the characters are great. Character is the center of good fiction. If the characters work, the story works.
The character of Odd Thomas was so unusual that my publisher at that time hated the book intensely. He refused to discuss it with me directly, conveying his thoughts only through my editor, which was unusual for our relationship.
I told him how much I loved the character and believed the story was powerful. I wanted to continue with Odd Thomas, seeing him on a journey towards absolute humility. That's a state I'll never achieve, but I felt this character could, and I wanted to see if I could take him there.
The publisher didn't want any more books featuring this character. I explained I wouldn't write *only* about Odd Thomas, but I *would* write more about him. We reached an agreement: I could write an Odd Thomas novel provided I wrote a different novel between each one.
At this point, only my wife, the editor, and the publisher had read the manuscript. Then, advance copies went out, and booksellers loved it. We received bigger orders than ever before.
Advance reviews started arriving, and out of over a hundred, almost none were negative. The publisher finally came to me and admitted, "I was wrong. I still don't like it, but I'm obviously wrong."
That's the mysterious, wonderful thing about it. I have no idea where that character came from, but I ended up writing eight novels about him.
David [38:31 - 38:39]:
When you have a character like Odd Thomas, or when thinking about character generally, what elements truly matter?
Dean [38:40 - 39:28]:
The lead character matters most to me. People comment that I write terrifying villains and ask how I get inside the head of a sociopath.
Perhaps, in a strange way, my experience with my father was helpful context. He could never hold a job—44 jobs in 34 years, my wife and I once counted—because he would inevitably punch the boss.
He was an excellent salesman, but his real vision was to become a millionaire overnight.
Dean [39:29 - 39:31]:
That's why he gambled.
Dean [39:31 - 41:23]:
He came up with inventions that were strange. Because he was a good salesman, he could get investors to put up money to make these things. Then they wouldn't sell, and he would get in trouble with the investors. We never saw any money either.
He became destitute the year after we moved to California. It was a relief to put 3,000 miles between us, not having him knocking on our door at two in the morning drunk.
Then his only friend called us and said, "He's terribly ill. He hasn't got a year to live. He's destitute." You couldn't send him money because he'd take it to a bar, buy everybody drinks to play the big man, and then have nothing the next day.
Gerda and I talked. It was a difficult decision, but he never supported my mother and me. If I let him perish on his own, it would be the same thing he did to us. We had to take control of him.
We brought him to California. We got him an apartment and a car. I told him, "The first time you're caught driving drunk, I take the car away." I became the father in the relationship. It was very strange.
He used to drink a fifth a day and a six-pack of beer. He smoked three or four packs of cigarettes a day. He ate half a pound of bacon for breakfast every day. He lived to be 83.
David [41:23 - 41:25]:
That's a long life for habits like that.
Dean [41:25 - 42:43]:
We brought him out here and took care of him. He lived 14 years, not one. It became a much longer ordeal than we ever anticipated.
During that time, he ended up in the psych ward twice. The first time was for threatening people with violence. The second time, he came after me with a knife in front of witnesses. I had to take the knife away from him; it was a pretty close call.
The first time, he was diagnosed as borderline schizophrenic with a tendency to violence, complicated by alcoholism. The second time, the diagnosis was sociopathic.
I know how to write sociopaths because I grew up with one. I wouldn't recommend it, but looking back, in a curious way, it's part of the gift.
Dean [42:45 - 43:09]:
That awareness of the mystery and strangeness of the world is connected to him. Often, what seemed like the worst thing in my childhood turned out to give me insight into a certain kind of psychology that's been very valuable for the books I write.
David [43:09 - 43:11]:
Growing up in a home like that seems like such a curse.
Dean [43:12 - 43:50]:
I had certain fortunate things. My best friend's father was the town banker. They had two cars, lived in a nice house, and often invited me over. I began to see a normal family and how different mine was.
When you grow up in a highly abnormal family without other examples, you think every house is this way. Seeing that other family helped keep me sane.
## [43:50] Finding Sanity Amid Family Dysfunction
David [43:50 - 44:22]:
You grew up in a very unfortunate situation and had a lot to make sense of. You were up close and personal with evil, schizophrenia, violence, anger, and alcoholism at a formative time.
You've also had moments of seeing the mysteries and the enchantedness of reality. Your life story, combining those two elements, clearly informs your work.
Dean [44:22 - 45:32]:
It took most of my life to look back and say all of it was of value. It all depended on your perspective.
I didn't talk about my childhood until I'd been writing for decades. When I finally talked about it in interviews, I was stunned to suddenly receive thousands of letters from people who'd had similar childhoods—some not as bad as mine, some worse.
The question kept being, "How did you get over this? How did you get past it? I'm 50 now and I'm still in therapy." It made me think, how *do* you get past it?
What I realized—and this is not noble—is that one thing that always motivated me was the thought: you have to get past it, or the bastard won. You don't want the person trying to destroy your life to win. You have to have that kind of attitude.
David [45:32 - 46:46]:
I'm thinking of the story of Moses talking to God. God says, "I want you to be the leader," and Moses says, "I can't do it. I have a speech impediment." But God insists, "You can do it."
Throughout the scriptures, we see ordinary people with great flaws—whether it's speech impediments, or Paul being short with a thorn in his side, or whatever it is. You see it over and over again.
I was reading the story of Gideon yesterday—just very ordinary people with a lot of self-doubt whom God raises up to do something miraculous. We often think of David and Goliath, of the spirit of God leading David to overpower Goliath.
But so much of the scriptures aligns with what you're saying: just ordinary people, left and right, who somehow find the courage to do something meaningful. Often, what gives them the power to do what they do is something dark or difficult that happened earlier in their lives.
Dean [46:46 - 47:16]:
It's true for me. I wrote a series with the character Jane Hawke, who is a rogue FBI agent. The whole agency is against her, and she's on the run.
But most of the people I write about are not like that. I don't typically write series characters who are special agents. My characters are bartenders or fry cooks.
David [47:16 - 47:20]:
Or people with a 70 IQ but a strange amount of wisdom.
Dean [47:20 - 48:20]:
Yes, because in life, I've seen that's where a lot of good comes from. There's something to be said for suffering, as long as it doesn't destroy you. It builds something else; it gives you a certain compassion.
I think that gives you courage as a writer. It gives you the courage to say, "Okay, this character is going to..." That was the thing about Odd Thomas that caused some initial problems. People thought, "Nobody is going to identify with a fry cook as an action hero."
Why not? It doesn't sound realistic, perhaps, but he's not a guy who knows everything about weapons. He's liable to use a mop instead of a gun. He lives within his own world and makes use of what he can get.
David [48:21 - 48:30]:
Tell me about editing. When you're going through all those revisions, what are you editing for? What is the North Star you're driving towards?
Dean [48:30 - 48:32]:
Fluidity of prose.
David [48:33 - 48:34]:
Fluidity of prose.
Dean [48:34 - 51:01]:
I want my writing to be vivid. I want to use all the tools in the writer's toolbox.
American fiction suffered from the attempt to imitate Hemingway. Hemingway stripped his prose down, but the mystery and the underlying strangeness of the world remained by implication. The imitations that came later stripped the prose down but lacked that depth, which did damage.
I use metaphor and simile extensively. When I first started doing that in a novel, it received negative reactions—people thought it wasn't what readers wanted. Yet, when I get mail, people react strongly to the use of language with all the available tools. It's a beautiful language, and it's fun to work with it, smoothing it and making it more vivid so it flows.
The goal is for metaphors and similes not to pop out like showmanship, but to flow into the music of the language. I love finding a way to say something that enhances the flow.
Sometimes you realize you've written a whole paragraph in a poetic meter. You might think, "I can't do that," but then you question, "Why not?" It's about bringing the reader into the text.
There's an idea, perhaps more common in academia, that the harder a text is, the better it is. I don't think that's true. Dickens isn't hard to read; he's easy to read, but the depth is still there.
It's about polishing the prose and ensuring anyone can read it and take something from it.
David [51:01 - 51:18]:
If you just said, "It's polishing the prose and making sure anyone can understand it," most people might hear that and think of Hemingway. But you're actually rejecting that style. Could you clarify the distinction?
Dean [51:18 - 53:22]:
I've written some books with spare prose, but they also contain figures of speech. There are as many styles as there are writers. I'm looking for a way that, even if I write a spare book, the language flows and sings if possible.
Consider Cormac McCarthy, whom I admire. He wrote two kinds of books. Early in his career, his work was dense and mysterious, like *The Orchard Keeper*. The prose was gorgeous and mesmerizing, pulling you in even if the plot was difficult to grasp.
Later, he moved to stripped-down works like *No Country for Old Men* and *The Road*, the opposite of his earlier style. Yet, you can tell it's the same writer.
That illustrates my point: writing doesn't always have to be dense and rich in imagery. It can be stripped down and still retain the poetry of the English language.
Language is a great and beautiful thing. Now that I'm older and understand it better, I always want to do the best possible job with it.
David [53:22 - 53:46]:
When you're trying to write with beautiful language and find music that sings, where do you find the most inspiration? Which writers, styles, or genres feel like the most lush well, where you can draw inspiration and pour it into your own work?
Dean [53:46 - 53:54]:
We are all inspired by others.
David [53:55 - 54:34]:
Exactly. Sometimes you read writing that feels like a springtime lushness. We're here in Newport Beach in late April, and as I was telling you, the poppies are alive and the hills are green—it's visually hydrating.
I feel that when reading certain writers; their well seems endless. I go to those writers because it makes my own writing easier. I feel an explosion of inspiration.
## [54:34] Finding Writing Inspiration in Others
Dean [54:34 - 58:19]:
I've read extensively. When my wife and I were first married, we couldn't afford a TV, and later decided we didn't want one. For ten years, we each read several novels a week. I've read thousands of novels over the years.
From that reading, I find that while I admire many writers, each usually has only one or two books that I truly find most inspiring. This applies to non-fiction and biography too. When I need inspiration for my own work, I keep going back to those specific books.
The screenwriter William Goldman, known for *Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid*, was also a novelist. His novels were well done, but one haunts me. The protagonist is a writer, and the novel's impetus is to show the folly of following certain writing rules too rigidly.
The character starts in college at Oberlin, acclaimed for his writing ability. His best friend is a publisher's son, and they remain friends. Goldman brilliantly portrays this character becoming overly committed to the idea that you only write what you know, but he fundamentally misunderstands it.
You can learn about anything and write about it convincingly. I recently wrote about a character living near a placer mine, where gemstones wash down from mountains and get buried in the soil. I had to learn about sifting soil for gemstones, but it's possible to depict it accurately without direct experience.
However, some people, particularly from academia, mistakenly believe 'write what you know' strictly means writing only about personal experience, even in fiction. Goldman's character embodies this flawed interpretation.
He unconsciously keeps ruining his life to generate vivid, exciting material to write about. This leads him to a hellish place by the book's end, driven by motivations he isn't fully aware of.
It's a brilliant concept. I often return to that book because the character is so charming. You watch him destroy himself, yet you love him. How does an author achieve that?
David [58:19 - 58:28]:
What makes you love a character? You mentioned this regarding the character with a 75 IQ, and you're talking about it now.
Where does that love for a character come from?
Dean [58:29 - 58:58]:
Certain human aspects make a character more appealing if they possess them.
I said about Odd Thomas that he was on a journey to absolute humility. That humility is also present in the character in this novel with the lower IQ. His mother tells him, "You'll be all right if you do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly."
David [58:59 - 59:02]:
Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly.
Dean [59:02 - 60:05]:
And he does those things.
Sometimes people say my lead characters are too good, that they have too few flaws. I don't think that's true. We're all flawed; they're flawed.
However, simply saying a character is a drunk or something similar doesn't automatically give them interesting flaws; it just makes them a drunk. The flaws in a character can be much more subtle, and then they are more convincing.
Odd Thomas, in his humility, is almost too naive. It's this naivete that repeatedly gets him into trouble.
These characters have problems, but they are more aligned with common human problems rather than purely dramatic ones.
David [60:05 - 60:13]:
Let's talk about suspense. What creates suspense in a book? What are the elements?
Dean [60:14 - 61:54]:
Again, it comes back to character. You have to care about the character and what might happen to them. If you're engaged on that level, the suspense works much better.
A sense of not knowing where the story is going—the twists and turns—also matters a lot to readers.
When a twist occurs, the reader should feel, "I should have seen that coming." As a writer, I dislike tricks thrown in arbitrarily just for plot development. This is my personal approach.
It comes back to character and revealing that character's history. Often, there are things you, as the writer, need to conceal about the character, or perhaps the character needs to conceal them, maybe unconsciously.
Sometimes characters discover things about themselves during the story.
I've never given suspense that much conscious thought. I just put the character into a difficult situation, and I'm pretty sure it will remain difficult.
David [61:54 - 62:11]:
So, does this stem from what some call a "low boredom tolerance"? Is it natural for you to think, "I'm bored, this needs to move faster"?
Also, is thinking in terms of "fast" and "slow" the right way to approach suspense?
Dean [62:11 - 67:09]:
Not necessarily. I've written 300,000-word novels with multiple storylines that, according to reviews and readers, still move quickly. The pacing relates to the density of events.
It's strange; I don't think anyone has ever asked me about my thoughts on suspense before, perhaps because it's such a natural part of storytelling for me. I believe suspense is a key element of all good fiction, including literary fiction.
Suspense is also one of the key elements of our lives. We never know what will happen next, whether it's tomorrow or an hour from now. That uncertainty is life. A novel without some element of suspense probably isn't accurately portraying life. So, I think of suspense in that fundamental way, rather than just as a genre requirement. I don't consciously think about how to artificially "juice up" the suspense for a character.
A perfect example is my novel *Intensity*. It begins with a woman visiting a friend in the wine country. A psychopathic killer enters the house and kills everyone except her, as he doesn't know she's there. He then takes the body of her friend—whom the protagonist initially believes is still alive—puts it in his motorhome, and drives away.
The woman leaves the house, intending to rescue her friend from the motorhome, only to discover the friend is dead. Just then, the killer returns and gets back into the motorhome. Now she's trapped inside with him, and he still doesn't know she's there. That's the setup.
She has opportunities to escape. The biggest one occurs about a quarter to a third of the way through the novel. The killer stops for gas somewhere along the California coastline, north of Santa Barbara, at a roadside stop with a convenience store. While he goes inside, she manages to get out of the motorhome.
However, he returns sooner than she expects. She hides underneath the vehicle as he fuels it, thinking her only chance is to slip into the convenience store and hide until he leaves. She makes it inside, but then he enters the store and kills the clerks. Now she's trapped in the convenience store with him, still undetected.
This moment connects suspense directly to character. The protagonist, China Shepherd, had a very difficult childhood with an inconstant mother who had terrible taste in men. Since childhood, whenever she was in trouble, she repeated a mantra: "China Shepherd, untouched and alive." It helped her navigate dangerous situations without being harmed.
She uses this mantra throughout her ordeal. While hidden in the store after the killer murders the clerks, she overhears him talking before he kills them. He reveals he's going home, where he keeps a young girl imprisoned in his basement.
China realizes she has a choice: she can escape now, or she can get back into the motorhome to try and save the captive girl. The question becomes: would she risk her life for a stranger? If the character is developed properly, I believe she would. That decision, driven by character, is where the real story emerges. When I wrote that scene, I didn't know exactly what was going to happen next.
## [67:09] China's Near Escape at Roadside Stop
David [67:09 - 67:09]:
Right.
Dean [67:09 - 67:33]:
I knew she was going to get out of that motorhome and go in there, but I didn't realize he was going to kill the clerks.
Then I realized he would kill the clerks, reveal he kidnapped the girl, and kept her in the basement of the home he was returning to. She faces a moral choice, and that makes the entire novel.
David [67:34 - 67:50]:
The image that popped into my head is that you're like the bulldozer of writers. You go really slowly, and then the novel reveals itself at every point.
Dean [67:50 - 67:51]:
Yes.
David [67:51 - 67:59]:
Day by day, you're crawling through this novel in your head.
Dean [67:59 - 68:14]:
A lot of it is subconscious; you get surprised by the developments yourself.
Other writers ask me, "How do you keep momentum? You're going so slow."
David [68:14 - 68:15]:
Yes.
Dean [68:15 - 69:34]:
In a strange way, going slowly builds the story in your head. You're denying yourself the easy answer.
There comes a point where you realize a character is going to have to end up somewhere specific, and that will cause a narrative problem. You wonder how to get the character out of that moment. It looks like you're tying a knot that can't be undone.
But because you're moving very slowly, you have a lot of time to think. Over the years, I've learned that as you get to that moment, you haven't just figured out how to solve it; you've got two, three, or four options.
This makes the story richer. You're always moving forward, and you have time on conscious and subconscious levels to think about how to get the most out of the situation, instead of just reaching for the quickest resolution.
David [69:34 - 69:52]:
This is one of your four rules of writing: Never go inside more than one character's mind in a scene. Each scene is from a singular viewpoint, and therefore a metaphor or simile should be in the voice of the narrator of the scene.
Dean [69:53 - 71:31]:
It's one of the worst things that has happened to fiction that this isn't taught. When you read a book where, in one scene, the author goes into different characters' thoughts, it's not a novel anymore. It's the author talking directly to you.
You've sacrificed the illusion of reality because you're showing your hand. I recently wrote a book where I break the fourth wall repeatedly, but that was intentional and for humorous effect.
I've mentioned this rule to writers who don't want to follow it, and to some younger writers, it's like a light going off. They realize it forces you into an intimacy with each character that you otherwise lose.
If you can go into every character's head in every scene, you're not inhabiting them; you're being a puppet master. If you force yourself to live within that character for their scene, you become more intimately involved with them. You're not just manipulating; you're living within the character. It's a very important rule. If I taught a writing class, that would be the first thing I'd teach.
David [71:31 - 71:38]:
Here's another rule: Metaphors aren't meant to dazzle readers, but to seduce them into a more intimate relationship with the story.
Dean [71:38 - 72:19]:
Sometimes things come to you, and initially, you think a metaphor is cool. But after looking at it for a while, you might realize that while it's clever, it pulls the reader too far out of the character's perspective.
You have to ensure the writing stays within the viewpoint character's thoughts or expressions. Anything challenging is also interesting; it makes the job more engaging. Writing becomes a more interesting task when you establish parameters that you must obey.
David [72:19 - 72:21]:
So you're saying not to dazzle?
Dean [72:21 - 72:28]:
You can dazzle, but the effect has to be felt organically within the character who's narrating the scene.
David [72:28 - 72:34]:
Does this mean every figure of speech should be consistent with the mood of the scene it appears in?
Dean [72:34 - 72:55]:
Yes. That becomes difficult if you're trying to sustain suspense and humor simultaneously, but it can be figured out.
If you're writing a very tense scene, the metaphor should contain tension in some way.
David [72:55 - 73:03]:
How about this idea: Metaphors and similes describe a scene more colorfully than a chain of adjectives, and they reinforce the mood.
What does that mean in practice?
Dean [73:04 - 74:01]:
Instead of just saying the scene is bathed in moonlight, which sets a mood, you could use a metaphor. For example, describing the face of the moon wrapped in clouds that begin to unravel like the wrappings on a mummy.
By describing things more metaphorically rather than with blunt adjectives, you bring more depth. It's what poetry does: it uses words to say more than the word itself says, creating moods and states of mind. That's the value of metaphor and simile.
David [74:01 - 74:41]:
How has faith been incorporated into your work over time? The word "love," specifically the Christian concept of the love of the Holy Spirit, seems increasingly prevalent.
The word "faith" itself implies something beyond logic and reason. There's where logic can take you, and then there's the structure of reality itself, with a gap between them. Are you suggesting that this gap is fundamental to how reality works, and that thinking we can fully understand reality through reason alone is foolish?
Dean [74:41 - 76:08]:
Yes. I read a great deal of science, especially books about quantum mechanics, because I find it fascinating. When you look at quantum mechanics or molecular biology, you're discovering a world we can't see, a world that doesn't respond easily to reason alone. There are other depths to it.
I have friends who are very good scientists in these fields. Privately, among friends, they will tell you that it is a creative world. But they often won't say it publicly because their careers are on the line, which I find fascinating.
Some do come forward. Stephen Meyer has written a couple of books, and his publisher actually asked me to provide a blurb. All the other blurbs were from scientists, and then there was one from Dean Koontz.
## [76:08] Faith, Reason, and the Limits of Science
David [76:08 - 76:09]:
There he is.
Dean [76:09 - 79:11]:
I said, "You don't want that. It'll just cut into the value of all the other things on there." They said, "No, we think you understand what he's saying here."
It's pretty difficult stuff, but he's making the argument that science is showing us—if we are only willing to look at it—that the world is more complex than just numbers and formulas. There's something going on at greater depth, and he makes a fabulous case for it.
If you go to Darwin, Darwin thought the human cell was what he called a "blob of carbonized albumin." He didn't know there are thousands of parts in every human cell, that there are chains of proteins that go on and on, and that the cell doesn't function without all of that.
How did the cell evolve into that great complexity if it doesn't function with irreducible complexity? You can't reduce it and still have it function. It can't have functioned simply and then gained these other attributes; it always had these attributes. That throws a big monkey wrench into everything we think we know.
When people ask how I can be so positive about life, given where I came from, how can I be so certain it has meaning, that we have free will, and that it's a created world? I say, if I came from where I came from, went through everything I've gone through, and all of this has happened to me, I'd be an idiot to think there wasn't something going on here.
I didn't make this happen on my own. There were so many moments in life that clicked, that if they had gone the other way... When you start to be aware of that, you're willing to say, "I'm part of something that I don't understand. It's mysterious and wonderful, and I just have to do the best I can."
If I do the best I can, things will happen. You have to seize the moment. Opportunity is given to you. And it's not always because of who your parents were—certainly not in my case. I can't imagine a world where reason alone can answer everything, because we know it can't.
David [79:12 - 79:55]:
Square this for me. On one hand, you love writing. You love to sit down at the computer every day and work. On the other hand, you have this self-doubt. How do those two things come together?
It seems like there's a lot of darkness for you in the writing process—maybe despair or limiting beliefs. How do those things coexist within this deeper faith, where you look at the arc of your life and see this repeated magic, thinking, "Wow, I can't believe that happened. I didn't do that"?
Dean [79:58 - 80:33]:
How do you reconcile the two? I don't know.
Partly, the doubt is there with the sense that I need to overcome it, that it's been put in my way for a reason. If you have no self-doubt, then you might not have any self-judgment. If I had no self-doubt, perhaps I would see every word I wrote as golden, and that would be a mistake.
David [80:33 - 80:34]:
Yeah, that would not be good.
Dean [80:34 - 81:04]:
That wouldn't be good. So the self-doubt is a tool, just like metaphors are a tool. You shouldn't be afraid of self-doubt. Some people get eaten up by it.
I've often said all writer's block is self-doubt. You may think other things are the cause, but it always comes down to this: when you sit down and can't get those words to come, it's because something inside is saying you can't do this.
David [81:04 - 81:10]:
What is the doubt that you feel? Is it 'I'm not good enough'? Is it that people won't like this? Is it internal or external?
Dean [81:10 - 82:32]:
The self-doubt is 'I can't do this as well as I want to, and I'm going to make a fool of myself.' I don't want to make a fool of myself.
Oddly, I frequently choose a book, a subject, or a way of telling a story where everybody in my professional life tells me I'm going to make a fool of myself. I choose them because there's that risk.
It really comes down to the personal, and it may go back to what I said about humiliation. Having lived and grown up through childhood and adolescence in a constant path of humiliation, I don't want to humiliate myself.
You don't want to be a fool if you can avoid it. Linda could testify to all the times I've made a fool of myself, but I prefer to live in the illusion I never have.
David [82:32 - 82:43]:
Let's go through a few writers I know you really like. What's a quick take on how they've influenced you or what you took from them? Start with John D. MacDonald.
Dean [82:43 - 84:26]:
He was the first writer who showed me that character can be as interesting as plot. He was a suspense writer. He wrote a series with a character named Travis McGee—they're good books, but his best books were not in the series.
He wrote a whole body of work, suspense stories involved with running a motel or being a real estate agent. His books are perhaps the best fictional record we have of the common American life in the 1950s and 60s.
He would be moving along in the book, compelling you from page to page, and then he would stop and tell you about a character for five pages. When I first read him doing this, I would think, 'Just get on with the story. I don't need to know all this about the character.'
But by the end of those pages, when the story resumed, I'd realize, 'Wait a minute. I want to know more about this character.' He made character exploration as gripping, interesting, and appealing as the actual plot. There was a great deal to learn from that.
As a writer, he had tremendous charm, yet he was a cynic. It didn't put a bitter edge to his work.
David [84:26 - 84:29]:
You don't usually hear the words 'charm' and 'cynic' together.
Dean [84:29 - 84:36]:
Look at Mark Twain. There's charm and cynicism mixed there, too.
David [84:37 - 84:39]:
T.S. Eliot.
Dean [84:40 - 84:43]:
His use of language is mind-blowing.
David [84:43 - 84:45]:
Mind-blowing.
David [84:48 - 84:53]:
I traveled here with only one book: the selected poems of T.S. Eliot.
Dean [84:53 - 85:31]:
You can read the same piece a hundred times, and the language gives you something new the 101st time. I don't know of any other writer like that.
He buries so much within the surface prose; it's almost impossible to describe.
I remember when I first found him and read the Four Quartets. Reading it is mesmerizing.
David [85:32 - 86:02]:
A line from T.S. Eliot reminds me of you: 'Here or there does not matter. We must be still and still moving.'
It reminds me of you because you seem remarkably at peace in your disposition when spending time together, yet you are also incredibly prolific.
'We must be still and still moving.'
Dean [86:02 - 88:00]:
I've learned more from Elliot than I realize. You absorb things that come into you and change you. What I most love about him is the surrendering to the way of the world.
This is the world. It is created; we do not control it. We make our way, we fail, but we go on. Going on is the purpose. There's a certain acceptance in him of all that's problematic in life that is very appealing once you start feeling it.
I was asked in an interview how often I get angry and what makes me angry. Linda and I actually laughed because we couldn't think of any time I've ever been truly angry. I just don't get angry. It used to bother my wife; she would say, "They're ripping you off!" Yes, I know, but we'll get past this.
I get disturbed by people's bad behavior, but I don't get angry. I think that's in Elliot, too. There's no point. We live in the still point of the turning world.
## [88:00] Embracing Life's Challenges with Acceptance
David [88:00 - 88:06]:
"Here or there does not matter... It must be still and still moving."
How about Ray Bradbury?
Dean [88:06 - 89:13]:
I read him a lot when I was younger. Bradbury just wants you to be as delighted with everything as he is. He's such an ebullient writer, unless you read *Fahrenheit 451*, which is a dark piece.
My favorite of his is *Something Wicked This Way Comes*, which is a wonderful book about fathers and sons and the right kind of relationships.
From Bradbury, as a reader, I started to have less fear about colorful language—just letting the language get however flowery you want it to, as long as you feel in control of it.
David [89:14 - 89:17]:
What do you mean by feeling in control of it? Spell that out.
Dean [89:17 - 90:34]:
You're just not ending up with uncontrolled metaphors. I was sent a blurb recently, and there was absolutely no control; the more elaborate and fantastic the metaphors could get, the better the author seemed to think it was. Well, that isn't a good metaphor.
Bradbury will push that kind of writing as far as he can, sometimes trembling on the edge, but he never loses control. There was a lesson in that.
I read once that he said he never wrote anything except in a state of joy. He wrote mostly short stories, which takes away the angst of wondering if you'll live long enough to finish a 400-page novel. He said he wrote many short stories just going outside, sitting on the patio in a lawn chair, and spending a few hours. He had a story because of the joy with which he approached it.
David [90:34 - 91:00]:
He had a sign over his desk that said, "Don't think." There's this great interview where he says, "You must always surprise yourself at the page. When you think, you start to lie to yourself, but you must always surprise yourself at the page."
I think there are similarities between the two of you there. He saw writing as an act of surrender to your subconscious—you were the leash, and it was the dog.
Dean [91:04 - 91:09]:
I often say I have to entertain myself when I'm working.
Dean [91:10 - 91:49]:
If I'm not entertaining myself... It's more than entertaining; I have to move myself too.
If a book is meant to take you somewhere emotionally and intellectually, I have to feel that when I'm writing it.
I can easily move myself to tears or make myself laugh out loud while writing. That's when I know it's working.
If I get choked up, then I know it's got it—without being overly manipulative.
David [91:50 - 92:51]:
I was writing something a few weeks ago and I was bawling. I sent it to a friend, and he said it moved him to tears.
I was crying so much that I had to dictate it; I couldn't type.
It was a strange feeling because I've sometimes resisted emotions. It was a challenge to myself to just feel this one. The act of writing turned up the volume on the feeling.
I was very sad at that particular point, but it was strangely delightful to feel the emotion of sadness to the absolute extreme.
Musicians make music to evoke intense feelings. As writers, we can ask, "How do I feel this emotion as intensely as possible?" There's something strange and very nice about that.
Dean [92:51 - 92:58]:
When you listen to certain pieces by Mozart, aren't you absolutely sure he was crying as he wrote them?
David [92:58 - 93:00]:
Let's talk about Dickens.
Dean [93:00 - 93:12]:
I didn't read Dickens in high school or college. I always thought, "I'm not going to read what they want me to read. I'll fake it and read what I want," because I always had my own reading list.
David [93:13 - 93:14]:
The rebellion strikes again.
David [93:16 - 93:20]:
I also read that you didn't like research at all when you were a kid; you hated it.
Dean [93:20 - 95:56]:
Now I love research.
I could fake book reports, so I did. Then, in my late twenties or early thirties, I decided I ought to read this Dickens guy. I chose *A Tale of Two Cities* and became utterly captivated.
When I got to the latter part, I couldn't stop reading. I finished the book around 3:00 in the morning. I was in bed, and my wife, Jarda, was sound asleep. She woke up because I was in tears.
The end of that novel is perhaps the most emotional ending I can think of. This attorney, a drunk who has messed up his life, is in love with a woman who loves another man. He goes to the guillotine under the identity of that other man, sacrificing himself so the woman he loves can be with the man she loves. He even gives compassion to another woman on the way... If you haven't read that book, you have to. It's powerful.
I don't like all of Dickens. Some of his made-up names can be a little difficult because they're so over the top. But *Oliver Twist*, *Great Expectations*, *A Tale of Two Cities*... He wasn't afraid of emotion.
What often happens in literature courses is that sentiment gets confused with sentimentality.
David [95:57 - 95:59]:
Sentiment is confused with sentimentality.
Dean [95:59 - 96:06]:
Sentimentality is something you want to avoid. Genuine sentiment is something you want to have as much of in a book as you can get.
David [96:07 - 96:08]:
Spell that out for me. What do you mean?
Dean [96:08 - 97:04]:
Sentimentality can manifest in the events themselves or in the way you write. For instance, imagine a character dying of cancer who simultaneously discovers her child might also be dying. We've gone from appealing to genuine human feeling to something so over the top that, even though it can happen in life, you must be careful about using it in fiction.
Sentimentality is also in how you write about it. If you push excessively to get an emotional reaction, you're likely doing it wrong.
Dean [97:05 - 98:48]:
You shouldn't have to push for the reaction; it should simply come from the character's condition and their place in life. It should be something you can identify with as a human being without excessive flowery language. When it moves you naturally, that is sentiment.
However, I have seen attempts to drive sentiment out of fiction entirely, resulting in a cold, "this is just life" approach. That doesn't move people or inspire them to deal with their own problems.
Sentiment connects us. It's the source of sympathy and pity. We recognize ourselves in the feelings, hopes, and dreams of others. If that is stripped out of fiction, you lose something vital.
There are writers whose prose I like, but I find some books so emotionless that I can only admire their cold clarity. Joan Didion is an example—very cold, very clear. But I don't really want to read it. The closest she comes to real sentiment is in the book about losing her husband, and even there, you sense a reluctance to go too far, to talk too much about it. She might just say she was devastated.
We need more than that. We need to venture into sentiment a little. Just don't go over the top.
## [98:48] Sentiment in Fiction: Connecting Through Feeling
David [98:48 - 99:03]:
This might be a self-indulgent question, but how do you feel surrounding yourself with these Japanese and art deco influences shapes your creative work?
Dean [99:04 - 99:07]:
Well, for those who aren't seeing this...
David [99:07 - 99:46]:
This house is incredible. I walked in and just lit up. It's a mix of classical Japanese elements with art deco paintings, doors, and curved lines reminiscent of streamlined modern design.
Right here in front of me is a collection of art deco radios. There's none of the plainness you often see in contemporary life.
Dean [99:46 - 100:24]:
I think that plainness in contemporary life is destroying souls. I've thought about this because I grew up in poverty, but poverty doesn't mean you can't have beauty around you. There was no sense of it in the families I grew up with; everything was rather ugly. I naturally gravitated toward things with some beauty to them.
I'm actually doing notes now for a book that might explore why I write the way I do.
David [100:25 - 100:27]:
Oh, I feel very threatened right now.
Dean [100:29 - 102:37]:
I started with notes to myself about the families. My father's family was dysfunctional in the extreme. He had two brothers who committed suicide. He often talked about suicide, mentioning he would kill all of us at the same time.
His entire family was dysfunctional into a second generation. When you would visit, there was nothing of beauty in the house or in their lives. One brother died of a burst appendix because their mother decided she was a Christian Scientist. A week after her decision, he got appendicitis, and she wouldn't allow him treatment. He died two months later, and she gave up Christian Science. That characterized the whole family.
My mother told me, "Never go near them. If anything happens to me, do not get involved with that family."
As I grew up, I think there was a yearning to be around peaceful and beautiful things. Art Deco, Japanese art, some Chinese art—seeing these things throughout the day, just walking past them, calms me.
I like to have things around me that give me a sense of continuity, of life, of reason, and meaning. That's all present in the best Japanese and Chinese art. If it's there, I'm much calmer.
David [102:38 - 102:58]:
You say that "metaphysics is the ink in my pen." Whatever's going on here, it is the central issue of our existence. It seems to me that it begs to be the central issue of a writer's career.
Dean [102:59 - 103:00]:
Wow. I said that?
David [103:00 - 103:01]:
I guess.
Dean [103:04 - 103:05]:
I must have added wine.
David [103:05 - 103:10]:
What were you talking about there?
Dean [103:12 - 108:35]:
I have said, if your conviction is that life has no meaning or purpose, that we're all just animals who came to think too much, you have one book to write. Once you've said it, what else do you have to say? There's nowhere else to go.
You can keep writing the same story about the meaninglessness of all things, but what a dead end that is.
I have found that the more I'm aware that there is deep mystery in life, the more interesting it becomes. Things happen that somebody may call coincidence, or even synchronicity, which suggests it's too coincidental to be mere coincidence.
When you open your mind and eyes to that possibility, life becomes much more interesting. It becomes fascinating.
That's where you find something to write about. Every life, every character's life, becomes a great adventure towards something meaningful. It isn't just about someone thrown into violence who either triumphs or doesn't.
They're going somewhere. That's what makes a book different: How did they get there? What did they learn along the way?
The work doesn't become didactic or preachy. It opens you to the different ways lives are lived and the mystery that evolves out of every single life, if you're able to look at it and think about it.
That sense of mystery is always there when I'm writing because I'm always thinking about it.
Many very strange things have happened in my life. I wrote about this once but didn't explain it fully.
I was standing right next to somebody who was shot and killed. The person who shot them turned the gun on me. I was looking right down the barrel, but they didn't pull the trigger. They just walked away.
I ended up having to talk to the police. You always wonder: why kill one person but not the witness standing right there? It makes you start to think.
If you open your eyes to things, you see coincidences in life and realize they might be more than just coincidence. When you open yourself to it, it seems to happen more often. The more you're aware of it, the more it happens.
As a writer, that's fascinating. It can carry you to places where some readers can't follow. I wrote a book called *Breathless*. Some people love that book; others found it a little too 'out there'.
I always want to reach an audience; that's why they allow you to keep publishing. If you don't reach an audience, you don't get to publish.
Conveying a sense of the mystery of life is useful. We're living in a world with things that didn't exist before. Social media can be beneficial, but it's also enormously destructive.
I look at the coming of AI and wonder what that will bring. What will it do to people's self-esteem as jobs are lost and things change? It's worrisome.
I likely won't be here to see the worst of it if things go downhill, but one becomes concerned about the fate of the human race. How will we go on?
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