Does it Take a Twisted Mind to Write Twisted Stories? | from Better In Person

How to Be a Better Human

In this episode of Better in Person, bestselling author Harlan Coben discusses his writing process, the psychology behind crafting suspensef

Key takeaways

• Coben believes great storytelling stirs the heart more than the pulse, emphasizing emotional depth over action or violence.
• He writes without considering film adaptations, fearing it would compromise authenticity and creativity.

Main topics

• The psychology of suspense and emotional engagement in storytelling
• Balancing creativity with commercial success

Notable quotes

"I don't care how many years you've done the same thing. I'm always looking for new challenges."

Conclusion

Harlan Coben shares how his relentless pursuit of emotional truth, cre

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Support comes from WISE, the smart way to manage the currencies you need around the world. Your life is global. Your money should be too. Some providers promise no fees on overseas transfers. Don't be fooled. Extra costs often hide in bloated exchange rates. Choose WISE. You can send, spend and receive money in over 40 currencies. Count on the exchange rates that you'd usually see on Google. That's how millions save billions on hidden fees. Be smart. Get WISE. Visit WISE.com. Hi, Speaker 4 (0:30) I'm Adam Grant, host of the podcast Rethinking, a show where I talk to some of today's greatest thinkers about the unconventional ways they see the world. On Rethinking, you'll get surprising insights from scientists, leaders, artists, and more. People like Reese Witherspoon, Malcolm Gladwell, and Yo-Yo Ma. Hear lessons to help you find success at work, build better relationships, and more. Find Rethinking wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 3 (0:57) Hey there, I want to share an episode today of a show that I think you're going to really enjoy. It's from the mind of Stephen Dubner, who you probably know as the host of Freakonomics Radio. And Stephen is trying something new. It's a video talk show called Better in Person. If Freakonomics Radio is about how things work, Better in Person is about how people work. Every episode, Stephen invites really smart, accomplished, fascinating people into his living room, literally, to talk about their work, their drive, and the things that light them up. This episode that we're about to share with you is with the bestselling author Harlan Coben. Coben has a knack for turning his thrillers into hit Netflix series. And as you will hear in this conversation, that comes with a lot of hard work. Stephen produced this special audio version of Better in Person so you can listen. But if you'd like to watch the show, just check out the Freakonomics YouTube channel. Hope you like it. Speaker 6 (1:50) I always love this question. If you weren't a writer, what would you be? And one of my friends says, a U.S. senator. I'm like, oh, please. I'd be a duvet cover, dude. I got like no other marketable skills. Speaker 1 (2:06) This is Better in Person with Stephen Dubner and Harlan Coben. Speaker 5 (2:10) If you write books for a living, even if they turn out to be very successful, which is unlikely, it's even more unlikely that you will have enough leverage to turn your own books into films and TV shows. But Harlan Coben has done that. He has produced 12 series on Netflix. His books have sold 90 million copies. And he still seems to be at the peak of his powers. You know, I've known you a little bit for a while, and I like you a great deal. I mean, I'm just saying that. Thank Speaker 6 (2:39) you. Speaker 5 (2:39) I like you a great deal. I appreciate that. Can Speaker 6 (2:41) everybody turn the cameras off for a minute? We're done. Feels very intimate here. Speaker 5 (2:47) But. Yes. But. Wow. I love it. But. I'm a little bit edgy, and I'm edgy because I've been reading a lot of Harlan Coben. Uh-oh. Wow. Like, you got your hooks in me because, like, there are all these characters where there's, they're placid. on the surface, but very turbulent inside where you think something is one thing and it turns out to be another, where there's some fear, unknown quantity lurking. And it has me in a state of deep, I'm not going to say anxiety. I don't feel bad. I just feel, like I said, on edge. But I want to know how you feel about making people feel that way. Speaker 6 (3:28) It's interesting. That's a different response than I usually. You know, because at the end, usually the world comes back together. It Speaker 5 (3:34) does. And it may not Speaker 6 (3:36) be. It may not be. At the end of Speaker 5 (3:38) each book. Yes. And I Speaker 6 (3:39) may not have happy endings. In fact, quite frequently, I like to have devastating endings. My favorite endings usually I see have their runaway. Runaway is one of my most devastating endings. but the world sort of put back together. And I think of it more as escapism, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way. So I'm actually kind of happy about that. I do want things to linger in your head. It sounds so corny, but I still want this to be the book that you go to bed at 11 o'clock and say, I'm just going to read for 10 minutes. Next thing you know, it's four in the morning, and you're a little delirious, and you're kind of happy. And it was... I call it the novel of immersion. That book you take on vacation, but you don't want to leave your hotel room because you have to know what happened. And I love, as a reader, having that feeling. And the idea that as a writer, I can give that feeling to somebody makes me happy. And I hope what makes the books work and what makes the difference is it's easy to stir the mind, it's easy to stir the pulse, but it has to stir the heart. And so I have to make you care about these people in order to work. I have no interest in action movies or action things. I'm not big on... violence or gore. I never have them in my books. That sort of seems always very internal from the viewpoint of the person involved in the action sequence. What do you mean by that? So in other words, it's what you are thinking. It's like as though I had just punched you in the face. It's not like his hand. It's what you are thinking. Oh my God, this fist is flying at me. What am I going to do? That fucking hurt. That's sort of a thing. So I try to make. any of the action sequence internal. When you film, it has to be complete opposite. It's external. That doesn't really interest me. When we're filming those scenes, I'm not really all that much engaged. Has Speaker 5 (5:14) your writing changed, though, as you've been filming more and more? Do you write a little bit more cinematically now, do you think? I Speaker 6 (5:20) actually think of anything less, but definitely not more. Speaker 5 (5:22) Less cinematically. Speaker 6 (5:22) Yes. In the sense of, I just finished writing a book with Reese Witherspoon that just came out called Gone Before Goodbye. Speaker 5 (5:27) This is your Speaker 6 (5:27) first Speaker 5 (5:27) collaboration, yes? My first Speaker 6 (5:29) collaboration. Speaker 5 (5:29) Why did you choose now? Why did Speaker 6 (5:31) you choose her? Reese sort of chose me. So Reese came to me. By the way, usually I like to have this conversation with Reese here so Reese can say this part because it always sounds so braggy. So one day Reese Witherspoon called me on the phone, but that's what actually happened. Do Speaker 5 (5:44) you want to Speaker 6 (5:44) bring someone to be Speaker 5 (5:45) Reese? Yeah, can Speaker 6 (5:45) somebody play Reese for Speaker 5 (5:46) me? Does anybody want to be Reese? Can somebody be Reese? Speaker 6 (5:48) So Reese did. She called me. We've known each other for a few years. Had she Speaker 5 (5:51) been in anything of yours? Speaker 6 (5:53) No, we never worked together. We're just, we fangirl and fanboy over each other and we're friends. And she said, I had this idea I want to talk to you about. I was reluctant. I shouldn't exactly say it was going to be for a novel, but I was sort of very wary. I don't do that. I'm not that guy. There are people who are that guy. I'm not that guy. Jim Patterson is that guy. He's certainly done it. But there's a lot of people who do that, love that. I'm just not that way. And I keep always saying this in my career, and you probably do the same, but I go, I'll never do this, and then I end up doing it. So I always thought I would never. But then again, I waited 36 or 37 or 38 books. So it's not like I was selling out early or whatever. But so Reese came and I was sort of like, how do I nicely tell Reese Witherspoon? I'm sure it's a great idea, but it's not for me. And then she tells me the idea. I'm like, oh, dang, I could do something with that. I kind of like it. And I take out a pad and we start going back and forth. And at the end of the whole thing, Reese kind of goes, are you going to do it with me? I'm like, yeah, let's give it a shot. I called my publisher. They were super excited about the idea. Speaker 6 (6:51) You know, the other thing with creativity we can talk about is it's always good to push yourself. It's always good to do new things. I don't care how many years you've done the same thing. I'm always looking for new challenges. Do you ever get Speaker 5 (7:01) bored with yourself? Speaker 6 (7:02) I don't get bored, but I just like new challenges. It keeps me fresh for everything else. And I know Reese is the same way. You know, Reese was taking a bigger chance in a sense than I was. But both of us knew, and I said to her day one, like, okay, this can't be done like one of those celebrity books. The only hands touching this are ours. No one else is allowed in a room. No one else is allowed to see it. This has to be a priority. And to get back to your original question, we can't think about this being adapted into a movie or TV series. It may be, but I write without thinking of that. It's the kiss of death, quite frankly, I think, to write a book thinking, ooh, this is going to make a really good adaptation. But will it? A book is a book. Yeah, it would. Most of my stuff does. But if I aim for it, it doesn't work. The caveat to that is I'm willing to change everything. I don't believe in staying devoted, slavishly devoted to the text. I believe that you have to make the changes. I think the worst adaptations are the ones that want to reproduce the book. What the hell is the point of that? You want the experience of the book? Read the goddamn book. So I just worry about what's going to make a good TV series or a good movie or a good book. And I don't worry about fidelity to the material. All right. So. Speaker 5 (8:11) You and I both know a lot of writers. Yes. Just when you're a writer, many of your friends are writers. And most writers that I know of, I don't know about you, if they have the good fortune to write something that then intersects with film or TV, what happens at the end is usually heartbreak and tears and misery. Usually. Yes. And then there's, you know, there's been films and Barton Fink. There are many, many stories of great writers going to Hollywood and just getting the crap beat out of them. Correct. You have had a different outcome. So let's hear about that. Let's start with the fact that I had that. Speaker 6 (8:40) part. So when I wrote Tell No One, there was a huge bidding war in Hollywood. What year is this? The year was 2000, I believe. Might have been 2000. The book came out in 2001, so I would say it was 2000. And Speaker 5 (8:50) you're a name then, but not... Speaker 6 (8:51) I'm not a name. Not at all. Tell No One was my breakout book. I had had seven Myron Bolotar books before that. So within the community... I was a name. I was a decent seller. You were winning some awards. I had won awards. I had won everything in the mystery awards. And Speaker 5 (9:06) the awards in the mystery and thriller world are serious awards. They're serious awards. Speaker 6 (9:09) I don't know if people Speaker 5 (9:09) know that. The Edgar, Speaker 6 (9:10) it's like. Yes, it was a big deal, but it wasn't in terms of sales. or in terms of that sort of thing. I had never hit the New York Times bestseller list. Oh, is Speaker 5 (9:17) that Speaker 6 (9:17) right? Never within sniffing distance, I don't Speaker 5 (9:19) think. Speaker 6 (9:19) Can Speaker 5 (9:19) I ask, how did you keep getting contracts for new books if you were a mid-list author, what we call it, right? Would you have been able to stick around seven books if you were starting out now? I Speaker 6 (9:29) don't know. I doubt it. So people believed in me. So to give you an idea, my first Myron Bolotar book was a paperback original with Dell. So I got paid $5,000 for it. I don't want to brag. But by the fourth book in the series, I was up to $6,000. Overnight success. Congratulations. Tremendous. So probably part of it was that I was such a pimple on the butt of publishing. $6,000. And I remember, this is a true story. So my first book was a contract for those Myrons. Two books, $10,000, $5,000, $5,000. The second book contract, my agent says to me, I negotiated it up because they want they're giving you eleven thousand. They wanted to make it five thousand five hundred, five thousand five hundred. But I got them to make it five thousand six thousand. And I go, what is the difference? Besides, it seems like it's a later payment because it shows growth. And I'm like, if that's the idea of what growth you think I want, it was time to leave that age. Speaker 5 (10:28) OK, so as you're making a whopping five grand for a book that takes you several months or a year to write. Yep. What's your family situation at this point? Your wife is a pediatrician. Speaker 6 (10:37) Yes. Was she in medical school then? No, she was already working as a pediatrician up at what was then called Columbia Presbyterian. Making Speaker 5 (10:46) big, big, big bucks as a pediatrician. No, Speaker 6 (10:48) not making Speaker 5 (10:48) big, big bucks. I had a full-time job. I had a full-time job. Oh, what's your job then? I was Speaker 6 (10:51) at a company called Club ABC Tours, which was a family travel agency that I was running, helping my grandfather run. Here's the other thing I believe. I don't believe you need... to be a full-time writer. I think that that's sort of a fallacy that we have all kind of bought into. So for a long time, I worked the first eight years out of college and I wrote at the same time. And then eventually- What are you doing for the Speaker 5 (11:15) travel agency? Speaker 6 (11:16) My grandfather was sort of aging up. My mother was there too. I was sort