Most people who are trying to write kind of sit in their basements and pull it out of their imaginations.
From John Sandford
Most people like a little sex in their novels.
If you do outline, you have to be aware of the problems that that kind of thing can cause.
Books set in Brooklyn and L.A. are often about people who are rootless, who want to go somewhere else. In the Midwest, though, the stories are about people who want to stay where they are - who like where they are.
People in California don't live in a place so much as they do a condition.
I have a problem with the way the media deals with a lot of law enforcement issues.
When I was reporting crime... I never had the sense of clockwork conspiracies or some kind of imposing order of evil. What I sensed was things just sort of falling apart.
That's my sense of how crime works: that it's not any kind of calculated evil driven by the devil, but just control disintegrating.
Women just make interesting characters, especially when you're working against cliches.
The difference is this: If you write a good book, it'll get published. If you have a great screenplay, there is no guarantee.
2 perspectives
1 perspectives