Transcript
This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is The James Altucher Show. Today on The James Altucher Show. What What does it mean to write a good thriller novel? What does it mean to write a twist where no one's gonna guess where the twist leads to? So Brad Meltzer, who sold tens of millions of copies of his thriller novels, he has a new book coming out, The Lightning Rod, and he comes on to talk about all sorts of things about writing. If you're gonna have any interest at all in thrillers, writing, movies, comics, listen to this interview with Brad Meltzer. You know, in comics, what you know, stories have a a 3 act structure, act 1, act 2, act 3, basically. Right? There's a beginning, there's a middle, and there's the end. And when I went to work for DC Comics, they said to me, so much of comics are about act 2. There is no act 3. There's never there is no end, which as a novelist, I'm like, I can't do that. That's why my comic stories are always self contained, beginning, middle, end. But for the most part, they want Superman's gonna go forever. Right? So you're never gonna end. But but when when an episode be like, let's just take the Superman TV show from the fifties. That always had a beginning a 3 actors or a beginning Right. Because they but they never had an arc over a whole season. They were just a 50 minute episode. That's absolutely right. But now you don't wanna watch an episode of the Flash where he fights a villain and next week fights a different villain. You wanna have a full 22 episode arc. And that 22 episode arc, we all know now as Netflix figured out, when you do 22 episodes of anything, you're just you're you're you're milking half the episodes in there because they're never gonna fit what you want. It's what killed The X Files. It's what kills, you know, something like Lost. You know? Like, you you're just eventually trying to put up with network demands of give me 22 of them. Whereas Netflix is, like, give me give me your solid best twelve. It it's true. Like, I used to like like, with lost, for instance, I used to try to figure out fairly quickly which were filler episodes. Like, they there was no real may there might be just one plot point that would extend the story, but everything else was just filler, And then I would just not watch those because I was binge watching. So you you can't you can't waste too much time on fillers. That's the thing. That's the truth. So we're talking about the lightning rod, of course. What's the official publication date? March 8th. March 8th. And but I do wanna ask, though. What what is you know, you've worked on so many comics. What are what's your favorite superhero show? My favorite superhero show, that's a fair question. I definitely love Peacemaker for now. I don't know that one. In terms of modern oh, Peacemaker was great on HBO Max, James Gunn basically doing television. They took a, you know, a film director and writer who crushes in the movie theaters and said, you know what? We're gonna do a TV show. I thought Peacemaker was great. I thought I mean, we were talking offline before we started about, you know, those early seasons of The Flash were just really fun because they just you really felt like special effects caught up, with with the TV shows. But it's you know, I actually think TV shows are really hard for this genre. I do. I think they are. What about, like, like, kind of these shows like Heroes, which are not quite comic book style but are superhero style? The funny thing about Heroes so Heroes, what no one realizes, they were written they were comic books. You know, the 22 of the writers were friends of mine on on heroes, Michael Green and Jeph Loeb. They basically both wrote for Smallville and then wrote in comics. Jeff wrote more in comics than anything else. You know, and and 2 of them are 2 of the best writers in the genre. And, you know, I remember watching Heroes being like, oh, I know what they're doing. It's an homage to you know, this is an X Men issue. This is a so and so issue. I remember that storyline and talking to them being like, yeah. You get it. But it would that that to me was actually America's first taste of a comic book genre without realizing they were getting comic books. Right. But that was those were comic books. Yeah. And then there were it seems like there was a lot of knockoffs of heroes. There there was, like, alphas, and then there was, like and there was, like, you know, ironic takes on heroes. Like, I forgot the one that's on Netflix now, The Boys. The Boys? I love The Boys. The Boys is is Eric Kremke crushing it. He's an amazing writer. Did supernatural for many years and now is, I think and The Boys comic was spectacular. Was, you know, Derek Robertson and Garth Ennis killing it. Do you think new writers now, rather than getting into, let's say, the thriller genre like like you did when you started writing, do you think they're going straight to TV? Because I mean, like, take take a show like Travelers on Netflix. You know, time travelers are coming back from the future to change things so they could save the future. It's like a good idea for a series, but it would have been great as a novel as well. But you don't see I don't see stories like that in novels anymore. I just see them on TV. You know, I think I think 2 things have happened. You know, one is, you know, in in the comic book world, someone once described comic books for DC and Marvel that the comic books themselves forget about television and film and everything else, that that comic books were the r and d. Right? It was the research and development. That's what comic books were. They figure out what works. And then TV and film says, oh, you did a 100 issues. These are the 5 best and these are the other 5 best. We'll take these. And they took them. And that and if you look at the films, I'm speaking to you the week before, days before the Batman comes out. And people are already buzzing with, is it going to be year 1? Is it going to be this story? What is it going to be, Darwin Cook's ego? Like, what's what are they taking from to help them stitch together this movie? Because every movie whether it's endgame or even spider verse and spider man, was was taking from some storyline that was r and d in comics and then either improved upon or built upon or expanded upon. But but that so that's always the setup of the way comics have comics have worked. I think what you're seeing now to your point with with novels, there are spectacular things that are coming in novels. It just takes the it takes Hollywood a couple years to find them. I mean, you're saying, oh, I didn't see it, but that's because you just saw Hunger Games even though that was many years ago now. But, like, you know, it's an it's not like it comes Hunger Games had 3 books out before they had the first movie out. And so it takes Hollywood a while to kinda catch up on it. So The Lightning Rod, which is sort of a sequel or kind of is a sequel to the the story you started in Escape Artist, you know, same characters. And, you know, I know it's hard always talking about novels because we don't wanna give away too much of the plot. I will say it's it's a riveting book. I'm so glad I got an advanced copy. And right on the front is quotes from James Patterson and and Lee Childe. This is according to James Patterson, this is your favorite this is his favorite Brad Meltzer novel, so I hope he likes all the other novels as well. My wife was we were very happy with that quote. When James Patterson gives you a good quote, that's the one time you get to impress your relatives. Yeah. Because everybody well, do do you know him? Have you did you call him? I know him. I've met him. It's not like we hang out. But I know you know, I know just like I know Lee. I mean, again, I've I've the one thing that's good about thriller novelists especially is it is a tight community. And whenever you get a bunch of writers together, it's just free therapy because all of us are are basically sit by ourselves all day long. And then when you get us together at Thriller Fest or some other event or book expo, it's the one time where we get to say like, hey, what's working for you? Or hey, did the publisher do this? Or hey, is how this publisher doing? And so that's always fun to me. I I mean, I'm a nerd so I love that. I love getting to meet Lee Child or James Patterson, whoever I've been able to meet over the years. In fact, my first the first book that I ever wrote, The Lightning Rod celebrates my 25th anniversary as writing, thrillers of my first published book. And the very first book before it came out, I wrote letters to John Grisham, to Scott Turow, and to David Baldacci who were, like, the 3 big writers at the time who were crushing it in that genre. Specifically, the legal thriller genre. They were right. I my first book was legal thriller. These obviously, lightning rod isn't, but the first book I wrote was illegal thriller. So I wrote to the 3 legal thriller big honchos. I was like, listen. I'm I'm 27 years old. My book's coming out. I don't know anything. Can you help me? And my phone rings one day and I pick it up, and it's John Grisham. Hey. It's John Grisham. How can I help you? And it was this is pre Internet. This was pre go on Twitter and DM someone. This was pre, hey. Look. I mean, I literally wrote a letter and put a stamp on it and sent it to wherever we sent it at the time, with no connections. We didn't know anybody. We it was literally a cold call. And all 3 of them got back to me and reached out to me. And that is, you know, one, a sign of what nice people they are, but also just a willingness to help those of us who are young and starting out. So to this day, if you have a book and it's your first book, go on my Twitter account. You will see all the time I will be tweeting for all these people who it's their first book, and I will always help them and tweet out their book. Well, what did John Grisham tell you on that call? He told me you know, he was one of the things he told me, he told me advice that other authors gave him. And I'm like, who's giving you advice? But I remember he told me at the time he said, listen. And this is when they were making a John Grisham movie all the time. They were making movies one after the other, after the the firm and the rainmaker and Matt Damon and Matt McConaughey, Matthew McConaughey and all these people. And he said, listen, whatever happens with your book, whatever Hollywood does with your book, it'll all be gone. And that book will always be on your shelf, and no one can take that away from you. And I still give that advice to people who get all worried and sweating and, you know, worry about, oh, what if it gets a bad review? What if this bad thing happens? What if no one buys? And I'm like, that book will still forever sit on your shelf. And that is it is to this day great advice. Well, with this book I mean, you you once mentioned that in an interview that, usually, there's some some little story you hear that kind of kicks off the whole plot, that that kind of inspires the whole story. So what you know, I don't know how much to give away. This is sort of a a military intelligence type of thriller. But, like, what what story or idea kind of inspired you to kick this off? It was one of my greatest fears of all time, which is when you hand your keys over to a valet. Yeah. And that's how the book opens. Yeah. And he hands his keys over to a valet, and the valet takes the keys. And instead of driving to the parking lot with his car, he hits the GPS button. He says the words go home, and the car plots a route to the man's home. And now this valet has the man's car keys and the man's house key that's on there. And this is going to be a robbery. He's going to rob them. But when he gets to the man's house, he walks inside and there's a man with a gun waiting. And he realized this isn't a robbery at all. This is a trap. And when the valet's body goes to our hero, Zig Zigorowski, who's really well known for working on government secrets, he uncovers not just one of the the government's greatest hidden secrets that the government has, But he also asked the question that really is a whole book is about was, what's your greatest secret that no one knows about you? Because it's coming out. And that I just ruined chapter 1 of the lightning rod for you, but that's basically the opening. It was my own fear of handing my keys over to valet and always knowing they could just go break into your house. So that's funny. So at at some point, I assume, like, you're at a restaurant. You hand your keys to the valet, and you start thinking, what if he says go home? But what if there's, when when does it start to turn into a plot? Like like, when do you think, oh, but what if there was a murderer there waiting for him? Like, does it start to just beat itself? 1st of all, I love that you say, you know, one time you go to the restaurant and worry about the valet. Every frigging time I go to a restaurant and hand my keys to the valet, I'm worried about what they're gonna see, what they're gonna find, what they're gonna put. Like, I just all thriller writers, the reason we can write these thrillers is because we're super paranoid. Right? My job is to sit around and take a normal situation and and imagine the worst case that becomes life threatening. So that may be fun for you to turn the pages of the lightning rod and be like, oh, this is fun. I'm I'm reading that. But that's my life. That's my brain. Like, every time I I was at a restaurant last night, and my daughter now teases me. She's like, you hand the key to valet? And my family knows, you know, you don't hand the house key. Don't hand that house key. No way. She knows. But that's so yeah. You and then you just you know, I'm looking for a way, and I'm looking for something. And I've learned over time a very simple rule I write with, which is I'm not that special. If if I'm worried about this or if it's entertaining to me, then hopefully it'll be entertaining to other people out there who have that same fear and that same, you know, oh my gosh. What would happen if that happened? So I that that kind of kicked it off. And then the other thing that was really big for me in this one is it's always there is some level of research that will always come from something. And I I, you know, I do a lot of work finding government secrets. So in one book, I did the hidden tunnels below the White House. I did the labyrinth below the capitol. I've done the secret tunnels that run below Disney World in one of the books. But in this one, I found out that there were 12. There are about a dozen secret government warehouses that the government has all across the country, strategic locations to deal with bioterrorism threats, whether it's Zika, whether it's anthrax, whether it's, you know, botulism or smallpox or even COVID now. So that if something happens, someone attacks New York, then they're going to have a push package ready within 4 hours in New York with the antidotes to whatever that is. They have cobra venom stored in one of these warehouses. God knows what that does. Like every imaginable disease, they have everything from, you know, drugs to get rid of pain to, incubators, intubators, you know, medical advice medical devices in these giant super Costco size end of the world warehouses. And they are hidden in places that are right sometimes in front of your face. And I was like, I need to go into that. I need to know where the warehouses are. I need to know what's inside of them. And and so when you're reading the lightning rod, you get to those last chapters, and you're like you know, you'll you'll see you go into one of the warehouses. What's inside there? I won't ruin the ending, but what you see in there is exactly what's really there. I I didn't make it up. I just described what's really there. And that's the fun of the book. How did you get into one of them? Well, the funny thing is is so I'm so slow as a writer. I started researching this book 5 years ago. It was pre pandemic, so they didn't have any problem saying, come on in. I had unprecedented access. It was back when they were under the CDC. I went to the CDC. I flew to Atlanta. They I was in the headquarters in the mobilizing unit that watches all the warehouses. It was fine. If I tried to research this book today, I'd never get in anywhere. They're never letting anyone in there now after COVID. So it just wound up being the dumb luck that, that I was able to get inside to go to, you know, experience them. Obviously, you think about your characters a lot. Like, you know, speaking of that ballet, and I'm not giving away anything here that's not even on the first page. We must really think of what this ballet's entire life has been like to get him to this point. I don't wanna say he's a minor character because he kicks off the entire book, but we only really see him alive for a couple of pages, as you mentioned. But he's got a whole story. Yeah. You have to you know, if I give you that plot, I can make up an easy plot that says, oh, look. A guy's in danger. He died. Chapter 2. But if you don't care about that character, who cares? Yeah. So I have to make you love that valet in 2 pages before we kill him. And you know exactly what he fights for. You know exactly who he fights for. You know exactly what he loves and exactly what he wants. And that's the key of every character, at least for me, is you have to know what they want. If you know what they want, you know what they're doing. So, again, it's always hard to talk about a novel because I don't wanna give away the details of the novel, but I am very interested in process. Like, for you, you sit down. You have kind of this kickoff incident. You maybe have a vague idea of what the book's gonna be about and what you're going to need to research and so on. But what are the beats of a thriller novel? Like, what points do you have to hit when in order for you to say, okay. This is a thriller novel, and I did a good job in terms of black, characters, world building, the whole thing. Yeah. You know, it's funny. When we first spoke, the first time we met, you asked me that question. I and I never forgot it because you were you're such a process oriented person. I you I remember you kept trying to say, like, what are the pieces to do it as if and and it's funny. I I know that there are pieces. Right? I know that you can read books like story. You know, there's, like, books that will tell you how to break down a story in the 3 act structure and then how to do it. There need to be a twist at the end of act 2. I don't follow any of that. I just don't. My body, my my internal clock, I'm sure follows them, but I don't. I don't write by, like, well, I've set up the character. I've given him backstory. Now I have to kill him. Now what has to happen? Now I have to have twist 1. Now I gotta do twist 1. What happens now? Investigation time. Like, I just don't I what if I, you know, my friend Simon Sinek always, you know, says in his great TED talk, he says, you know, every life is like a bull's eye. And the outside ring of that bull's eye with 3 rings is what you do. And you know what you do and I know what we do and everyone knows what they do. The middle one is how you do what you do. Right? And and for someone who let's say you're a plumber or my uncle who's a garbage man, like, he knew exactly how to do what he does. You drive around, you pick up the garbage, you put it in the truck, you take it back. But for people in the creative arts, even even sport, how do you do what you do? How do you get so good at basketball? Or how do you write a novel? Like, so much of it is just trust in your gut. How do you know when to give give a good path and to make a good pass on a basketball court? Like, you just know like, you just trust your gut that this is gonna be a good one. And it's not it's not well, someone can't be watching and I have to make sure I have 6 inches or more or it just you gotta trust it. And I trust my characters. The key to me for structural stuff is making sure like, I I've been at this 25 years. If you give me chapter 1 if I give you the chapter 1 I gave you, guy in a valet dies, And I can figure out chapter 2. I'll I'll I know how to build the boat while I'm sailing the boat. I'll figure it out as we go. But that's not a good book for me. Some people, it is. For me, I need to know the characters. If I have good characters and you care about those characters, I can do anything I want. You'll follow them anywhere because they're interesting. So I will I remember I plotted in in the lightning rod. The first time you see Nola after the one of those opening scenes, she was like our kind of, like, crazy wild child character, she's like this incredible based on, you know, real research and and and these war artists that the government has on staff who paint disasters as they happen. The US army actually since World War 1 has had an a war artist on staff painting, you know, whether it's storming the beaches of Normandy, whether it's Vietnam or at 911. And I remember going to them and saying, you're telling me everyone's racing with guns blazing, and you got someone who's racing with nothing but paintbrushes in their pockets? I gotta meet that guy. That guy sounds crazy. And they said, you mean her. You wanna meet her. It was a woman in real life. And I built my I remember when I had my first plot, I was like, I'll figure out Nola after. Even in the light run, I'm like, I know what? Nola's gonna come up later. And no I finally was stuck. I didn't know what she I didn't know what to do in the plot. I really didn't. I had that opening scene and I was like, listen to Nola. She will tell you what she's doing. And you can see I won't ruin anything. You can see that when Nola when they first chase Nola, Nola gets away because Nola's like, I'm not that stupid. I'm not falling for that. And I just watched her. And I know it sounds totally crazy, but when your characters can take over and you're not plotting anymore, that's when it's most realistic. Is that because you're surprised, so it's a little easier to surprise the reader? I think that's part of it. I think it's also you know, when you're you know, the the guy who did breaking bad had this great quote. I'll I'll never forget, and I'm gonna paraphrase him. Although I just said I'll never forget it. But he basically said, no one believes coincidence isn't fiction. You know, if I say, oh, he's walking down the street and the murderer bumps into him, you're like, yeah. Because you just said the murderer bumped into the hero. That's never gonna happen. But if something goes wrong for your hero, whatever the coincidence is, a car knocks him out of the road, you believe all of that. That seems much more realistic. So the key is, is to try and find that that balance that just leaves it feeling completely not you you don't wanna ever feel the author's touch in the scene. You never you know, you're watching it too. When you're watching a movie, you're like, that only happened because the author basically made it happen. But, like, if if if if someone if a character's car is, you know, driven off the road or someone you know, a car bumps into it and it goes off the road, I would think that that that's not a coincidence, that that that it's part of the plot. Right. Well, the and that that's part of the plot, but but think of the think of the that's not really a coincidence. Right? But think of if the if I'm if a character is following the bad guy and he's trying to sneak around so and so, and all of a sudden a guy, unconnected to either of them, opens up his window and says, what are you doing on my property? And pulls a gun. And it has nothing to do with either of them. And that's just bad luck, man. You just picked the wrong backyard to be hiding in. You're like, oh, crap. Everything just went really bad and really south really fast. And it just that seems more fun and realistic, at least to me. This is my personal preference. That's actually very interesting because I'm gonna make an analogy with with business. Let's say you developed a a product, some new toy, and you showed it to a bunch of your friends, and they all said, hey. This is a great toy. We love playing with it. You're gonna make a gazillion dollars. That actually gives you no real information. Like so the the analogy is that only if someone says, I really didn't like this, then you can ask why didn't they like it? And they're gonna tell you something real because there's a reason why they didn't like it. But if if they there's a lot of reasons why people say yes. They might say yes because they don't wanna hurt your feelings. They might say yes because they wanna get off the phone with you and go back to what they were doing. They might say yes for because they liked it, but who knows? But if they say no, and they're and they're willing to tell you why that's real information, that that's not fake information. So I wonder in general, if things going wrong in any area of life is is the way to convey real information. Listen. I I will tell you when I I have the same, like, 5 friends that have been reading my books for 25 years. Right? We were in from when we're young, in our twenties. And the first thing I always ask them is I don't say, did you like it? That's nonsense. The first thing I always ask them is what parts didn't you like? That always gives me more. In fact, there's a great saying, I think it's Neil Gaiman. I'm gonna, it's basically like when you ask people what they don't like about your stuff, they are 99% right. When you ask people how to fix what's wrong with your stuff, they're 99% wrong. And he says it a little bit differently, but I think the same is the exact same, which is the one thing we all know is when it's crappy. And and I always say to any upcoming writer and I think this for nonfiction, for fiction, for anything you work on, and I think it fit for business too, is you give your idea to 10 people. You'll get back 10 different answers of what they think about it, but you have to find the the 5 to 10% that they all have in common, and that's what's really wrong. Because some people just be like, it's too fast. Some people like, it's too slow. It's all Goldilocks problems. Right? Like, it's too big. It's too small. It's too rough. It's but when you hear you can kinda re you have to learn to read between the lines with what's wrong, and you'll hear, like, oh, they don't understand why Zig is doing this. They don't understand why he's risking his life. Like, they can't all verbalize it. But that when you see what they all have in common, you know, no book is ever perfect. You just gotta find what's really wrong with it and then fix that and then fix it again and fix it again. And I go through, you know, 7, 8 drafts of a book easy. And I've been doing this 25 years. And I'm still doing that many drafts of a book because I'm just constantly trying to make it so that when you get to the end of the lightning rod, you go, oh, crap. I'm so surprised by the ending, but I'm so mad at myself I didn't guess it. It was right in front of me who the bad guy was the whole time. How much of the overall arc of the story do you know in the beginning, and how much is kind of, like you say, given to you by the characters as you're writing? Yeah. I always know who the bad guy is. That's the one thing I know. Mhmm. I know who the bad guy is because I if you're doing a whodunit, you need to know who to leave out of the room while the done it is happening. Right? I need that. Otherwise, I'm just making it up as I go. What I do make up as I go is kind of the way to get to the end. I did one book where I plotted the entire book out, and I was like, I got the whole thing. I'm just gonna literally instead of plotting 50 to a 100 page, I'm gonna plot all 400 pages. It was so horrible creatively to work on that book. It was like plain paint by numbers. I was just like, okay, chapter 2, chapter 3. It was just it was no fun. And I realized at least for the fun for me is is not knowing the end of the story. Why would you ever wanna know the end of the story? And and I would think that I always kinda think that an audience, whether they're readers or viewers or listeners or whatever, they're like an x-ray machine. So if you know how the story is going to end or every detail along the way, the you can't really hide it from them. They're gonna be able to figure it out. Readers are are far smarter than the authors they read. I really believe that. And I think that it's so interesting. Like, I will take I'll have my plot, and I've never nailed it on the first try. I will tell you, I I always take the plot, and I and I'm usually, like, there's one part where they'll say, that doesn't seem like that was a fair game. You know? And I I firmly believe if you read my book and you guess the ending, like, you as a reader trying to guess the ending, I'm as a writer trying to fool you. If you guess the ending, you win. If I guess the ending, I win as long as we're both playing fair. So you didn't flip ahead, and I didn't just make it the butler who appears on one page and just, you know, shocked it out of nowhere. So I'll always have friends who are, like, reading and be like, I don't know. It kinda came out of nowhere. So I'll put 3 more clues in. And then the next person who will read it who I trust will say, I saw it coming a mile away. I'll take one of those clues out. And then the next person will go like, oh, that was awesome. How did I not see it? And it's I know it it's literally like that. You can put in 3 more clues or put in 6 more clues or take out 2 more and you it's like a recipe. You find the exact right spot. And we've all seen it. You know when you've seen that thriller where you go like, oh, that's the killer. It was right there on every page. How do I not guess it? But you're totally, at the same time, shocked. And and it has to be in a good thriller, the perfect balance between I played fair as a writer and put all the clues there, and you still didn't see it. And on the one hand, you shied away from the question on process for the whole book. But what is a clue? What is a legit twist? Because I would think twists are hard. Because you have to put something in that where you know you're twisting, but you also have to have the skill to realize the reader is not gonna realize this is a twist. Yeah. No. No. And and that's what I mean. Like, I I I know that I know that I'm doing something that is structural in that way that your brain needs, but I don't I don't do it and say, I need a twist here. I literally just go like, man, I've been in this part for a while. I wanna change. But I don't sometimes it's on page 30, and sometimes it's on page 70, and sometimes it's on page a 170. Like, it just you know, it's like the supreme court definition of pornography, which is you know it when you see it. Right. Like, I know that moment when I see it where my characters are like, they're stuck, and I don't know what to do. And and and, yes, I I I know I need to know the twist is coming, but sometimes I surprise myself with that. Like, I remember I I remember I always say, you know, the phone always rings when you're in the shower. I remember physically being in the shower and just going, oh, crap. And my wife's like, what? When I got out and I'm like, I got it. I got it. This person, this character is working with the bad guy. This is an inside job. So I knew the ending with who the bad guy was, but now I had I didn't even realize, oh my gosh. This would be a great twist. What if this character that I invented 3 months into writing the book is actually on his side? And now I gotta come up with a backstory for that and why that works. And that's the fun of writing to me, is figuring my way there where I'm entertaining myself. And then once you know that like, let's take this example. Once you know, oh, this guy is really on the side of the bad guy, how do you, in turn, now conceal it from from the reader? Because you're so aware that this guy is a bad guy, and now you're gonna start filling in his backstory. That seems to me difficult. And it that's the art, man. That is where that is where you have to, like again, if you what you just described is, like, me saying me saying, James, don't think of pink elephants. And you're like, I can't now. I can't do anything but think of pink elephants. Like, you have to in your head just know don't treat them like a bad guy. Write them like a good guy, but give them enough, you know, and you'll see it sometimes. You'll see, like, just that little sprinkling. And I see it when I when I watch TV shows. I will watch TV shows and movies and well, it'll hit some point, and there's something about I'm like, I said to my wife, I know who did it. She's like, don't say it. Don't say it. Like and I'm like, I know who did it. And then we'll get to them in the movie, and she's like, did you guess it? I'm like, MiWay is so much better. You know? Like, I will constantly be rewriting everything I'm in trying to make it that twisty way. But what what goes What's an example of a of a good twist in, let's say, popular movies or fiction or TV, you know, that you could describe? Like, you could you looked at it, and you could say, okay. Well done. I mean, I think my my one of my favorites of all time is is the murderer in Scott Turow's presumed innocent. I was gonna ask you about Scott Turow's presumed innocent. So Yeah. That is one of the great day. That's that's one of the great twists, that stuck with me. I love that. I love that. Twist. Because I would not have guessed that one. I recommend anyone watch that movie. It's, like, 30 or 40 years old or whatever. But Yeah. And I'll challenge you and say, read the book. Okay. The book is 70 times better. Like, that is a perfect book. And So how do they keep people from guessing that, but still at the same time I guess, like, the trick is people can't guess it, but once you realize it, it's obvious. That's it. That's and and you know why? Because the person who did is the bad guy in that book has all the motive in the world, but you also love that character. That's the magic. It's right in front of your face. I think that, I think I think the movie Juno has a really amazing twist. That you think that, you know, we all love Jason Bateman. He's the best. You all hate wanna you know, Jennifer Garner looks like the bad guy. She's the fussy one, and then they twist it and you're like, oh, how did I not see that coming? That's so obvious. It just feels natural. And your biases get the best of you because you're told to, like, this cool guy and hate the stuff you want. And so I I love those. I love when when your archetypes of how you view the world are turned on their head. And I think you just have to I think you have to play fair. I think if you just, you know again, if you just make it, oh, you know, what what was the other one I just saw? But let let's look at that quote that you just said. So the arc archetypes somehow are twisted. Like, somebody seems like, the good guy or the good woman and, you know, is playing a role that we've seen in society many times, so we it's baked into us that we really must think this person is is good, and then that's the twist. She she or he turns out to be not good. But I would think now people reading thrillers or watching thrillers on on movies, they know that they know to think that the one you're supposed to hate is not the bad guy. Oh, yeah. I mean, that that's a you're yes. The answer you the answer to your question is yes. That's exactly again, to your to your first question, I I never mean to shy away from it. It's just really trying to find a fair answer. I again, I I can't. You're absolutely right that people guessing are 50,000,000,000 times better than they were 20 years ago. They just are. We're savvy. We've seen more stuff. We've seen it done and redone and redone. But here's a perfect example. So the my favorite book of all time is Watchmen Mint by Alan Moore and Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. My son who's 13 years old, now 14 years old, just read it. That book has been ripped off and redone and been through the zeitgeist for 30 years and no one's been able to outdo it. And when you get to the ending, my son literally said, oh my gosh. How did I not see it coming in? It's so good. That is one of the best endings in Bad Guys you'll ever find ever, ever, ever. And why? Because it just was perfect. Not because it was like it's not just taking, oh, I'm told I'm this person's good and now it's gonna be bad. It has to be form that's just a black and white, you know, two way view of it. It it just now now what I do as a writer is I know you're gonna know that. So my guy who's extra nice is never gonna be the one who everyone thinks is the bad guy. It's gotta be the guy who's a little extra nice, but not so nice. Like and you just have to build a better mousetrap. And we are, as thriller writers, always trying to build a better mousetrap because we gotta fool you. So, like, in in recent, either novels or movies or comics or or whatever, where where is a good example of of a twist that that you thought well done? Let's see. I'm trying to think of something that's much more common recently. Like, or you can even pick, like, lost or something like that. Yeah. No. No. I'm I'm just even I'm trying to think of something that we can actually talk about openly because everyone knows it. So I'm just trying to think of, like, even, like, in the Marvel world. I think that oh, I I mean, again, this is hardly a big one, but it was it's a it's a blatant obvious one. Is is, the, the guy in Black Panther who works for the CIA, the guy who's in Sherlock and Oh, yeah. Yeah. Fargo. Like, that guy comes in. You're like, here's this little nebulcy guy coming into Wakanda. He's obviously the worst. Right? We hate him by his existence, and he winds up being awesome. And they totally turned it. Right? Or or looking at something, I think a really good one is, is what's her name? Thanos' daughter is, gosh. I forgot her name. Little lady just hit me. Gamora. No. Not Gamora. The the sister. The other sister. Oh, gosh. I'm blanking. Now every every one of my friends is literally texting me right now being like, dumba*s. How can you forget her name? Hold on. It's good. I have to stop talking about it. Nebula. Thank you. Nebula. Oh my gosh. What's wrong with me? So Nebula is, you know, the right hand person to Thanos. It's the, you know, the biggest of the big ending, but who saves the day in the end? They literally earn that entire turn for her. They earn it. They make us love it. They make us love her. And even Gamora to some level is, like, kind of a bad guy in a league with the bad guys won you for so you have to earn it. And when you earn it, it's spectacular in its payoff. And and And that's that's what I love. When when you when you realize later on in the writing that, okay, this person is gonna be aligned with the bad person or the good person or whatever, in an unsuspecting way, do you then backfill so that there's little clues along the way, and and and you make sure that they're not too obvious? Like, how would Yeah. No. That's what you do. You literally then then you play Goldilocks. You you, you know, a little too much, little too little less, just right. Like, in the case of of Nebula, like, how, could or or let's even take the case and presume innocent, like, which, again, is so many years old that I don't mind spoiling it if if if you feel free to spoil it if you want. But how would you sprinkle in that or how do you sprinkle in I think you again, I think you stay true I think in in those examples, they stay true to the character. I think that, or even you know, as a perfect example, Black Widow. Black Widow hey. Here's here's even better. Let's go even more common. Black Widow and Hawkeye were both bad guys when they were introduced in the comics. They earned over time, like, that loyalty that made us be like, they can't be bad guys. They're the best. Scarlet Witch is introduced as a bad guy in avengers too. Right? And she comes in now as everyone's favorite. Oh, we love Wanda. Wanda vision is all the best. I mean, but they earned it and you earn it by, like, letting that character be that character. And you can see that when Wanda misses her love of her life, the great grief that she has undoes the universe, you're like, oh, that's totally reasonable too. You're not a bad guy. You're just a misunderstood person. I think that Killmonger in in Black Panther I it's I'm just using these movies, 1, because I'm a comic book person, but 2, because I really think that, they're just known by the average, you know, just about everyone, is one of the things you have to do is you earn that and you and you follow it. So what's an example where it's been done poorly? What's an example where it's been done poorly? Well, one I you know what? I can think of them. I don't like bad mouthing anyone's work, but the ones we the same ones you hate are the same ones I hate. Like, the ones where you're like, that's ridiculous. She would never do that or that's ridiculous. He would never do that. I mean, that's it's always the same. So so with stories that are, like, sequels like, this one's a sequel. Do you start thinking in terms of, like, like, right now, do you start thinking about the next way you can use these characters? And Yeah. I mean, listen. I never think of them as a sequel. Like, I there's a you know, someone said Yeah. You're right. By the way, I didn't read The Escape Artist. Right. You didn't read The Escape Artist. You read this. Right? Like It was no no issue. Right. James Patterson said, this is my favorite Meltzer book. Like, I need to know that someone's gonna pick this book up because he said that, and they're never gonna have read anything before this, and that's okay too. Yeah. And so I purposely layer in everything you need. You can start scratch with it like you did. But I do think of what the next one is. The the final scene of this book, obviously, very clearly has in mind something else coming the same way the final scene of the last book has something in mind. And if you showed up for all of them, great. You get rewarded. And if not, it's okay too. I'm gonna fill you in as soon as you start. Well, how do you think you've improved over the past 25 years of writing these? I mean, I don't you know, I think the thing that I improved at, if I improved on anything, is just, you know, realizing that you have to always be improving. I mean, I really think for a while, I spent a little you you can very easily start to believe you're really good at something just because you're selling lots of copies, and that is not a marker of being good at anything. That's just a marker of your sales. And I I had my kind of 20 year anniversary of doing this was, like, great, I can keep doing this and it'll hopefully pay me to do this, but how do I actually get better after 20 years of doing something? When you're doing something that's like, how do you actually improve? And the only way to do that is to kind of check your ego out the door and say, know, which of these books were the best and which of these books were not as good? And I'm gonna do my best here figuring it out. And that's what I tried to do. I literally looked and figured out, okay, these were these were the 3 best books, I think, maybe 4 best books I've ever written. Now what do they have in common? 20 years of doing it, what do they have in common? And I realized, I was like, oh, they have the best characters. That's why these books are the 4 best. Like, without a question, I was like, don't start your next book until you have Zig and until you have Nola. And when you have those characters, then you can start the book. And I think that these books are so much stronger because I understand these characters so well. And I think improving I don't think I'm I got any better or any smarter, any wiser, any but I I I was able to just not think that I was great, and therefore, I found some room for improvement. I'm just I'm trying as hard as I can. So, you know, during this pandemic, a lot of people, they were basically you know, as we know, everybody didn't go to work. They stayed home. Many people started pursuing their their childhood interests or or what they always really wanted to do. So what would you say to someone in their you started in your twenties. What would you say to someone now in their thirties, forties, or fifties who wants to be a thriller novelist? Because they love thriller novels, and they always wanted to have time to write one, and now they do. What would you say how to how to start? What should they do? I would say, great. Well, you're welcome. You're in the club. Like, that's I honestly, like, I I love the guy. Remember the show Frasier, the father on Frasier. I saw some this could be TikTok, you know, BS information. But it said, like, he was, like, you know, 60 something years old when he started acting. Great. Awesome. Like, I love that. I don't think you have to be know, if anything, the thing that hurt me when I was 20 is I didn't have the breadth of experience to write about. I just had what I lived up until I was 27 years old. I think it's I think it's fantastic. I think the only thing you have to do is it's writing is about persistence. You know, I mean, I can tell you how to ride a bicycle. I can say hold the handlebars and balance your center of gravity and go 2 miles an hour and, you know, and then you'll ride the bicycle. And you can, you know, James, you'll write all down all the the things of how to do things. But until you get on that bike and pedal, you will never learn how to ride a bike. And that's how riding is to me. Like, I can tell you, oh, you know, make a good character and then make sure you have a couple twists and make sure you know where you're going and whatever other the rules are. But until you sit down and type and get on that bike and pedal, so to speak, you're never going to write a book. So you just have to write a book and write 1 page a day. And if you write 1 page a day, you'll have a book in a year. You absolutely will by numbers. The problem is is what most people do is they go, oh, I'm gonna I'm not writing my page. I'm gonna write 2 tomorrow. I'm gonna get really good tomorrow. No. Screw it. I'm gonna write 3 on Wednesday, and then it's all gone. That is that is a good point. So, you know, last question. I remember one time we were talking. I think it was I think it was you. You have a better memory than me, by the way, I've I've noticed in this in this conversation. But, That's what writers do. You understand. We have to use everything so we remember everything. So, you you were telling me about, there was a, you you you did a little bit of either work or consulting, whether paid or free, I I don't know, for the government where they kind of got thriller novelists and other novelists or other storytellers to basically imagine worst case scenarios for the government and and brainstorm. And I was just curious. Is this still, like, an ongoing thing? Yeah. They did ask me. I did it for free. They asked me for free. They asked a bunch of thriller writers who they asked me to come in and brainstorm different ways a terrorist could attack the United States. And my thought was if they're calling me, we have bigger problems than anybody. You think the country is screwed up right now? I mean, but I it was right after 911, all kidding aside. It was after 911. They would pair me with a Secret Service agent and a chemist, and they would give us a target like New York, and we would destroy it in no time. And it was incredible. I don't know if they I I know they stopped doing it. I don't know if they started doing it again. But after 911, when you have terrorists who will take planes and use them as missiles into buildings, you need what they called out of the box thinkers. They they just were like, no one can think of that. That's like something that, like, monkeys banging on typewriters would come up with. So we're gonna get monkeys and typewriters. And we were the monkeys and typewriters. And we just were like, coming up with the craziest things. The thing that was I don't know if I told you last time was, that they called me back to do it a number of times. And when they called me back, they would give me the place that they were looking at. And that's terrifying because it may be a place where my family or friends or someone you know, it was like these big kind of group events. And I'm like, do they know something I don't know, or are they just role playing here? And, but it was amazing. It was it was incredible to work on, and I I loved it. I loved doing it, and I felt honored to do it. Did they ever, react to anything you said, like, you know, change some policy? Or, the phone that I was gonna fill in? Yeah. It's so funny. The only thing I could tell you is they never told us if anything were was right or not, so you had no idea. They never told us we would change. The only thing I knew is they invited me back, and everyone did not get invited back. And the funny thing was is, if you look up the story in the Washington Post, the I'm the only person that's quoted in it. Because they told me that I was the only person everyone was sworn to secrecy. And they said I was one of the only people who actually kept his mouth shut. So they let me be the one to go public with it, and they let me, like I was the one who The Washington Post interviewed for it because they were like, you're the only one who followed our freaking instructions. So that's why it's so hard to have a conspiracy in the government because everyone just wants to talk about it. That's funny. Well well, look. Brad Meltzer, your new book, The Lightning Rod, excellent, was riveting to me. I like I said, I'm really glad I had an advanced copy. I feel privileged. You got Lee Child quoting it, James Patterson. Lee Child says Nola Brown is one of recent fiction's all time great characters. Trust me. This is a terrific, compelling, unputdownable thriller. So it's true, and I encourage people to check this out. And, Brad, once again, thanks for coming on the podcast and, you know, teaching us all a little bit more about what you do. I appreciate it. Always good to be back. Thank you so much. Thanks, Brad.
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