Harlan Coben Sold 100 Million Books. Here’s His Advice for Aspiring Writers.

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1:30Harlan Coben:You can always fix bad pages. You can't fix no pages. You just got to get something down. Start writing. Don't worry if it's crap. Don't worry if it's in the wrong order. Don't worry that you started in 2014 and really you want to start in 1974. You'll do all that later. You can fix everything later. No one should ever see that first draft. Just start writing. If your dream is to be a published novelist, Theo of Golden that came out this year, he was 70 years old. When the crawdad sings, she was 70 years old when that book came out. It is not too late. It is never too late. That's the beauty of writing.

1:59Harlan Coben:And what's the harm if it is? What's the harm if you fail? So what? So you've done some fun writing and research. It's the same thing as your friend who's painting all day long or as a hobby. Your hobby is going to be writing. Just start putting pen to paper. You'll be surprised how much quantity will inevitably make quality. You just keep writing. Just like anything else in life, you're going to get better at it. Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining us today is bestselling author, New York Times He's a bestselling author. He's a creator and executive producer, Harlan Coben.

2:31The new book is a little bit different than the old books, I should say, because he is a prolific fiction writer, amazing storyteller. I've read so many of your books, Harlan. So I'm really grateful that you accepted my invitation. I just want to tell the viewers this. Viewers and listeners, you've sold more than 100 million books and you've had your work translated around the world and so many of your stories have become major television series but the title of this book is called plot twist life craft and the messy first draft a memoir on writing i gotta tell i really enjoyed this book because i i uh i live vicariously through people like you daniel silva brad thor these are buds of mine uh who i admire greatly brad thor is actually up on the, he's in the Arctic right now, Harlan, sending me pictures, okay, making me jealous of this once-in-a-lifetime trip.

3:33But what I love about this book is that it's a masterclass on writing. And so first question is, why did you write this book? What motivated you to make Harlan Coben the main character of a story?

3:50Harlan Coben:Well, first of all, it's great to be here, Anthony. Daniel silva and brett are good friends of mine as well so i could just see you getting along by the way with thor he's you know that's a he's a great dude he's always always has something interesting to say and always doing something uh interesting i you know um i just written two uh written 37 or 38 um suspense novels but i'd written two this particular year my own and i'd written one with reese witherspoon and i was just kind of like i need something different and i was thinking a lot about how I do it and I had done one of those master classes online where they you teach you probably seen the ads go by the videos I'm a subscriber to master class yeah I know I've seen you on there yeah I'm on the BBC maestro um master class you you said you had no the thing about you though is you said you had no process but it turns out you really do have a process yeah when you do something like that you know I was surprised by my own answers as I was doing the class i'm like oh wait i really never kind of thought of that before and i've always sort of distanced myself from the process i've jokingly said what do i know about people disappearing and murder and mayhem and all of that i just make it all up but i realized that all of it came from my life really every bit of it and so it became a half memoir half i'm not i mean it's a writer's guide but i really like to look at it more as a as a creator's if you if you're interested in writing music if you're interested in painting sculptor if you're interested in i mean hopefully any kind of entrepreneur business.

5:20Harlan Coben:I hope Plot Twist also inspires that as well and motivates you to do that. There's so many similarities between how a novelist does it, how a musician does it, how a painter does it, and how an entrepreneur does it. I was shocked at how many people are telling me, oh wait, this relates to what I do, not just writing. Yeah, it's so interesting because in reading your books, I have you as this sort of Robert Luglum global James Bond of literation. You know, that was my, my frame of reference. When I read this book, I'm like, wait a minute, you're a suburban kid from Livingston, New Jersey. That's right.

5:59And you've been, you've been able to channel all of this great creativity. I think, I think one of the things that I was surprised by in the book is that a lot of the stories trace back to your suburban childhood, and I'll just throw out some, okay? Tell no one the strangers. Fool me once. Tell me a little bit about that self-discovery where you're like, wait a minute, I just channeled ideas from my own upbringing.

6:26Harlan Coben:Yeah, I mean, a lot of fiction writing, we know a lot of fiction writing is asking what if. We just go around life asking what if. But just the small, strange things that happen. And in the case of the New Jersey suburbs, which is, you know, it's the sort of the battleground of the American dream where a dream is supposed to sort of come true, right? My parents had bought the house. They had two cars. They had the garage. They had the basketball hoop in the yard. They had the barbecue in the backyard. And where all these dreams come true, it's also very fragile. It's a bubble. And it's very, very easy to kind of make it burst.

7:00Harlan Coben:And so I love that idea that I read a lot of my books. It's sort of the every man in the extraordinary circumstance, the ordinary man. And if you think, you know, in a placid pool, very placid pond, even a little ripple, even a little stone can cause tremendous destruction ripples. So that's always been my battleground for my books. I guess the one thing I also got, you know, we have this tendency to think, OK, there's Harlan Coben. He's sold 100 million books. It's all inevitable. But you write very candidly about periods of time where you had self-doubt. I have a relationship with Billy Joel because he lived out here on Long Island.

7:41My uncle used to sell him motorcycles. And he once said to me, yeah, I had so much self-doubt. I drank a bottle of shoe polish once thinking I wasn't going to make it. He's one of the most prolific songwriters in the world. And here you were talking about your self-doubt and saying to yourself, maybe this isn't going to happen for me. Take us there and take us how you built out of there. because I know viewers and listeners love that arc of the story.

8:07Harlan Coben:Well, I mean, now the term imposter syndrome has become just a little too big, but I do think it fits. I don't only, one of the things I always say is only bad writers think they're good. I worry about the writer who thinks that they're sort of, you know, you're always in doubt. And I know this from, I'm friends with John Grisham and Stephen King and a lot of these guys. and I don't know any writers who don't have self-doubt. It just has to, it's part of the process. If you're not doubting yourself, not questioning yourself, you're probably not pushing yourself quite enough. The self-satisfaction is sort of a danger and eventually you just sort of live with that.

8:46Harlan Coben:I mean, I live with those voices. Every book, you know, I say, oh my God, you know, I lost it, I was so good before what happened to me and then five minutes later, I'm like, oh my God, this is genius. Someone's going to read that book that's already out there. And so I think insecurity and those doubts just have to, you have to imbue them. You have to, there's two ways you can look at it. Fear can either paralyze you or it can fuel you. And so I try to make it fuel me. I try to make those self-doubts and the I'm not good enoughs, instead of torturing me and paralyzing me, I use them to say, how can I make it better?

9:22Harlan Coben:How can I work even harder? How can I use it as fuel to get me someplace new? You mentioned John Gershom is also a prolific writer and his works I genuinely enjoy. He called this book a romp, a riot, a joy to read. It's humorous. You're describing the self-doubt, but there's also process here. And, you know, one of the things that you said in the book, if it helps me produce pages, if it doesn't, if that's good, if it doesn't, well, then that's bad. It's the most self-indulgent writing ritual that you've killed by that test. Self-indulgent. You have to, here's the thing, you have to battle for your time.

10:11Harlan Coben:So a lot of writers will say to me or people who want to write, I don't have time, you know, my life is too busy. So understand that that's not the way to say it. I wouldn't say I don't have time. I would say that writing is not a priority for me. That's all. Because we all have 24 hours. None of us have more. None of us have less. And so if you can't fit it in, then you're not a writer. I understand we all have busy lives and things like that, but it has to be a priority. You have to fight for those times. And if you don't, it doesn't mean that you're a bad person or anything like that, but it means you're not a writer.

10:39Harlan Coben:And wake up and face that fact. You have other things in your life more important than writing. And so you don't do it. The example I often use is my old friend, Mary Higgins Clark, who passed away a few years ago. And when Mary was 38 years old, I think it was 38, maybe 37, she had five children, five young children, and her husband dies. The next day, her mother-in-law dies. This is way back in the early 60s. You know, no insurance. She has to work every day. So Mary would wake up and write from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. at the kitchen table, then wake the kids up, get them to school, then take the train into New York City to work.

11:10Harlan Coben:So don't tell them you don't have enough time to write. Mary had enough time to write. It may take longer. It may take 12 months instead of 10 months, but don't tell me you don't have time to write. And so part of that, yeah, I'm being a coach and kicking your ass a little bit, but I just don't buy it. Yeah, but I also think that what you've expressed in the book and so many people feel is the passion. Bonnie Garmis has been on my show. She wrote Lessons in Chemistry. She's got a new book coming out. It's a bestselling book. Her debut is a bestseller. She wrote it at age 65, and she always had that burning desire, right?

11:43So I think the message from your book is if you've got the desire, you've got to hit it as hard as you possibly can. I want to talk about this Netflix series, I Will Find You. This is, to me, a real element of your staggering success. This is the biggest original debut on Netflix. So tell me about it. When did you figure out that you could adapt your novels into these award-winning, eyeball-catching series?

12:17Harlan Coben:Well, I always thought they'd be good many years ago. I don't think regular TV, though, sort of fit my brand. You know, 40 minutes, it's got to be solved at the end of the 40 minutes, new episode, 22 episodes, all of that. with streaming and places like Netflix where I, there's currently 13 of the shows on right now in various languages. You can make them six episodes, eight episodes, 10 episodes. I can make one 45 minutes, one 50 minutes, one 35 minutes, whatever needs to do for the story. So it really kind of works for me. I, to me, it's like, I'm slapping the novel right on to the screen rather than trying to make it fit in some other way.

12:55Harlan Coben:It doesn't mean I don't make changes. I make a lot of changes because what people don't understand, there's an old saying. They asked one time, I'm going to grab this book over here. They asked James M. Cain, who wrote Postman Rings Twice, don't you hate what Hollywood has done to your books? And he said, they've done nothing to my books. They're right there on the shelf. So the adaptations don't change anything about the book. I just love, you know, I love doing it. It's been really fun. I Will Find You has been a remarkable sensation. and the actors and I, Sam Worthington and Britt Lauer and Milo Ventimigli and the rest, we're having such fun, you know, watching people's reaction.

13:32Harlan Coben:And the audience size on Netflix is just psychotic. And so we're just proud to be there. It's also going to help future book sales. Everybody's addicted to your books. You wrote something I find this interesting, and I want you to give us some insight here. You sell more books overseas. Yeah. You know, and I don't know. does that say something specific about New Jersey, that it lands universally? What do you think that is all about? I think in general, what a writer has to know is that the more specific you are, the more universal the appeal. In the case of New Jersey, I always use the three S's, Sopranos, Sinatra, and Springsteen.

14:13Harlan Coben:The more those guys and those stories are New Jersey, the more universal bon jovi is missing you right now john john knows john knows i love him and his music i just doesn't he doesn't have an s so i'm gonna stick with my boys right now but i love i love you i'm with you great great dude and great music but the but the more specific you are to your story so a lot of people in the writing think oh how do i appeal to somebody over there i have to make my town every town usa instead of the more specifically my novels are new jersey the more universal the the appeal and i don't know exactly why that is but france is my biggest country per capita i am the jerry lewis of crime fiction i often tease my german publishers i want to be the david hasselhoff of mystery dome as well but hasn't quite happened as well over there um but yeah i think that's the key is to be very specific to your place don't don't try to pander don't try to do any of that sort of thing it's just people get that and think about yourself as a reader most places when you're when you talk about a place or a specific person, it's because they're very specific that you love them, not that they have all this kind of universal appeal.

15:19Guys, thank you so much for listening and subscribing to Open Book. You know, we've got 200 authors on this show. It's been a lot of fun for me, but I'm also an author now too. And I've got All the Wrong Moves available. Go to scaramucci.net backslash all the wrong moves. You can buy your copy today. It's a lot of fun and lots of commentary about what's gone on in the U.S. over the last three decades. You know, it's interesting. I mean, so I love your novels, but I also love New Jersey, those three S's. But there's something else going on in New Jersey that you, I think, identify. And I just want you to react to what I'm about to say.

15:59I feel like Jersey has got industrial notes to it on I-95. It has rural notes to it in Western Jersey. It's got the beautiful shore. And so it's almost like you've managed to take all of those elements and shake them up for people. And so if you're in France or even if you're here on Long Island, it's like that's America. I mean, Jersey to me is America. Am I getting that right, Harlan?

16:28Harlan Coben:I think you're absolutely right. And I would add in New Jersey, maybe a dash of attitude. I remember one of the New Jersey Hall of Fame induction things that I went to, Springsteen was inducting Danny DeVito. And he was sort of saying, like, he's comparing Danny to New Jersey. And he's like, New Jersey's small. Danny's small. New Jersey's dense. Danny's dense. New Jersey's a little angry. Danny's a little angry. And so there is this sort of attitude, I think, about New Jersey. You know, we're really not a state in the sense that we're also half as the suburbs of Philadelphia, half as the suburbs of New York.

17:06Harlan Coben:Then you got the shore. Then you have the reason we're called the Garden State. Then you're driving on New Jersey Turnpike. That looks like the nightmares, beginnings of Terminator. So you have all this sort of interesting mix together. But mostly we are suburbs. We're much more about our suburbs. We have some wonderful cities, but we're mostly known for our suburbs than we are for the cities. You know, listen, you know, a few of your governors have been my bosses. You know, John Corzine was my boss at Goldman. Phil and Tammy Murphy are some of my closest friends. Best people. And they have this undying love affair in New Jersey, as most of us do here in the Northeast.

17:45You said it a little earlier, but I want you to go back to it. If someone is 55, and you talked about Mary in the 60s, but if someone is 55, they have a full-time job, but there's a story in their head. What do you recommend that they actually do on Monday morning?

18:02Harlan Coben:Right. Just write. Don't think so much about it. Don't worry about it. You know, one of the quotes that I use in the book, it's my own one, I guess, because I finally looked it up wondering if I was one who first said it, according to every place I looked, I am. But you can always fix bad pages. You can't fix no pages. You just got to get something down. Just sit there one day. You have a, if you like writing by hand, but just start writing. Don't worry if it's crap. Don't worry if it's in the wrong order. Don't worry that you started in 2014 and really you want to start in 1974. You'll do all that later.

18:34Harlan Coben:You can fix everything later. No one should ever see that first draft. Just start writing. And the point you're making is really valid. Okay. When I was young, I wanted to be a pro basketball player. That dream is over, guys. That's dead. I'm not going to be a pro basketball player. But if your dream is to be a published novelist, besides the names you just mentioned, Theo of Golden that came out this year, he was 70 years old. When the craw dad sings, she was 70 years old when that book came out. It is not too late. It is never too late. That's the beauty of writing. And what's the harm if it is?

19:08Harlan Coben:What's the harm if you fail? So what? So you've done some fun writing and research. It's the same thing as your friend who's painting all day long or as a hobby. Your hobby is going to be writing. If you want to call it journaling, I'm not a big fan of calling it journaling, I'm cold journaling. Fine. I don't care. Just start putting pen to paper. I like that. And the older folks like me like that. But or just go right on your laptop and start typing. But you'll be surprised how much quantity will inevitably make quality. You just keep writing. Just like anything else in life, you're going to get better at it.

19:41I think it's so well said. And I think it's a good segue to the messy first draft part of your book. according to harlan colbin harlan colbin is a messy first draft writer right so you you you

19:57Harlan Coben:don't even like your first draft do you i think every i actually think most writers um either subconsciously or consciously do this my favorite quote on it is from ann lamont who calls it the first draft um and that is you have to pretend no one's gonna see it because no one is no one should ever see your first draft you know i i don't know any writer who gets it right in the first draft i mean you ask brad and yes and yes dan they'll say the same thing it's like you know there's that one guy who says he does it but none of us like him or want to hang out with him you know the first the first step to me it's like diamond mining the first draft is taking this big rock out of the ground and it's ugly and you would never want to wear it but that's where the value is and then your next draft you're going to start chipping at it and shining it and polishing it Making is something you want to wear.

20:42Harlan Coben:So that's the key. Don't worry if it's ugly at first. Well, the thing about you, which I still can't figure out, and maybe you can provide some insight here, 30 years of observing you, reading you, and you are the most famous in my mind for the plot twist. I think you do it better than any of those other authors that we're talking about. But yet for some reason, you're constantly fooling me. Okay. I figure, okay, I know this son of a bitch. I've read 20 of his books and I'm going to anticipate where this is going. And it always goes in a different direction. So I guess my question, I was dying to ask you this.

21:18How difficult is it to fool the reader after 20 or 30 years of, of writing? It's hard. It's hard. I try to fool you several times. What do you do? You walk into the garden and say, Scaramucci thinks the story's going into arc A. So now I'm just going to screw him and go into arc Z. What do you do?

21:37Harlan Coben:flip a coin what do you do there there is there is some slight of hand but mostly it sounds corny but i try to rely on making the twist have an emotional component if the twist has an emotional component it always ends up being better if it not just fools you but makes you reconsider look at everything differently like a camera coming into focus and you think it's you know you see long dark hair and you think oh maybe it's like you know maybe it's uh cindy crawford and it gets more and you see like a nose maybe it's share in the last turn you see it's howard stern and he should have known it was howard stern from the very beginning he cut the camera coming into focus it's sort of that kind of a thing i'm also always trying to think of ultra alternates what hasn't been said before what hasn't been done before how to mislead and it probably is you know there there's parts of your skill you develop and parts that are natural and i probably have a natural inclination toward knowing how to do plot twists and writing them but you can the one other secret i talk about this a lot in the book is to is to move your twists up to challenge yourself to not just give me like a big mystery and then wait to the last minute to solve it give me a lot of mysteries along the way if you watched i will find you we kept asking questions and then you answer those questions but the answers to those questions satisfy you on one level but lead you further down into the rabbit hole that's the real secret don't frustrate your reader or your viewer let them have answers but figure ways of making those answers lead to even more questions so you know in the beginning of that story i will i will find you sam worthington gets you know he sees a photograph of a boy that may be his you know that leads to more questions so what does she have in her she has this photograph okay we're going to reveal the photograph right away we're not going to hold it for two episodes we're going to show you now what is he going to do with it and then all those answers just keep piling up on each other and that helps get the twist going it's a real tribute to your creativity it's good with my producer had created some questions for this show but I had my own because I'm a New Jersey file.

23:52Okay. It turns out that you were born in Livingston. There's another guy that I'm close to. He's born in Livingston and he would be, the Italians would say Gabba Dos, which means he's got cement in his head. And that's Chris Christie. And by the way, I had Stevie, I had Stevie Van Zandt on this show to discuss his memoir. And one of my questions to Stevie was how the hell did Chris Christie break down Bruce Springsteen? right because if you remember they were at loggerheads together back in the day

24:19Harlan Coben:yes oh i i've witnessed it quite a bit so i've gone to concerts with chris chris and i were actually both born in newark and grew up in livingston right outside so livingston's right outside we both we're both um newark new jersey and we were both on the same little league team when we were 10 years old coached by his father and we were both inducted into the little league um hall of uh fame which was kind of a joke because neither one of us was particularly great but we're both on the same team and they decided to let us go in together. What's in the water in Newark slash Livingston that would create Harlan Coben and Chris Christie?

24:55Harlan Coben:I don't, you know, I don't know. We had a lot of, I ran to a lot of interesting people over, this is just a very, I think, we're East coast and you know, the East coast. And so we're snooty and think differently than everybody else we think, but everybody sort of thinks that. I don't know. There's something about the denseness and the diversity and everybody kind of growing up in that same sort of melting potish area of Livingston where we had all sorts of different people. And we all had parents at that time who were sort of first generation and really pushing for us to succeed. I think that was a lot of it too.

25:31Harlan Coben:There was a generation that wanted to see the next generation do better and work hard at it. I'm not sure our generation has done as good a job with that, with the next generation. But so a lot of these problems today, I think, are our fault in that way. I see in you and Christy, though, authenticity. And I think that's, to me, if you were going to say, what does Jersey represent to me? It's something that I think we sort of take some pride here on Long Island with, too. You know, we've got a bunch of banana heads here on Long Island, too, whether it's, you know, I mean, I could name all the banana heads, but Howard Stern would be one of them, Eddie Murphy.