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

Harlan Coben doesn’t think so. The mega-best-selling author talks suburbia, impostor syndrome, and what he learned from his college friend David Foster Wallace. If you'd like to see the video version of Better in Person, you can watch it on YouTube or Apple Podcasts.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  This episode of Better in Person is presented by ChatGPT. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Download the new ChatGPT desktop app today.

• 0:13Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. You are about to hear an audio version of a new TV talk show we're making called Better in Person. Our guest this week is the mega bestselling author Harlan Coben. As thriller writers go, Coben is particularly generous. He nearly always heals your nerves, at least a little bit, after he's done shredding them. If you would rather watch this episode, go to the Freakonomics YouTube channel, or you can watch Better in Person on Apple Podcasts. You can watch it on your phone, but really, it is a TV show, so I'd suggest you use a bigger screen if you can. But like I said, this episode you're about to hear in the Freakonomics radio feed is audio only. As always, thanks for listening.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  I always love this question, if you weren't a writer, what would you be? And one of my friends says, a US senator. I'm like, oh, please. I'd be a duvet cover, dude. I got like no other marketable skills.

• 1:16Speaker 02

  This is Better in Person with Stephen Dubner and Harlan Coben.

• 1:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  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 gonna say that.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  I like you a great deal.

• 1:50Stephen J. Dubner?

  I appreciate that.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Can I really turn the cameras off for a minute?

• 1:53Stephen J. Dubner?

  We're done.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  It feels very intimate here.

• 1:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  But.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Yes. But, wow, I love it, but.

• 2:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  I'm a little bit edgy, and I'm edgy because I've been reading a lot of Harlan Coben.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  Uh oh, wow.

• 2:07Stephen J. Dubner?

  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 gonna say anxiety, I don't feel bad. I just feel, like I said, on edge.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  But I want to know how you feel about making people feel that way.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  It's interesting, that's a different response than I usually, you know, because at the end, usually the world comes back together.

• 2:44Stephen J. Dubner?

  It does, to be fair.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  And it may not be, it may not be.

• 2:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  At the end of each book, we're saying.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  Yes, and I may not have happy endings. In fact, quite frequently, I like to have devastating endings. My favorite endings usually, I see how they're runaway. Runaway is one of my most devastating endings. But the world's sort of put back together, and I think of it more as escapism, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way. So that's, I'm actually kind of happy about that. I do want things to linger in your head. It sounds so corny, but I want, still want this to be the book that you go to bed at 11 o'clock and say, I'm just gonna 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.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  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, what makes a difference, is it's easy to stir the mind, it's easy to stir the pulse, but 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, it's from the viewpoint of a person involved in the action sequence.

• 3:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  What do you mean by that?

• 3:59Speaker 01

  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 sort of a thing.

• 4:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  So I try to make the, 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.

• 4:23Stephen J. Dubner?

  Has your writing changed, though, as you've been filming more and more? Do you write a little bit more cinematically now, do you think?

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Actually, I think of anything less, but definitely not more.

• 4:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  Less cinematically?

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Yes, in the sense of, I just finished writing a book with Reese Witherspoon. It just came out called Gone Before Goodbye.

• 4:37Stephen J. Dubner?

  This is your first collaboration, yes?

• 4:38Speaker 01

  My first collaboration.

• 4:39Stephen J. Dubner?

  Why did you choose now? Why'd you choose her?

• 4:42Speaker 01

  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.

• 4:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  Do you want to bring someone up to be Reese?

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, somebody be Reese. So Reese did, she called me, we've known each other for a few years.

• 5:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  Has she been in anything of yours?

• 5:02Speaker 01

  No, we've never worked together. We're just, we fangirl and fanboy over each other, and we're friends.

• 5:07Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  And she said, I had this idea I want to talk to you about, and I was reluctant. I shouldn't exactly say it was gonna 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.

• 5:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  Jim Patterson is that guy?

• 5:20Speaker 01

  He's, 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 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 this is a great idea, but it's not for me? And then she tells me the idea, and I'm like, oh dang, I could do something with that. I kind of like it, and I take out a pad, and we started going back and forth. And at the end of the whole thing, Reese kind of goes, are you gonna do it with me? And I'm like, yeah, let's give it a shot. I called my publisher, they were super excited about the idea, and... You know, the other thing with creativity we can talk about, is it's always good to push yourself.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  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.

• 6:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  Do you ever get bored with yourself?

• 6:12Speaker 01

  I don't get bored, but I want, I just like new challenges, it keeps me fresh for everything else.

• 6:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  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 the room, no one else 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 gonna make a really good adaptation.

• 6:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  But will it?

• 6:47Speaker 01

  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 can, 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 gonna make a good TV series, or a good movie, or a good book, and I don't worry about fidelity to the material.

• 7:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, so you and I both know a lot of writers. 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. 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. You have had a different outcome, so let's hear about that.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Well, let's start with the fact that I had that part. So when I wrote Tell No One, there was a huge bidding war in Hollywood.

• 7:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  What year is this?

• 7:55Speaker 01

  The year was 2000, I believe, it might have been 2000. The book came out in 2001, so I would say it was 2000.

• 8:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  And you're a name then, but not?

• 8:01Speaker 01

  I'm not a name.

• 8:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  Not at all?

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Tell No One was my breakout book. I had had seven Myron Bolitar books before that, so within the community, I was a name. I was a decent seller, I had never.

• 8:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  You were winning some awards.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  I'd won awards, I'd won everything, winning a mystery awards.

• 8:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  And the awards in the mystery and thriller world are serious awards.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  They're serious awards.

• 8:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  The Edgar, it's like.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  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.

• 8:26Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, is that right?

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Never within sniffing distance, I don't think.

• 8:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  Can I ask, how did you keep getting contracts for new books? If you're 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?

• 8:39Speaker 01

  I don't know, I doubt it. So people believed in me, but I, so to give you an idea, my first Myron Bolitar 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.

• 8:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  Congratulations.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Tremendous. So probably part of it was that I was such a pimple on the butt of publishing. Six thousand dollars. And I remember, this is a true story. So my first book was a contract for those Myrins. Two books, ten thousand dollars, five thousand, five thousand. 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? He goes, 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.

• 9:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, so as you're making a whopping five grand for a book that takes you several months or a year to write. What's your family situation at this point? Your wife is a pediatrician.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  Was she in medical school then?

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Uh, no, she was, she was already working as a pediatrician up at what was then called Columbia Presbyterian.

• 9:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  Making big, big, big bucks as a pediatrician.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  I knew, not making big, big. But I had a full-time job at the, I had a full-time job.

• 10:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, what's your job then?

• 10:01Speaker 01

  I was at a company called Club ABC Tours, which was a family travel agency that I was running, helping my grandfather run. I ran, here's the other thing, I believe, I don't believe you need to be a full-time writer. I, I think that that's sort of a fallacy that, that we have all kind of bought into. So for a long time, I, I worked the first eight years out of college and I wrote at the same time. And then eventually when I lost the job.

• 10:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  What are you doing for the travel agency?

• 10:26Speaker 01

  My grandfather was sort of aging up. My mother was there too. I was sort of, I was traveling a lot, setting up tours overseas. So this company actually was second biggest to Italy behind Prilo Tours, which I'm sure you've all seen on TV. So I would go to Italy, I would go to Rome and Florence and Venice and negotiate with hotels in my grandfather and my mother's name.

• 10:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  And would you write while you're traveling on these tours?

• 10:46Speaker 01

  I would write while I was traveling. I'd be writing at night, I'd be writing during lunchtime. This is the kick-ass portion of the program. I don't accept excuses, you don't have time to write. My favorite example is Mary Higgins Clark, who's a legendary mystery writer. So when Mary, I think she was thirty-seven years old, had five kids, her husband died. And very next day, her, I believe it was, her mother-in-law died. Um, she's left with five children, no husband, no real financial support. She had a full-time job. She woke up and wrote from five AM to seven AM, then got the kids up. So don't tell me you don't have time to write, that's nonsense. It means your life is filled with things that are more important to you than writing, in which case you're not a writer. That's fine, move on with your life. So you can always find, in my view, you can always find time to write.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  It may take you fourteen months instead of twelve months, but you can always write.

• 11:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  Did you study writing at any point?

• 11:38Speaker 01

  No, never. I mean, I was a political science major at Amherst College, which I took because it was all writing. It was never any test-taking. So you could always, I could always write a B-plus paper quickly if I needed to. So I didn't have to study for tests.

• 11:51Stephen J. Dubner?

  Turns out you weren't the only writer at Amherst during that time, yes?

• 11:54Speaker 01

  No, there was quite a few of us, actually. So my freshman year, I lived next door to David Foster Wallace. Lived next door to me freshman year.

• 12:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  What was that like?

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Well, it's funny because at the time, none of us sort of knew we were going to be writers. Amherst College is a fairly intimidating place back there. It's only four hundred and, four hundred and twenty students a grade. Everybody seemed quite brilliant. It was the small Ivies. But I had gotten in because of my basketball. I was a good high school basketball player and that's how I got in. My grades were fine, my SATs were fine, but they weren't Amherst College alone. So I was a little bit intimidated coming from a public New Jersey high school into Amherst. And I took Introduction of Political Science and David Foster Wallace was in my class. Dave Wallace back then. And I wrote my first paper and it got like a B or a B minus on it. I'm walking back to the dorm with David and I'm like, David, what'd you get in the paper? And he goes, I got an A. I'm like, can I just read that because I'm curious what an A paper looks like?

• 12:46Speaker 01

  And I read this, I go, oh my God, how to not fail. I'm going to fail out of this place so fast because I didn't realize at the time, David was the smartest human being I've ever met. And I say that in terms of, he was that kid in class that when he spoke, everybody sort of sat up and listened.

• 13:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  Did you see what he would, what he would later write? Did you see all of that in him then?

• 13:05Speaker 01

  I wouldn't say I would say all of it, but it didn't, if you were saying to me which kid that I knew freshman year would become sort of a, a genius sort of writer and see things in a skewed way, it was David. He was a stranger guy.

• 13:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  You also had Dan Brown in your frat or something?

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, Dan Brown was also there at the same time.

• 13:21Stephen J. Dubner?

  Was he a writer?

• 13:22Speaker 01

  No, none of us were really, you know, we, we weren't really writing back then. In fact, Dan, I think at the time was more interested in music. And we were friendly, but we didn't know each other super well. We were in the same fraternity, but we knew each other. And I remember a couple of years later, after I had already had a little bit of success and Dan had, came to me with the manuscript for Da Vinci Code. And he asked me, he says, when we're having this published, can you read it? And I was the first person to actually blurb that book way back when.

• 13:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  And you liked it?

• 13:50Speaker 01

  I did. And I actually read, it was based, a lot of the theory was on a nonfiction book called Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which I had read. And I kind of loved that theory. I thought that book was really cool. And I thought, what a genius idea to kind of take that theory and make it into fiction.

• 14:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  I think for a lot of people who've read your books, which are many, or people who watch your TV shows and films based on the books, you're, you know, you're a brand name. Also, your name is pretty, it's a good, Harlan Coben. It feels fake to me.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  It does.

• 14:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  I know it's not.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  And it's also misspelled all the time. So it's not a great name. It's Harlan with an E-N or Cohen or Coben or Harlem. So I get misspelled a lot.

• 14:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  Other than all those problems, I like the name. So when I read your books, the wife character in Runaway is named Ingrid, but seems to be patterned to some degree on your actual wife, Anne, correct? Yep. So I feel like Myron is the, the character that, uh, uh, the average reader could easily think is a little bit like a Harlan Coben, right? We agree, basketball, sports agent, yeah, yeah. And many of the names, maybe just because I know you a little bit and because we live in New York, many of the names have a familiarity or I feel like there's a wink in them. The names are pretty strong signals often, kind of class-wise or whatever. So how much do you think about that? And I, I assume you're naming people after people you know now and again, yeah?

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Sometimes, first of all, I do this charity thing. Where if you donate, I think it's five thousand dollars now to charities of my choosing, I'll use your or a loved one's name in a book. Now, I don't take requests. You could, you, usually it's a neighbor who's mentioned once, but you know, you could be a killer, you could be a dead body. Read my books first before you decide to do this. You know what I mean? If you're sweet, you know, I get these letters like, I'm buying this for my mom. She's eighty-five years old and likes to play croquet. I'm like, she's going to be like, you know, on crack and living in an alley in my book. So that's one way I sometimes come up, but sometimes it's just a feel thing. You know, it's just, you know, he's a Ken. Like I wrote one book, I don't remember what, I think it's The Innocent. And I named the lead character Jeff.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  And somewhere along the way, it's like, he's not a Jeff, he's a Will or something like that, or a Matt. And I just will change, it's like, some people are that name. The other technique, if you will, is I, I have to make the names different enough so when you're reading fast, they won't have, like, if I have a Steve, I won't have a Stan. Because you're reading fast, you'll, you'll confuse them. I usually have someone who just goes by their initials. In the book I just wrote with Reese, one of the lead character's name is Porkchop. That's a name you're not going to forget. That's a name you're not going to skim over and think of somebody else. It's also a great nickname. And he's a, he's a biker dude. So you get right away Porkchop.

• 16:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  So honestly, reading a bunch of you the last several weeks reminded me of a writer that, I don't know if you think about yourself in combat, Tom Wolfe. So Tom was a great New York writer.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 16:40Stephen J. Dubner?

  I think of you as a great New York writer. They're not all New York, but there's a lot of New York in what you write. But also, um, he was writing these novels that were, they were almost nonfiction books, but novelistic. But one thing that I think we all liked about reading Tom Wolfe fiction was that they had the reporter's eye for detail and observation because he'd been a reporter for a long time. So when I'm reading you, when I'm reading, let's say, Runaway, and there's a scene early on, something happens at Strawberry Fields in Central Park and the protagonist, Simon, the father of the runaway, um, learns about the schedule of these singers, these kind of panhandling singers. It's just one of those moments that when you're reading, it's not the plot itself, but it's such a delicious little thing to know now.

• 17:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  And I wonder how it works with you.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Well, that one's kind of interesting. If you go right now, we walked over to Central Park, uh, to Strawberry Fields and we went in there. The guy's name is Davy. And he'll talk to you, by the way, anybody will talk to you.

• 17:37Stephen J. Dubner?

  He was called Davy in the book, even?

• 17:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, he kept his name. Because I was noticing when I was there that they changed on the hour. It used to be chaos. Guys would be singing over each other and fighting. And somewhere along the line, they all kind of came together and say, hey, for all of our sakes, we could all make some money off of this, we have to have a schedule. And Davy still is the guy who schedules it. So the guys will come to him and he'll text out what time they're going to be playing. And they all play, watch, one hour. Now they're much more sophisticated. They all have microphones, they all have QR codes to give them donations and things like that. And so I asked one of the guys, like, how do you decide who's here? And he goes, Davy. So I went over and talked to Davy for a while. And I got all that information from Davy.

• 18:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  What do you say to Davy? Do you say, I'm a novelist?

• 18:18Speaker 01

  I say, yeah, I'm writing, I'm, I'm booking, those are the guy. Everyone's always willing to talk about what they do. People love to talk about what they do. And I don't know how many years ago now, I remember I met Davy over ten years ago. And every morning when I walk my dog, I still say hi to Davy. He's there all the time, man. So you, say hi to him. He's a, he's a great dude. I'm one of the only writers who will tell you this. I Very lazy researcher. I do not believe in research for a book. If you're trying to write a book, the advice I give you is don't do any research, do as little as possible.

• 18:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  Fiction book, I'm hoping.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  No, yes, yeah. But here's, and I defend the position because no one to write, you know, oh, we gotta do that, you gotta know that. And I do know it. But here's the reason I say that, just two reasons. One is you will find any excuse not to write. It's like, I'm going to write, but first, how about if I would pan on my basement? You'll do anything to avoid that moment. You have to sit down and write. So research is much more fun than writing. Oh, I'm gonna write a scene on Park Avenue in New York. First, I gotta go to Park Avenue. I gotta smell the hot dog stands. I gotta watch the women walk. No, no, you've been there, you know it, you have an imagination, you have Google Earth, write the damn scene now, then you can go to it and look at it. Don't use as excuse not to write. The second thing is we've all read that fiction book, the novel,

• 19:29Speaker 01

  where the writer has done a lot of research and he gets lost in it, so he keeps slowing down the pace because he wants to give you the factoids. Not a problem with me because I don't know anything, you see? So that's why I recommend it.

• 19:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  What I do try to find is the one moment that brings it all to life, like this detail you just mentioned. So I'll tell you one quick story that I think illustrates it. I used to be a member of a group called the Adams Roundtable. And Mary Higgins Clark was one of the founding members. It's been around for many, many years. I was, when I first joined, I was the youngest member by like eighty years. But anyway, they had a conversation one time, because all these mystery writers, and Lee Child was a member for a while, Nelson Demille, Peter Stroud, so there's a lot of top writers, Susan Isaacs, and the question came up of what is the scariest noise in the world? Is it a mother screaming, a baby crying, a man being tortured, whatever? And one of the members says, no, no, no. You're all alone in the woods, in a cabin in the woods, you know you're all alone. You're all alone in the woods, all alone, you know you're all alone in the house.

• 20:26Stephen J. Dubner?

  I'm already miserable.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  And from upstairs, and from upstairs, you hear the toilet flush. Right? That's the moment you look for as a writer.

• 20:34Stephen J. Dubner?

  I would not vote that for the most, the scariest sound ever. Just because the toilet flushing is kind of comical.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  But you're there alone in a house.

• 20:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  I know, but I'm thinking somebody really had to go, like, you know.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  But no one else is at your house.

• 20:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  I know, it could have been a squirrel. I know, so you're not gonna, you scare me all the time, but for some reason, a toilet gives me comfort. A scary toilet may be more of a Harlan Coben thing than a me thing, but it did make me curious. So we came up with a little game to see how his mind works. We gave him a grab bag of everyday objects to see how he might use them in a novel.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  What's that? What the heck is this? Cool mint nicotine pouches? Well, okay, my guess is that it's really not a nicotine pouch. It's probably some sort of heavy dust THC cannabis. Or I would find this in somebody's room who I know never smokes. Why would it be in the baby's room, for example? Or would something be in here that's not supposed to be in here? I'll tell you another, an example. I was once taking these, my, these kids around for Halloween with a mom.

• 21:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  Your kids?

• 21:38Speaker 01

  My kids. And I was with another mom who was taking her kids, and she had the, um, shit, I'm looking over there, Poland Springs water bottle with her. And one of the kids spilled stuff on them, so we grabbed like the water bottle to do it, and she's like, you can't, it's vodka. Out it, out it. There's a novel right there.

• 21:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  I knew Harlan would be good at that. Okay, back now to a slightly more serious part of our conversation. I want to talk to you about writing. I really want to know, um, how much feedback you solicit and get and who you get notes from.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  Nowadays, very, very little and very, very few. So by contract, I don't even say by contract, but I, so I sent to my publisher at about the hundred page mark, mostly to calm them down and make sure they know I'm doing it, it's okay, it's good. I really don't want to hear any criticism at that stage, and everybody knows that, because, you know, I, I am fragile in the sense that if you criticize me early, I'm going to freak out. Let me finish and then you could tell me what you think might be wrong with it. But if you tell me in the middle, I'm like, oh my God, the whole thing doesn't work. You know, being a writer, still to this day, a lot of insecurity, a lot of self-loathing.

• 22:50Stephen J. Dubner?

  Do you get stuck ever? No?

• 22:52Speaker 01

  I get stuck all the time, but I learn as part of the process, and I use it, I try making it as a challenge.

• 22:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  What do you do when you get stuck?

• 22:58Speaker 01

  I just sit there and I stare and I, until my, my ears start to bleed. I mean, the thing you can't do is say, oh, I'm stuck today. I'll go shopping, you know, or I gotta watch what's on TV. You have to keep staring at it, and you have to figure out ways and, and challenges, or take a walk, or do whatever it's going to be, something that will stimulate you out of that. But a lot of it also is, you know, it's like not going to the gym. You have to make yourself go to the gym. And so a lot of times writer's block is just, I just don't want to go to the gym that day. But if I don't write, I'm not a writer, so what the hell am I? I'm nothing. You know, I, I beat myself up a lot. I, I think you have to, you have to have that sort of insecurity, you have to still care. Only bad writers think they're good. We all have imposter syndrome. We all suffer through all of those things.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  Stephen King still suffers from it. Like, he sent me a book, um, one point early, because this is very flattering, but he was using my, me as a character in the book. And he asked permission, like I'm gonna say no to Stephen King. Like, it wasn't the most flattering thing in the entire world, but he sent me the book to, he goes, I wanna send you the book, make sure you read it and like it. And I'm like, I could tell he's nervous, my, our reaction. I'm like, Steve, are you, are you actually nervous? Like, he goes, yeah. I go, damn, so this shit never goes away? He goes, no, it never goes away. So if Stephen King still has, I felt much better that I could still have that fear. And I think that's what keeps you, when you stop having that fear, maybe you're starting to be that writer who phones it in.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  I still worry every book. I'm in a panic every book, every TV show, oh my God, they're gonna hate it, I, I'm done. I'm gonna be discovered as the imposter syndrome thing comes in. And I think in my case, that fuels you. You have to let those things fuel you, not paralyze you. That's the key to writing. Any of those sort of fears, for most people, it will paralyze them. For me, it fuels me.

• 24:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  So this is fascinating to me because I think anybody who's ever tried to not just write a book, but make anything, could identify with that. I remember the best writing advice I ever got, I was going to do my first book, and a guy who'd written several books said, there will come at least one or two points in the next few months where you are convinced that you don't have a book here and that you should stop and do something a hundred percent convinced.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  Then you suck.

• 25:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  And then when I got that moment, if he hadn't told me that, I probably would have stopped. But your advice, as much as I like it and identify with it, I think sounds alien to a lot of people in the world now where so much advice is about how to, you know, life hack your way to better execution. Um, I think that people don't want to embrace any lack of confidence. I think people don't want to have any self-doubt. They just want to march on to the positive result. Do you have any advice for people how to embrace your, you know, inner anxiety or inner stress? Because, you know, psychologists talk about positive stress and negative stress. It sounds to me like you maximize the positive stress and make it work for you, but people don't seem to be comfortable with that in general.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  First of all, I think people should stop listening to any of that, that advice. I'm online sometimes. I can't believe the shitty advice that's all over social media. And I'm publishing, oh my God, I could lose my, I could, I could go crazy all the, the bad advice. So first of all, turn off your goddamn computer. Um, I hate to knock, because I'm sure you'll have these people on and people are gonna be listening, so I'm gonna get a lot of shit about this. I can't stand the term self-care. None of us are not being selfish enough in our life. You're not thinking of you first. Yes, you are. In fact, you're thinking of you so much that you keep looking in social media to find things that tell you that you're not thinking about you enough. That's how much you think about you all the time. Stop it. Just get to work, do what has to be done. I treat this job like I'm a plumber.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  Plumber can't one day wake up and go, oh my God, I can't do pipes today. I just, and every artist, I hate that term too. I like to prefer the creator or whatever else, but every person I know who produces pages, be they your most literary writer or your most, um, commercial romance writer, they treat it like a job. They treat it as something that has to be done. And so I, I stop, just stop listening to that, to that advice. And how come every, every person I see online who talks about dating has only dated narcissists? They're never the narcissist. You never go, you know what the problem with this relationship? I was a narcissist. No, I have dated forty-seven straight narcissists.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Maybe it's you, honey. Maybe it's you, sir. So, you know, we just, we, we love these blind spots. And this is actually how I develop character as well, watching these things online and getting pissed off the way I'm ranting at you. This can trigger something that can be from a book.

• 27:30Stephen J. Dubner?

  That was very helpful.

• 27:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  This episode of Better in Person is presented by ChatGPT. ChatGPT work moves beyond answers into getting real work done. It's a new experience in ChatGPT for bigger multi-step projects across web, mobile, and desktop. You can give ChatGPT work a goal and have it gather context, choose an approach, create the output, and continue iterating, all while you stay in control. It can help turn messy inputs into useful outputs like briefs, spreadsheets, dashboards, presentations, prototypes, landing pages, and workflows. You can even ask ChatGPT work to take on entire workflows with a single request. Here's an example. It can turn customer research into a campaign brief, use that brief to create marketing assets,

• 28:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  and adapt those assets for different markets, carrying context through every step. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Download the new ChatGPT desktop app today.

• 28:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  A few people that we spoke with beforehand, who we told we were going to speak with you, including some family members and so on. They often mentioned your wandering mind, as it's called, as a tool, essentially. And I'm curious to hear, first of all, do you agree with that? And how does it serve you well?

• 28:55Speaker 01

  Well, I assume by wandering mind, they mean that I get easily distracted. And sometimes my kids will be like, oh, Dad's off. So I'm always looking for, what can I, how can I use this in a story? How can I turn this around? How can I make this a writer's prompt? And ideas come to me at strange times, and I have to sort of follow them out. So I can be rude company at times. I'm not the, I'm not the most focused, laser focused on you sometimes. And so the people who know me are sort of used to that. That's probably, I assume, what they're referring to.

• 29:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  But when I, like, I think all of us, we try to figure out how we got to where we got, whether it's a good place or a bad place, whether we like the result or not. I try to isolate whatever the variables are, because most of us as humans, I'd like to think are pretty similar, right? We all want to be loved, we want to eat food that tastes good. We want to be protected and all that kind of stuff. But then there are these, you know, variables that really range a lot from person to person. So for me, I think as a writer, the things that I thought made me be able to do it were that I'm a trier. I'm just, you know, I'm gonna try hard. I may not have the most natural ability, but I'm gonna try. And the other is that I'm a noticer. And I think that comes from being the youngest in a big family where I wasn't talking.

• 30:07Stephen J. Dubner?

  When you think about you, what drives the ability to write what you do and to make the books that you write into things that millions and millions and millions of people really love? And not just because it's twisty, and not just because it puts you on edge, but because it connects with them somehow. What's that?

• 30:27Speaker 01

  I think probably it would be my parents and their early deaths. I mean, both of them were dead by the time they were my age. Both of them were extraordinarily bright. I think both felt frustrated by their relative station in life, decidedly middle-class, seeing people, they weren't bitter, but seeing people who were, they felt probably not as smart or talented as they were being their bosses or heads. One of the last things, my father lost his job when he was 57, died of a heart attack at 59. And I remember him saying to me, try never to work for somebody else. Try to be your own boss.

• 31:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  What kind of work did he do?

• 31:06Speaker 01

  He was trained as a lawyer, but at that time, he had been like an executive, sort of in-house legal counsel for a company that did laundry services. So like when restaurants, every night, somebody goes and picks up the dirty linens and the dirty sheets and things like that.

• 31:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  I thought that was just the mafia.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  It might have been. Well, also, my family, not my father, my mother, my grandfather, were definitely mobbed up and connected. My whole town was mobbed up.

• 31:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  What town?

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Livingston, New Jersey.

• 31:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  Livingston, oh.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. So part of it was that, part of it, they were sort of ambitious. And I think all of my brothers and I, I think all have, are ambitious. I always had what I call incremental ambition. So like when I was first wanting to be a writer, I was like, I just want one day to have a book published by a real publisher. I just want to one day walk past the bookstore and see my book. Okay, two books, just to show it wasn't fluke, just two books. Okay, if I could scratch out an embarrassing living, but just enough so I could say, that'd be great. Okay, if I could one day for just an hour skim the last slot on the New York Times, like number 15, just, if I could be top 10, top 5, 1.

• 32:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  Dayenu, dayenu, dayenu.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  So yeah, I kept going like that. And back in those days, the one advantage that I had was there was no internet. So like we were talking earlier about the shitty money I was making for paperback originals. I didn't know how low-level I was. I thought I was the cat's ass. I had a book published by a major publishing house. I had no idea I'd be ranked number 1,347,000 today on Amazon. There was no Amazon. I thought I was pretty hot shit, you know what I'm saying? So I also had reason to just keep going on. And I was damn ambitious about the fact that I was going, and I believed that I had the talent that I was going to make it as a writer. My parents' early tragic deaths, which I've written about in essays, I think in the end, and this is not a silver lining, and I know I don't believe you have to suffer for your art,

• 32:57Speaker 01

  but there's no question they make me a better writer. There's no question the hard thing that we were talking about before comes from the grief that I've suffered. That in many ways, most of my books deal with parent-child relationships and that bond, and what it's like to lose somebody in all these books. And I don't think it's a coincidence that I always have missing people. Because with missing people, there's always that hope. There's always the hope that maybe they can come back and you can be.

• 33:23Stephen J. Dubner?

  Often, not just missing, but pretty sure, we're pretty sure they're dead. There are dead people who aren't dead in your books.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  Exactly. And what, what greater hope? I mean, you know, I have a, my recurring dream with my father is that he's alive. And there's always in that dream, like he's, has some issue with bills or whatever else, I'm trying to tell him not to worry about that anymore. I have money and all that. There's always a moment in these dreams, I'm so happy he's alive, and you just sort of accept it. And then there's that moment in the dream when you realize it's probably a dream, and you're gonna wake up, and he's still gonna be dead. And I'm actually trying to grab on to him, like to bring him with me. And still to this day, my father, my father died in 1988. I still have that sort of thing with my, with my parents. When I, in my twenties and early thirties, I did seven eulogies

• 34:14Speaker 01

  by the time I was 32 years old. I think I've only done one since. So that period of time was probably very informative on what I write.

• 34:22Stephen J. Dubner?

  So Stephen King likes to talk about how if he didn't have writing, he'd have been dead a long time ago. That it was a way for him to kind of process a lot of emotion. When I think about you, you seem so solid as a human, you know? But then when I read you, I feel a fragility in the stories and the characters and the emotions, and that's what makes it compelling. So what about you? If you didn't have this, is the writing what helps you turn a fragility into personal solidity or vice versa? Or is it, is that not, is that all your imagination?

• 34:58Speaker 01

  It's a really good question. I don't know if I would go as far as Steve, Steve does. And he's had abuse, you know, drug problems and things like that, that he's been very open and honest about. And I don't know if I'd be losing my mind. But that said, I know that if I'm not writing well, my life is not in balance. So what do you need to balance in your life? Well, you know, eating well, exercising, your relationship with your partner, your relationship with your kids, your friends, your social life, all of those things. All of those things could be great and balanced, but if my writing is not in balance, that's all gonna tilt and fall over.

• 35:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  You also just answered a question that my daughter sent in. When I told her I was talking to you today, she said, does it take a twisted mind to write twisted stories?

• 35:41Speaker 01

  I think it's no. I think there's a, one of my favorite quotes that I use is from Flaubert, who says, "To be regular and orderly in your real life, so you can be violent and original in your work." I love that. I'm also a big guy on opposites. You can't have a left without a right. You can't have an up without a down. You can't have the darkness without that light. Most of my books take place in like suburbia or placid pools, where even one stone can make a ripple. If I'm writing that book in a churning ocean, I could throw as many rocks as I can into that ocean. You're not gonna even see them hit. So you need the placid pool in order to make those ripples.

• 36:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  You told me that Netflix, I guess, discovered that a suburban house on a movie poster is the scariest thing around, yeah?

• 36:25Speaker 01

  Not scariest, but for my books, for my stuff, they draw the most eyeballs.

• 36:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  What were the other options?

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Well, we have dozens, dozens. I mean, so this is a little, giving you guys some Netflix inside info, I guess. Hope Netflix isn't bad. But Netflix normally has, I'd say, between 15 and 20 posters for every TV show. And you may notice this, right? You go on to the show, and one day, let's say my show's safe, it'll have a picture of Michael C. Hall. And the next day, it'll have two women. Next day, it'll have a suburban street, a cop, whatever it is. They change it up to try to figure out, I think, your personal algorithm. And also just to see what hits you. And then they love to play this kind of game with me where they'll say, okay, guess which poster did the best? And to me, it's always a poster that has no appeal whatsoever. But it's always a house. It's always a suburban scene.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Or like a gate in front of a house. Those are the things that I guess signal to people, something's gonna get disturbed in suburbia. And that's the appeal of my shows.

• 37:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  I know you're always telling your family that I'm really gonna stop soon, but at least that's what we've been told. Do you really tell them that?

• 37:31Speaker 01

  I'm 63 years old, and I'm working harder, doing more stuff than I've ever done before. I never had a month like this past month, never. But I feel lucky about that right now. I'm not ready to, to give that, to give that stuff up. But every year, I kind of think like, when I was just a writer before I had TV, I always joked I didn't really have a real job, because you just make up your own hours. Now I do have meetings and things I have to do.

• 37:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  Do you like collaborating, generally?

• 37:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  Because you seem like you like alone time.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  I like both. I mean, I'm a, you know, I'm a, I'm a writer. I spent most of my life alone in a room, and I don't regret one day of that. How many people can say that? I am an introvert, but I am a pretty good introvert. I can fool you into not being.

• 38:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  And you can get yourself up for the.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  Exactly. Then I'll go back and I'll collapse.

• 38:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  Feel depleted?

• 38:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I will. I do. I feel depleted afterwards.

• 38:22Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah. Do you think most writers are introverts?

• 38:25Speaker 01

  I, um, I don't know if most are, but the ones I know, yeah. We're pretty social with each other, and they're actually fairly normal. Um, but we do need our alone time, and we do need that time. And it works for me because, so I'm alone in a room and I'm writing. And then there is a little inkling like I'd like to be on set or be whatever. And then I go to set for two or three days and like, oh my God, get me alone in a room again. So it actually feeds off each other in terms of the writing rather than depletes me in one way or the other.

• 38:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  Should we talk about Netflix a little bit more? How is it good for you, the Netflix deal?

• 38:59Speaker 01

  It's fantastic because, you know, listen, I'm a commercial writer, and I say that with no embarrassment. I want to sell a lot of books.

• 39:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  Did you ever want to be a literary figure? Not that you're not, you are.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  I know what you're saying, but let me tell you this. Every writer who's ever sat with you or you've ever talked to wants two things. More sales and more critical acclaim.

• 39:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  I don't care who you are. Every writer who denies that's a liar. Oh, I don't care about sales. I only care. Bullshit. Bullshit. I only care, I don't care if all the reviews are crappy. I sell some books. Bullshit. Everybody. It's human nature. So let's stop pretending with that bullshit. I am the Berkeley tree in the woods. If a tree falls and nobody hears, it's make a sound. If I write a book and no one hears it, you know, that's, and people say to me, I want to write, but only for myself. That's like saying I only talk to only myself. It's fucking nonsense. That's therapy. That's not writing. How does it relate to Netflix? Netflix is in 190 countries. I didn't even know there's that many countries. I think there's only 195. Not in like three, like North Korea and some, two or places like that. 190 countries, over 300 million families subscribe to it.

• 40:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  You led Netflix in minutes watched.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  That's correct. Fool me once with the number one show in terms of viewership that they had. Number one. Very proud to say that.

• 40:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  Congratulations.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Thank you. But that's like 100 million families watched it all eight episodes in the first 90 days.

• 40:21Stephen J. Dubner?

  Do you ever try to picture what they look like en masse?

• 40:24Speaker 01

  No. I don't know. That could have been imagination.

• 40:26Stephen J. Dubner?

  Do you think much about what the effect is? Not the effect necessarily that you're having, but the, just what the effect is of that mass of an audience. Because honestly, there aren't that many things in the world that unite that many people.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  No, but I'm happy for it. I'm grateful for it. It's such an honor and privilege, just the other side of this thing. And I don't want to sound Pollyanna, but what you do and what I do, that people will listen to you and choose that. Out of the zillions of podcasts, they counted a zillions of books. You walk into a bookstore, there's thousands of books, that you pick mine, or you're going Netflix and you pick my show. That's a responsibility I take very seriously. If you're disappointed, I'm upset with myself. I'm not happy.

• 41:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  I really want to try your wandering mind again. I think we've got you in a nicely agitated state. Okay. This time, Harlan pulls out a baby monitor in the form of a sock. He is a good sport, but I sense he is starting to hate this game.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Part of the problem with this is you're kind of making it seem like something that's magical or that I snap like this. It's sitting around staring at the wall for hours on end.

• 41:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  Take your time. Sit and stare at the, what is that?

• 41:31Speaker 01

  The fuck is a dream sock? Am I allowed to curse on this? FDA cleared, smart baby monitor. Okay, so this, see, this I would think about, how I could make this like be tracking somebody, or it would match up to somebody else. Or imagine you put the sock on your child in the middle of the night, and then when you wake up, the pulse is going, but it's not on your kid's sock anymore. See, there you go. Right there, we have some kind of story. It's like the baby monitor. Like I always think, what if I heard something weird over the baby monitor that I wasn't supposed to hear?

• 42:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  So wait, who's the sock on if not my kid now?

• 42:07Speaker 01

  I don't know. That's gonna be the mystery.

• 42:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  Come on.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  You gotta read 350 pages before you kind of find out where that is or why someone's messing with it.

• 42:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  That was fantastic. All right, last question. You're writing a play?

• 42:20Speaker 01

  I am. I'm trying to write a play. I've been commissioned by a group in London, on the West End. And their, their pitch to me sort of was interesting. Mouse Trap has been playing for 73 years. We need a new thriller or a new mystery. And at first, it was one of those where I had no idea, no thoughts, no nothing. And then I had the first scene. This is something that works.

• 42:40Stephen J. Dubner?

  Give us something.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna give you that. But I gave them the first scene, and they were like, ooh, that's good. And I go, that's all I got. And then I went home that night. I like literally had the rest of it by the next morning. That's happened to me twice in my life. Lazarus too.

• 42:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  I don't understand how a mind like that works. I'd like to have a mind like that, I think, right?

• 42:58Speaker 01

  But it's all I do. Like other people wake up and they have to do their jobs and go about their business.

• 43:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  No, this is all I do. I got nothing else.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  That's it. So this is what you're, why you're good at it. I have nothing else.

• 43:08Stephen J. Dubner?

  I don't come up with like a play in the morning and it's done by the evening. I've never done that.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  The idea is, now the hard part, I gotta do it. The hard part is writing. Ideas are not that hard. They're hard. But the, the hard part is, as you know, is the actual, you've written enough books to know. You gather all the information. That's kind of fun. And you're trying to organize it. That's kind of fun. But only writing counts as writing. Everything else is flotsam and jetsam.

• 43:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  Can I just say, I'm very happy for you.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Thank you, man. Happy for you.

• 43:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  I think it's obviously a great career, but I also think you're kind of an inspiration. But also, I just don't sniff a bit of cynicism in you. And I really appreciate that because I think when you're successful at something, you can start to take for granted like, well, of course how it's gonna be because everybody else sucks. And I don't sense that in you. So, uh, thanks. Thanks for coming.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thanks. Thanks, everybody.

• 43:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  Harlan Coben.

• 44:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  I hope you enjoyed this audio edition of Better in Person with Harlan Coben. But remember, this is a video show, and if you're only listening, you are missing out. You can watch this episode of Better in Person on the Freakonomics YouTube channel or on Apple Podcasts. Your feedback is always welcome. Our email is [email protected]. We will be back soon right here with more Freakonomics Radio. Until then, take care of yourself. And if you can, someone else too.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  It's hard to capture my raw animal magnetism in photography. Good luck, guys. You have your jobs really cut out for you today.

• 44:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  Thanks again to ChatGPT for sponsoring today's episode of Better in Person. ChatGPT can help teams move from goals to real outcomes. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Download the new ChatGPT desktop app today.