Michael Connelly: How to Write Unforgettable Characters | How I Write

Michael Connolly is a crime novelist who's famous for series like Harry Bosch and The Lincoln Lawyer, and combined his series have sold more than a hundred million books. But then also they've become TV shows on Netflix, on MGM, and Amazon Prime. Where he's not just writing, but he's the executive producer. His fingerprints are

So I want to ask them about it. How do you dream up vivid characters? How do you write about a city, a town, or a place? And if you're somebody, you want to write, you want to come up with stories, you want to imagine worlds and put them onto the page, well, you're in the right place.

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I want to hear about detail. What do you focus on when it comes to details, bringing stories to life? And what is it that writers get wrong? I spent a lot of time. with the kind of people I write about, whether they're detectives or um lawyers, judges and so forth. And um I never take out a notebook. I don't want anyone to kinda be frozen by seeing me writing down something they said or did.

So it's really uh you know, observation and I I just try to watch for um what I call telling details and they can be verbal, they can be in a story, someone talking about what they do or very specifically about a a case, uh uh an experience they had. Um, but it can also just be something I observe about them physically or in their workplace, um, in their car even. Um, you just look for uh These details that if you can get it

it uh you know, it opens up a window, um, of imagination for your for your viewer. I mean, it does for you as well as the writer, but you're I'm always conscious of uh Uh, what's the reader um going through? Wha wha how is their imagination turning? And um it turns on details and so you always gotta be be available for that. Your second part, what did writers get wrong?

Um, well everybody's unique. Um, but I know as a writer and reader I don't like to be hit with uh too much detail over over details. I think in writing and reading uh uh a key thing, maybe the key thing is momentum, you know, no and a lot of details create speed bumps. So it sounds like what you're going for is the fewest things that create the most vivid picture and keep the momentum. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what I mean by Telling detail. Instead of five details, you pick the one

He that says something about the situation, the character. You know, I I often tell this story, I was one time sitting in front of a detective at his desk, and I had been at crime scenes with him And knew that um at each crime scene he would take his glasses off and hook the earpiece in his mouth. as he was observing

um, you know, uh the victim of violence. And uh when I was sitting at his desk I saw that he had a groove in the plastic of his earpiece from and I realized his teeth are clenched when he does has those moments and and that was kind of like all I needed to say about this guy to convey, you know, I took it and and put it into fiction. And it said a lot about the character with just one little moment like that or one little piece of uh detail description.

As you're writing detail and you're working through drafts, do you feel like those details are something that come out in the editing process and the rewriting, the rewriting, Okay, I'm okay, finally, like draft four or draft five, I found the detail. Or do you feel like, hey, you've seen it, you're thinking of the story? Actually those telling details are pretty clear for you. I think it's latter. Um uh I mean it comes later. Uh it's in rewriting. Rewriting is uh

a real key thing for me and uh and it goes both ways. I take details out when I rewrite and I kinda strip it down to to what is needed uh to maintain momentum. Uh, but that is also the process where I I think better of it. I think this is a better detail where I expand the detail.

Or it just comes to me, um, because now I have a full story and um and the whole and I'm like e emerged into a full story and I might know something that happens in a hundred pages that right now I could set up with a detail.

And how does that work? Is it like, okay, I got draft one on the left side of my screen, I'm gonna rewrite it draft two? Is it like I'm going paragraph by paragraph? How does that rewrite? Well there's I have two. One is built in, so I start every morning by rewriting what I did the day before. Oh wow. Yeah. And you know, so uh that can be anywhere from three pages to ten or depending on what kind of day I had the day before.

And, you know, I write on a laptop. It's a digital world. Um, but I really like to feel a paper. I've never read an e book. Um, I read books in that I hold in my hand. And I kinda uh rewrite that way. So I print out what I do. What I've written the day before I'll print it out and I'll mark it up with a pencil and then I can

put those changes into the uh the digital form. And then I do a larger uh version of that when I get to the end of a book, I print the whole thing out, go through it, reading it in paper. and marking it up. And uh and I go f all the way through before I go back in and start taking the markings and suggestions and all that stuff. And, you know, I have a whole um shorthand of ways of leaving notes and and margins and stuff like that. Like a little personal code language.

Yeah, like uh RW means like rewrite this whole paragraph. N S G means not so good. you know, um, which I got from sadly from my mother once who was reading one of my ma uh manuscripts and there's I saw these N S Gs and I go, Well like what's that? Thanks. Kind of s like yeah, yeah. But she was a good critic. Um, you know, she she read a lot. and loved reading uh mysteries, so she was a good one to say, like, Oh, I this is the guy who did it, right? And that kind of thing.

Um but yeah, she I I took some of her shorthand into what I do as well.

Now tell me about truth, right?'Cause At least at the surface, very crude reading. You're like, okay, I write fiction. Fiction's the opposite of truth. But no, it seems like in your when you're writing, you're really trying to get the detail. Hey, you know, does this this work well? Is that like the right way to describe this scene? So as you're writing and you get it down on page, and my sense is you're not doing a lot of research.

And then towards the end it's like, okay, let's make sure that this works. So how does that work in terms of your own kind of validation process on your own? And then sometimes talking to other people to say, Hey, hey, hey, did I get these details right? Yeah, I mean there's two things. One is I was a journalist for a long time before I uh started started doing this. Um, I covered courts and I covered crime for about fourteen years.

So it gives me a kind of a rudimentary knowledge of how this is done. That allows me to write and not spend a lot of time researching. And so like I always wanna be re writing. Um and um I have a cadre of people that help me with my books, um, you know, ranging from detectives to uh lawyers and judges and I can shoot them texts and and emails, phone calls while I'm writing, depending on the urgency of when I needed the information. I also have a researcher.

who's basically an internet researcher. I mean I could go on Google and get this and get that, but I would rather be writing and so I'll shoot him um a uh a message. And and he's worked for me long enough that he knows I'm not looking for page after page after page of something. I I'm looking for a concise answer to my question. Um, that I can like digest quickly and then incorporate into what I'm writing. So it it's really about maintaining moment momentum, always be writing.

You know, I you gotta eat. And so a lot of times I will m uh meet people for breakfast'cause um I'm not gonna be writing while I eat so I might as well meet someone who can help me or answer a question. Um and uh so the yeah, so the process is all um kinda Organized so that I can be ready.

Okay. So you're saying always be writing. So like what's any given Tuesday? Like, I don't know what'd you do today? Did you write today? Is it how do you structure your life in order to get writing done? Well, I find that um the safest time is morning, so that's where you're gonna get less interruptions. Um so I like to be writing before it's light out. Um and I did that today. Um

I I'm very lucky in that I my work has inspired television and so forth. I live in Los Angeles, so I'm close to these productions. Um I I'm not like somebody who has to watch over my stuff. Uh, but but there is there is a good purpose to being there from time to time, e even if it's just to be a cheerleader. This on the T V sets, huh? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I try to

write um for a a minimum of like six to eleven every morning and then I might go off in the afternoon to a set to an interview. Um but if I can get like six to eleven in, I'm pretty happy.

I saw somewhere they said uh Realtors talk about location, location, location. And for me it's a character, character, character. Why is character so important? I think that's what people read books for. Um, you know, everything's important, but you know, but everything seems to be in service of character, um, your plot.

you know, where you set the story. All really important stuff, but I think they're really about character. And so y that's always front of mind. You gotta always be thinking um, you know, about how you're how and what you're delivering this character. you know, to the reader. Um you were talking in the last question about details and I really didn't answer, but that the c the answer is character. Um, you know, I write books about a person

a character at at the center of a book who does not exist. And so I just adopted this philosophy that if the best way to sell this Character. that doesn't exist to a reader who's who's gonna be a smart reader is to plant that character's feet in as real world as possible. So you so I endeavor to get the details right. The details of the job, the details of

the geography, the details of the weather, the details of the history. My books are very contemporary. Yeah. And so I'm constantly picking stuff out of the the real world that's that has happened or is happening. to uh put into my books and see how my characters react to

What do you like so much about writing about LA? Uh, that it's never stops giving. I mean, it's such a big place. It's such a uh quickly evolving society. That there's always something new. Um I've r I'm up to like forty two books now and in each book I start out with the goal of ending up in a neighborhood I've never been in, fiction wise, you know, in a book. I wanna I wanna take my readers to someplace new in LA.

And it's become pretty clear to me I'll never cover the city. You know, it's it's too big, it's too sprawling, it's too different. I mean I've now been published over almost thirty five years and places I wrote about in early nineties are d are gone and they're different. Um and uh and I can go back to these places and kind of categorize that change. So there's a lot of lot on the palette here, um to draw from and and uh of course it's

It's a lot of fun uh to draw from it. I sometimes feel like I have a unfair ag uh advantage to other writers because I write about LA.

Well also when it comes to uh do you know the work of Jeff Manoff? So Jeff Manor, he wrote a I think it was a book called The Burglars Crime a a Burglars Guide to the City. And he talks about crime in LA and how it's distinct, how it's different. So I was thinking about this, you know, prepping for this interview, like what are the things that make LA distinct? You know, you got the hills.

And then you have a lot of flat space. I mean even more. You got the highways. It's a city that I was probably patrolled by air more than any other city. When I think of crime in LA I think of car chases. You know, you got the big car chases with the helicopters, then you got the tunnel, you got the LA River in all the movies and just like the vibe of sort of this like retro kind of concrete of the LA River. Um Yeah. What is it about LA? How is crime here different from other cities?

Well, I think it starts with the uniqueness of the place as you just have um mentioned. It's got All this stuff. It's got mountains, deserts, uh, ocean. Um i the variety i is pretty amazing. And it's also um a segregated city, segregated by freeways, segregated by a mountain chain that goes right through the middle of it. Um and it's also a place by virtue of being um the entertainment center of of possibly the world.

But a major entertainment center, um, it it kinda le wears its heart on its sleeve. Um, there's so many people that come here from some other place. I did myself. Um d that come here because wherever they were at it wasn't working for them. And this is the city of second chances, but not all second chances. pay off. And and so th the the haves and the have nots and and the difference between them I think are more noticeable

in this city than say Pittsburgh or something. And um and that that creates a uh a sometimes palpable palpable um friction. And and and that's that's what you're looking for when you're writing crime fiction.

Yeah, I went back and there's a Little Sisters by Raymond Chandler and I know that That book inspired you. So I just read I think it's your favorite chapter, chapter thirteen, and this stuck out to me about LA. No moon, no fuss, hardly a sound of the surf, no smell, none of the harsh, wild smell of the sea. A California ocean, California, the department store state, the most of everything, and the best of nothing.

Yeah, I mean that's why I read that. Um I that's like me raising the flag. I read that chapter uh when I start a book. Just because uh in it's a pretty short chapter and um Bye, baby.

And it has nothing to do with plot, it's just like uh Chandler, Struly's guy Marlowe, decides to take a break and drive around the city and describe it in very uh sardonic, cynical terms. Um but Uh I'm not sure may I don't know if it's on there, but I think that book was published in nineteen thirty-nine and uh some of those descriptions are are right on, right now. You know, to pull that off.

the you know, the uh the department store stayed to pull the something like that off and and to read it now and know it's uh that's accurate then and as it is now. You know, that to me is the definition of art and and that's what people like me aspire to and that's that's why I read that um before I start writing a book. Well you can see the details you're talking about, right? And I pulled another

Another quote: Malibu, more movie stars, more pink and blue bathtubs, more tufted beds, more Chanel No. 5, more Lincoln Continentals and Cadillacs, more wind-blown hair and sunglasses and attitudes and pseudo-refined voices and waterfront more. By the way, waterfront morals is like a killer a killer line. But it's just like boom, boom, boom, msh i it's these details that yeah, paint a picture of the scene, capture the essence of a play.

And and what does it tell you? This the guy telling you that story, it's about him. It's his it's uh that is so much about character,'cause it's his view of a place that he can't aspire to, you know, that he can't afford, that he can't touch. And he's an outsider looking in. It says so much about character. And um and so that is the the perfect example of of how um the telling details can reveal character.

For you, as you're writing, you have, you know, different characters that you're working with. Do you feel like you can actually see? It's like putting on different lenses. uh over your eyes. Do you feel like you see LA differently through different characters? Yeah, especially uh I mean some are similar, um, but you know, I have the lens that is like a female's view.

of the city and uh you know, a male dominated uh bureaucracy. I I've the wisdom view through Harry Bosch, who's now in his seventies. Um and then I I the my true outsider I believe is Mickey Holler, the Lincoln lawyer, because uh you know, he's not a guy with a badge and a gun and uh the defense attorney

is t kind of traditionally seen as as an outsider. Um a guy who's like looking at the the standards, um the the power and might of the state and and figuring out how c how can he find the cracks in that and and work them bigger, wider.

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If you have these different characters, it seems like then you're developing different voices. How does that work? Um, it's a lot of things. Um, and i some of it is diction. I mean I I think um dialogue is the most important part of of character. And by that you mean two people going back and forth, having a conversation. Yes, um, or not. I mean just the what how a character speaks um

And how much they speak says a lot about them. I mean, by design, you know, my original character is Harry Bosch. I've been writing about him since nineteen ninety two. Well, publishing him since ninety two. writing about'em much longer. But You know, I wanted him to be a a guy who felt like an outsider even though he had a bad And a and a gun and uh you know, basically um was uh symbolizing the power and might of the state. I w I didn't want to feel comfortable about it.

And uh and I think that came out some in his dialogue and it also came out in how uh he didn't use dialogue. Um he's a guy who nods a lot. He d he's a ha a real economy of words guy. Uh to the point that I used to have a uh editor who on the uh margin this is early on when we actually edited on paper.

would just keep a running count of how many times he nods in a book. And it was like You know, he's nodd five hundred and forty times and we're only on page two hundred, you know, that kind of thing. Um but I but that was a that's a character thing. I I didn't want him to say yes or no. I just want him to not. Um But I I d there's just little I don't know if you wanna call'em tricks, but there's little things you do that I think can can uh g give a character a distinct uh feel for the reader.

And how do you tactically relate to these characters? Is it like a felt sense you have, or like, you know, you have a little like a different room in your house where three sixty it's like a map room but for character and all their little tricks and quirks and stuff like that. No,'cause that would uh that would like indicate that I thought I had longevity and you know, and I I don't think the the the writers who feel like they're gonna be able to do this for their whole life

are rare. Um, you know, if I knew what I knew thirty years ago, I would have started keeping journals that had all this information. But I I keep nothing. Um, I never have. Um and you know, I do ha I've only had two copy editors over my entire career. And they have a Bible, so they've been able to catch me on a lot of stuff that I that I don't get correct from book to book. Um usually it's ten books ago I said this and and and it doesn't match with what what I'm saying presently.

I I don't really worry about that because I d again it comes back to Momentum. I don't wanna my eyes are focused on my the screen of my laptop and the words I'm writing. And I don't want to look away to look at an outline or to look at a journal that said this person had green eyes back then. Um I just don't wanna take my eyes off the screen. Um I just wanna be writing and and moving a story forward.

Tell me about conflict. How does conflict let character unfold, let the story Well, I would say the uh one of the best pieces of advice I ever r read, I didn't get this personally, obviously, um came from uh Kurt Vonnegut, whose whose books I loved. And then he was asked once uh in an interview, what's the best piece of advice you can give a writer?

And he said, uh, make sure on every page every character wants something, even if it's only a glass of water. And that to me is the distilled essence of of writing. And that's conflict. It's what you want. And you know, and so I I often do that. I look at a page and say, That do I have th I do I have Kurt's advice covered here? Does everybody want something? And uh and it's really important you know, to have that. And I was more religious about it in the early days.

You know, I uh you know, I I had Bosch as a smoker and it's a s society where you're again not supposed to smoke. So like he always wanted a cigarette but he couldn't have one. That was my little way of making sure there was conflict on every page. Um, you know, and uh and again that shows something about character that A in the first place he is a smoke.

And uh it shows that he's kind of stepped outside of um traditional or standard society and he's looking in. Um, so there's all kinds of ways that you can use conflict.

uh to deliver character. And I'm lucky that in a crime novel there's building conflict, you know, I have to find a murderer. I have to get uh my client and not guilty. You know, so you have these big things, um And you you build in all kinds of layers, the small ones and um Bureaucracy is a huge one because you're also looking for conflicts that your reader

uh can relate to. Um, you know, most of my readers, probably ninety nine point nine percent, have never solved the murder, but they're reading a book about a guy trying to solve a murder. So you gotta connect with them with stuff they do know and that 'Cause they just don't have to. That kind of stuff. Like the y you you put in stuff

Traffic. The traffic I dealt with today. Um you put in stuff that everybody can relate to while you're delivering the big conflict, which is something they probably have no idea about.

Wait, so traffic. Okay, that's an interesting one. Let's just follow that thread. So you're right about traffic. So how do you bring something like that to life? Because I could see, okay, you're right about traffic. Okay, what there's not there's not that much that goes on, right? There you're you're you're sitting there. Volkswagen, there's Cardex or Mercedes or Stop X Starting, like I kind of know what to expect. So then what are you doing in order to take traffic and bring it to life?

It's like what's your guy doing in in the car while he's not moving'cause this is LA, you know. Yeah. Um, or what does he do to avoid it? I mean it gets a little bit like that Saturday n like Saturday night live um skit.

Where they make fun of how Los Angeles people like say, give this take this and do that. You know, everyone has directions they want to share with you. But uh and then I you know, I was late to this interview and I had to call and say, My I actually have my GPS on when I'd be arriving. So, um, it's an important part of life out here, so y it's gotta go in books and and you gotta find ways uh to use it. Uh my main character, Ari Bosch, lives in the hills and has a view of the one on one freeway.

And there's probably hasn't been a book uh I've written about him where he doesn't go out on his back deck and and we find out what the traffic report is, you know, the ribbon of lights not moving, that kind of stuff. Yeah.

How does place become a character, you know, like even just reading what people have written about your work. They're like, Man, the city of Los Angeles is a character. It's not just like the stage that the game is being played on. It is a character in The book itself. Well, y you can use it y you know, you want your characters to be moving forward and backward in time, you know, remembering things, uh, delivering how they came to be who they are and where they are.

And you can do that a lot with um geography, you know. Um Again, I I hate calling it a trick, uh but it's a trick I guess. You know, like Harry Bosch will go into a neighborhood or will go into a restaurant and then that will kick off a memory of when he was there with his mother or when he was there with his wife. Um, and and so it's a way of using geography again to deliver character. I mean, you started this conversation with the character question.

And really all questions lead back to that. And uh so that that's how I view it. Like what can the city of LA, the physical city of LA, do to help me deliver who Mickey Holler is or Harry Bosch is

And uh it was Richard Price who said every murder mystery is the tale of a city, something like that. So how does the city show up particularly in murder? Uh what Richard Price is he's up his thing is up there of Curved Vonnegut. He said someone was baiting him'cause he's a fantastic writer. And I guess uh cr uh someone interviewing him should have been uh thought he should uh instead of writing crime fiction, should have been uh writing the great American novel or something.

And they said, Why do you write I I they didn't say this part, but the question really was, why are you wasting your talent on a murder story? And his answer was when you circle around a murder long enough you get to know a city. And that is that's precious. And that's true, and that's probably why I write murder mysteries. And uh

And it's Harry Bosch who actually added that part about every murder is the tale of a city. But it but it's true. You you a murder is a is it basically a framework for you to investigate. something in society and uh and and so you can tell a lot of stories about a city through an investigation by murder because uh by you know, this it by the kind of crime it is, by the kind of detectives that work on it, they can go anywhere. They have

um, licensed to go anywhere in society. It goes back to Chandler and some of his the essays he wrote about writing detective stories that that the detective by virtue of their position in society can pierce all veils of society. And uh and that to me is an in uh is like a invitation I couldn't turn down. I l I love that idea about uh writing writing crime crime fiction because uh you can take your character anywhere.

Sometimes when I think of stories I imagine And I wanna know if you're like, Yeah, I agree with that or you're like, No, that's nonsense. But I almost imagine that sometimes all you need to tell a good story is like you show up, you imagine a beautiful building, right? So you're in Barcelona, kind of a Art Nouveau door.

And you see the door, you're like, oh, that looks interesting. Then you open the door and you enter this sort of big hallway and you go, wow. And it's like that's all you need to write the story. It's almost once you enter the rest of the story can kind of unfold. And so I'm wondering with you, what is the thing that you need in order for the story to get momentum and in order for you to get propulsion so that you can enter the tale and find that momentum? I I need an idea I wanna explore.

You know, I just had a book come out that is is a legal thriller, but it's about AI. It's a technology a lot of people don't understand, a lot of people are afraid of, a lot of people uh think it will change the world for the better.

So it's a debatable thing that's happening to all of society. And so to me that was the uh ignition point for that book. I I wanted to fashion a story that would essentially put AI on trial and you'd hear b all sides of people t uh quote unquote testifying in a court case, but what they're really talking about is where are we in society with this new technology that has the power

to both change things brilliantly for the better and also to bring things down. Um, you know, th that's a big picture idea but I wanted to just compress it into a square, a courtroom, and and use that courtroom uh you know, as the framework to to look into this and ask questions. Not not be didactic. I don't think the book tells anyone. what to think or what to do. Um, but it does ask questions and and that was the Starting point and ending point for that story.

How would you break down the different perspectives kind of beyond the the sort of cliche of it's gonna save the world and it Well y I did some uh some research or I should say I had my researchers give me stuff. And and and that's what's wonderful about a a courtroom thriller because you have you just bring in witnesses and then you have other witnesses that that counter that. So you can get every point of view.

that you're interested in delivering huh uh to a reader in into a trial. The the big task with uh Corbin Thriller is they all lead to one or two answers. It's either guilty, not guilty type of thing and so y it's it becomes uh repetitive and and you gotta keep thinking of ways how can I do this differently because every trial ends thumbs up or thumbs down and uh

That I don't like being hemmed in like that. Um, you know, when I write a book about a homicide investigation with detectives, I can go in many different directions, but when you Uh apply what you're doing to illegal throwers. Um, you can get shoehorned in and it and it's not comfortable.

Harry Bosch. Yeah, I am now. I wasn't that way all along. It was m uh a decision I made Uh again, I was trying to do whatever I could to make him feel like an outsider. I I came to wanting to write. these books from Raymond Chandler and guys who wrote about um private eyes and what was intoxicating about those books, especially when I read'em as a teenager. was they were about outsiders looking in a and usually cynically at society, which is perfect for a teenage boy.

But then I became a journalist and I had access, uh, you know, to police departments. I w I talked to a hundred real detectives a week. Um I w walked in the police stations and I had a press pass where they had to let me in.

So I w I knew instinctively I gotta use this. Um this is what I know and um I'm gonna use this when I write my uh my first novel. And um but I Couldn't leave that Raymond Chandler stuff behind, so I did wherever I could I tried to make Harry Bosch feel like a guy who didn't belong, who felt that he was an outsider, even though he had an insider's job. And uh so I kinda went from there.

So what's in what's in a name? I mean, we can get to Harry Bosch and the name itself, but how do you think about naming characters? What's important? What makes a name kind of feel right? Um, good question. I mean, y you start with this idea that your primary purpose, almost your sole purpose, is deliver character to your reader. So never miss a chance. to say something about character. Have everybody on every page want something that says something about character.

So don't like just slough off the name, you know? Um think about it. Um names as metaphors are great, especially if it's a metaphor that matches what you're trying to do. And uh I mentioned the Chamber one of Chandler's essays where he said the detective has to pierce all levels of society. Uh so when I was writing my first published novel, uh the Harry Bosch novel. In the first draft his name was Pierce. Um no first name, just Pierce.

And uh then I I can't even remember why this happened, but I something happened that reminded me of Huron Musbosch, the fifteenth century painter who I had studied in college. Uh, not by my choice. I took a humanities class and the teacher The professor was fascinated by Bosch, so therefore we studied Bosch for about a month. And uh and this was pre internet where it's very easy to find his work and uh

and study it if you want. Um, but it was uh he was very obscure when I studied him. I never heard of him, um until I took that class and I never heard anyone mention him afterwards. And uh So I was g I was going along all right with the name Pierce and that's that was a good good call. I mean a good name. I think it c it would have some deeper meaning. But something reminded me about Posh, uh Hieronymus Posh, and I decided to uh

use that name because it was i I I knew it would be intriguing. It wasn't like you could just type that name into the internet. The book came out in nineteen ninety two.

And so I knew people would either have known the pain known of the painter and gotten the uh uh admittedly strained metaphor I was going for and that that is that You know, Bosch's uh most famous painting is called The Garden of Earthly Delights and and I was kinda going for the metaphor that LA was the uh modern day garden of earthly delight.

And so I knew some people might get that and then there'd be people that wouldn't get it and they'd be intrigued about where's that name come from. And so I thought it was quote unquote the a win-win situation in terms of a character name. Well, my parents live in Denbos where he's from. So I spent a lot of time thinking about that painting in particular and all over the city there's like the little characters around.

And it's funny because when you first look at that painting, you're like, Okay, this is very strange. And then this is the way I feel about a lot of paintings at that time. There's kind of a spookiness. almost like, uh, get away from me with a lot of medieval paintings.

But then if you keep looking, I think you can only really understand medieval art once you start laughing because it was very imaginative and it then gets very goofy. And that's the thing that as I spent more time with that painting I discovered is how funny. It can be a time. I mean, that's why we studied it for a month, or the painter. But it was mostly spent on that that painting. Yeah, the paintings in uh Madrid.

At the Prado and once I was over there on a book tour and my publishers arranged for me to go into the Prado while I was closed. and spend an hour in front of that painting. I by myself, except for a you know, a museum guard was there, but that was pretty amazing experience. Um Is it big? No, it's not as big as you think it would be. Um in fact. the uh it's pr it's a pretty amazing accomplishment, all the little details because they are small. Yeah, I went to go see uh Monica Peace in Brussels.

And we had driven down from Holland down to Brussels. I I don't know, I was probably eleven years old. It's like we're gonna go see Monica Peace, this famous statue. And I was like, Oh my goodness, you know, we're driving a few hours. And the statue was no bigger than my torso. And I remember just being like, what? I felt like I'd been scammed. Well David's pretty big statue. Um

So I don't know if your parents have asked you the question, um why is he called Harry? Because when I've gone to uh Holland on book tour, uh I w the question I get from every single reporter is why Do you call him Harry short for Hieronymus? And they always point out that that's the uh the Greek uh or the I'm sorry, the Latin root of the name Jerome, and so he should be called Jerry. Oh really? My mistake. Mm.

But also a dialogue dialogue in a book is so different from the dialogue that you'd hear at Dunkin' Donuts or Starbucks, right? It's it's it it's it's more dense. And we're talking about making something feel real, right? So how do you make dialogue feel real when the essence of it is that it's fixed? Well, I think one thing you do is um yeah, almost as soon as you write it, you go back and cut it in half. You you shorten it. I mean I think that

One of your first questions is what do writers do wrong? I think they they create dialogue that doesn't sound real. Um I was lucky I I worked for newspapers Uh, before um, they m pretty much migrated to online and so when I was working for newspapers I had a fine night. amount of space to tell a story, especially crime stories, which usually were second tier unless it was a huge crime.

Um but for the most part they'd be saying like give me six inches on that and uh and so I learned to have an ear for dialogue and and for dialogue that carried information, no no flow. Because I didn't have the space. And so if I quoted like a police detective, the quote had to have information that I felt the reader needed and that wasn't repeated in the body of the story. And um and that was, you know, my practice for fourteen years. And so it it it yeah, I couldn't help but bring that into

you know, what I do as a as a book writer. Now of course I can write as much as I want, you know, four hundred pages, a hundred thousand words and and I don't have that kind of constriction, but I carry that with me anyway. And so I just try to make dialogue carry meaning, um g carry carrying information to the to the reader.

Now, when I think of dialogue, the word that then comes to mind is conflict. And obviously we've been talking about conflict with the cigarette, right? Man, I want a cigarette. Should we haven't cigarettes? There's a sense of almost internal conflict there. But how about conflict between people? That's a different kind of conflict. So how is that the same? How is it different?

Well, I think it's mostly different. Um, but it's also uh a fun thing to to build conflict between two people in dialogue without them talking about their conflict. I mean you can always have the conflict that's obvious, but um You know, and again that that really c you really have to trust your reader that they can that they're going to pick up subtle nuances of dialogue and uh You know, and sometimes that becomes a a battle with editors and so forth. Um

The editors generally want things to be more obvious. Yeah. Okay. Uh or uh you know, I get the things in the margin about uh wanting more to explain what's going on here. But um I'm I eminently trust my readers, you know, to pick up on the nuances of conflict, uh, especially in dialogue. And so I I love doing um Conversations that are on face are about this, but they're really about that. And it's really about the conflict these two people are having. Okay, break that down for you.

It's a take it from your own life. I mean, it's it's like in your own relationships this happens all the time. And uh in your own relationship you have the added thing of tone. Uh which you don't get on a piece of paper. Sure. But but you can infer that kind of stuff. And uh like I was writing a scene this morning that was about someone telling Harry Bosch he he should cool his jets, that he should at his age

And he's fresh from getting a new knee. And like I'm really playing into his real age, which is in the seventies. to slow down and but they're telling them the opposite. They're acting excited about it. But they drop in a few words here and there that um that show their concern. Yeah, as you were saying that I was thinking about uh During the holidays every year there's there's there's conflict that shows up in conversations and it's people talking about the stuff going on in their family. Yeah.

And I don't know why this year I felt like there was a lot of conflict in different friends' lives. So, you know, I had a lot of conversations. And you know, you talk to someone about, oh, we have this this this drama about the coffee machine. Hey, we got this drama about locking the front door, we got this drama about, hey, you didn't clean up the front seat of the car when you left. And it's like a whole thing. And actually the deeper thing that's going on is about

It almost comes back to this question of like do you love me? Am I loved? And the smallest things just had these c w like these cosmic scale of importance to people because the thing that people were actually bitching about. really came down to I feel like you don't love me or I feel like you ignore me or something like that.

I was watching the Olympics last night and um there was a geco ad that was a set in a family get together and they're looking at like a scrapbook and the guy says, uh, look how young you look back then. And it's like that's conflict, but you know, and and the look on her face, like what are you saying? That was that was pretty good. And it's kinda like that's what I do. But that's a really small

a really small specific conflict. That conflict doesn't need to be, hey, you want iced tea, I want iced tea. There's only one iced tea left and it's a hundred ten degrees outside and there it there isn't any water. Conflict can be, Hey, you look so young back then and all of a sudden it's like, Oh my goodness, do I look old now? Have I

You know, will you still love me when I'm no longer young and beautiful? The Lana Del Rey line. Like the smallest thing can have conflict is what I'm getting from you right now. Maybe it's all about as you said, do you love me? All conflict leads to that. Hm.

Tell me about uh heroes and villains, how villains magnify the hero and how the hero magnifies the villain. It's funny. I um I don't spend a lot of time on villains. Um I you know, there's writers who love that. Um I'm not that interested in the m the motives of villains. Um I'm really interested in hero heroes and what makes them heroes and what sacrifices they make. uh to be the hero of a story. And I I know it's a balance. I had a a friend, uh Stephen Canal, who created lots of T V shows.

and wrote books and um and he had a sign over his desk that that said, What's the bad guy thinking? And uh, you know, I could put that on like ten lists a list of ten You know, with Richard Price and uh Kurt Vonnegut and all that. The bad guy thinking. You know, you might be writing about the good guy. I might be writing about Harry Bosch. But you gotta remember there's a bad guy out there that he's looking for and what's he doing, what's he thinking?

And uh I do g I am conscious of that, but I I'm not one of these guys who wants to get into the psychological mur uh uh motives behind um a violent crime. Um and I think that's a worthy thing to understand as soci society, but I leave it to other writers. I rather um concentrate on what it takes to be the good guy in a story, to um to be uh willing to, you know, uh risk going into that kind of moral darkness

To bring order from disorder um and and to risk yourself. Because I think there is a cost to doing that. And I really think that at the uh that's the thesis of a lot of what I do um is to uh explore that and uh You know, when you uh I think when you do the kind of work that most of the people I write about, I mean I think the exclusion is uh Mickey Holler, but but I but I think even a Lincoln lawyer goes into darkness.

um in his world. Um, but if you go into that, some of it's gonna get into you. And uh a lot of the books are about what you do with that, you know, that darkness that gets inside and what you how you try to protect yourself and

uh stop it from metastasizing into like a kind of a moral cancer that can uh lead you astray. So that to me is uh is a noble battle and I'd rather write about that noble battle than the flip side of the person who has lost that battle and and acts out in against society or against people in uh horrible ways.

You know, we were talking about how When you're writing a Novel about a murder. Most people haven't experienced that. So then you have to make things that are relatable: being in traffic, going to the grocery store, whatever it is. And Is there something similar where you have a character and what you gotta do in order to have a good character is to fundamentally anchor it to something deep about life, which is, you know, you're asking this this profound question here, which is like

If you're called to confront evil, you're called to fight chaos, bring order to it, how do you not let the stuff that you see spread and metastasize is the word they use and sort of overtake you. That's this very deep philosophical question.

Do you feel like that emerges? Is that something that you're trying to do consciously? Is that an important thing in a story? Or is it just that's just gonna be there? And you sort of think about that, realize that that's what you're writing about in retrospect? No, it's I don't think it's in retrospect and I I think it's important and it might be only important to me.

But, you know, um writing a book is uh is a journey. It's not you know, it might take you two days to read a book, but that book was written over quite a long time. I mean, I'm a fast writer, but it still takes me ten, eleven months to write a book. And I need things during that period of time to keep me going and I need like a a higher calling, if you will, and and I need to be exploring something that a bigger uh human question and and that's why I say this

this f this fight against uh the darkness that gets inside. I'm very conscious of that, um, as I'm writing books. A uh through my whole career, I really think uh I don't have to look back on my career and go like, Oh, that's what that was about. I mean, I've known it's what it's about, um, almost from the beginning.

what matters at the start of the book. Hooking people in, setting the scene. I I would say if you looked in my early books, I did have the the trigger. Um to me it's like a slingshot. You you have so much time to pull it back, but at some point you gotta let it go. And I used to think uh you gotta let it go within ten pages or then it became twenty five and now I don't even think about it, I don't think.

Um, it's funny you should bring that up'cause the thing I was writing this morning I just started writing a book, um, about two weeks ago. And so I'm like only on page thirty. And I don't outline my books, I just kinda write by instinct and I started a new chapter and it was a conversation with a It was uh say hi uh Harry Bosch meets somebody for lunch. And and that does not pull back the the uh the swingshot at all. And it's just him talking I'm kinda updating the reader

on where Harry is right now through his conversation with a friend. And in a way it's like chapter thirteen of the Little Sister. It doesn't advance the plot at all. It doesn't pull the slingshot back at all. And I probably would have never risked that at page thirty. twenty years ago, fifteen years ago. Um Now I feel I can

And so that that has changed over time. But but yeah, you're you're looking for the trigger, whatever you want to call it, the swing shot. Um You're you're always looking for something that will that will that kind of drops the car into Dry. So page thirty. W walk me through I don't know, what do you without giving

too many details about the book if you don't want to, but like where you at on page thirty in the book? Yeah, got a general sense of theme, you got a general sense of character, you kinda know where it's gonna go, or are you just like, I don't know, I kinda figured out the first thirty pages. I'm now kinda here for the ride and I've almost

surrender to something deeper, like the story has a momentum about it. I'm actually in the passenger seat and the story itself doesn't drive. Like where are you at in relationship to your story right now? I can only answer that by saying where I'm at in relationship to my overall writing and to the people who read my books. Um and where I am in the world. So I we've we've talked a little bit that I have these uh television shows going uh that are based on my books and

They're based on my books, but they influence me back. Um you know, I'm involved in the shows, I read the scripts, I write some of the scripts and T V usually has a shorter um Six pages of script. at the most. Um, where whatever's going on in that episode Um the slingshot's been let go. And uh and so in this book I wrote I I wrote two chapters that are really nothing about the plot, but they're they're like an anecdotal story based on the true story.

that a detective told me about how they how he solved the case and I thought it was, you know, brilliant but not it could not sustain the whole novel. It was an anecdote. And so I decided to Start this book two chapters with that anecdote and it has nothing to do with the rest of the book. But it you know, and and Harry goes through this little case, helps somebody solve a murder.

And then he drives home and uh Mickey Hall or his half brother, um, who's a lawyer, is waiting for him and he gives him a piece of news that that starts our story. And and the piece of news is not enough to say that's a slingshot. It leads to him being intrigued and looking into a case from his past, his his far back past. Um and and so he starts looking into a a story A death that happened sixty years ago, knowing full well.

I mean I'm challenging myself here, knowing full well that whoever did this is probably dead happened sixty years ago. And so when you're telling a reader that he's not gonna corner some bad guy and there might be gun battles and all that it's i you know, you're really uh

I'm really gambling that the that I've earned what I've just said that the reader's gonna stick with me'cause he's he's pursuing a case that where he wants to find an answer, but he probably won't find a real person alive. Yeah.

Yeah, I i I mean, you're unique in that out of all the writers I know who've had their work commissioned into movies, T V shows, you seem to be just about the most involved in the on screen stuff. And my question for you is I ha almost have the image of a butter knife and a steak knife or something. What is like the same tool but they're not the same tool. What does

the screen TV movies, what do those allow you? How do they allow you to tell a story that books don't allow you to do? And what do books allow you to do that TV and movies don't allow you to do? Well, I mean, books are always gonna be deeper. You have that um component of internal thought. You know, when you write a script you can never say what anyone's thinking.

And that's why I don't hold myself out as a good script writer because I am s too steeped in my world of writing what Harry Bosch is thinking and what's the bad guy thinking. Um, in Tv in T V it's what's the bad guy doing, I guess. It's a different form of um storytelling.

I'm involved but not to the degree a lot of people think I am. You know, I get involved in the first season of a show, um, just'cause I wanna be there for the transfer of it from page to screen, but very quickly I learned who I can trust and whether these people have um the best in in mind for for the the main characters and uh and that kind of lets me step away. Um, and so I you know, my name is on every episode, but it doesn't mean I'm there and all that. Tell me more about

T V's about what you're doing. Books are a little bit more about what you're thinking. Yeah, it's just it's visual storytelling and and it also one of the hesitations it looks like I have no hesitation'cause I I do all these shows, but It was not without a lot of thought because um uh you know, uh I'm primarily by far a book writer, which means I'm steeped in the imma in what's important about reading and that's y you know, the majesty of imagination.

And and all you know, I've written over twenty books about this guy, Harry Bosch, and if you added up all my descriptions it's less than five pages because I as I've said before, I eminently trust the reader. And and so I I put enough telling details in there for them to build Harry Bosch in their head and that's what I've did for more than two decades before there is a T V show. So I've I kinda betrayed them. I said, Build Harry Bosch for yourself.

And then twenty years later I said, This is exactly what he looks like, this guy this guy on the T V show. So I can't tell you how many times I've been approached by people saying they don't watch the shows, um, because they have Harry Bosch in their head and their heart. And I I totally respect that. But as a storyteller, I just I wanna hit all the you know, we're back to baseball. I wanna hit all the bases.

And so when opportunity came, especially for ser f serialized storytelling, which is the streaming world really brought that uh uh the advent of that. I mean, I know HBO was doing it and and some cable. But streaming was totally built on serialized storytelling, so I was attracted to it. Because I knew if I could get a good run, I could really deliver uh these characters that I write about in in in full space.

You know, and you know, we ended up getting like ninety eight episodes of Bosch. There's now gonna be fifty of Lincoln Lawyer. And so you can really deliver character when you have that kinda um uh space uh to tell your stories and and and that's pretty much why I did it.

What's a Hollywood writer's room like Did you do that? Were you in a writer's room sort of sitting around or was everyone just sort of going solo and then you'd come together and and edit together? What was that like? Um it was fun because um It reminded me a lot of my newspaper days. Uh so I went from like a newsroom where

Lots of camaraderie, pranking, joking, you know, water cooler talking. And then when I reached the point where I could be a full time novelist, I I went from that to like a room by myself. It was it was quite a difficult transition. Just just back then the noise of keyboards in a newsroom were so it was so loud. Totally. And so many years go by and I'm s still doing the solitary thing and we get these shows going and

And it was fun. There's about seven to nine people in a you sit around a board it's like a boardroom with big oval table and everyone has a spot. Um courtboards all around and y and you put up three by five cards and you kinda dope out um the episodes and the season. And there's a lot of um camaraderie and c water cooler and pranking and and joking and and it was fun. It was it was even addictive. Um and I probably stayed longer than I needed.

Um but that th it's not an all day thing. Basically a writing room that uh is set up with eight or nine very small offices um, surrounding the boardroom. And like you go in there from like, you know, ten to twelve or or ten to two, bring in lunch. Then everyone retreats to their little offices to do uh the writing they've been assigned, whatever episode and so forth. So a writer's assigned a specific episode. Yeah. I w everyone contributes to all episodes in the room.

you know, throwing out ideas and then there's a boss, a creative boss called a showrunner. Yeah. And they're the kind of the final arbiter of like, this is that what we're gonna do in that episode.

And it's assigned to somebody and they they go off and write, um, in the after usually in the afternoons. So which I didn't have that component, so to me it was a part time thing and uh I'd write at home in the mornings, go in around ten and then come back to in the afternoons and and go back to my book.

We talked about Raymond Chandler a little bit, but what is it about his novels, his work, his writing that inspired you so much? I think it was uh you know, I grew up in Florida and I read his work long before I ever set foot in LA. Um I didn't come to LA till I was thirty years old. Um it was just something about the way he could use his character to uh capture a city. And again, it wasn't a city I'd been to, but I'd seen it in movies and T V and all that.

But it wasn't a city I knew, but I felt I knew it um through his books. And uh, you know, so when I arrived at thirty to work for the newspaper, one of the first things I did was follow the track of um chapter thirteen where he uh

basically circles the city, goes out through the valley, out to uh Malibu and then back in through Hollywood, Santa Monica and Hollywood and all that. Um and it's it's still a track you can take. There's freeways now. He didn't take freeways, but Uh you don't have to take the freeways and then you'll get the kind of view uh that he got as he described the city along the way.

You know what I think of when I think of LA I just realized I think of this sort of the neon and then those sort of nineteen fifties, nineteen sixties pastels. That's what I think about with that kind of Disneyland original font. There's sort of this I don't know why this word came to mind, like whirly swirly sort of font. And there's a there's a cheeriness, there's an optimism about it. And then what you get is you get these restaurants

uh that are almost these mini worlds. Like I was driving to West Hollywood last night from LAX and I passed this diner. The diner's, you know, it's got the fake sort of palm trees and whatnot. It's got these cool sort of triangle, angular shape. It's sort of just this bygone world. And then when you go sort of Santa Monica down to Venice towards LAX, you swore to get it there. But it's uh very distinct to this to this era. Yeah, I mean I think this place still Shows a massive

growth that happened after World War Two. Oh, absolutely. And uh so many of those mid mid century structures are still around and uh they're revered, you know, people who keep them exactly as they were. Um and does make it uh distinctive, especially when you get outside of the uh the entertainment sectors like Hollywood, but if you go up into the valley, um a lot of it's still preserved. A lot of it doesn't work anymore, um, you know, or or has been uh fallen into disrepair, but the places that

that kind of revel in it. Some of those neighborhoods in West Hollywood have it. Um and a lot of the arcade um um apartment uh buildings. They're very cool.

So tell me this. If you were invited to a college, you got a semester to teach a course to say, Hey, this is This is how you do what I've the kind of writing that I've figured out how to do. How do you structure that curriculum? What are the core principles they're trying to teach people? Well I'd probably turn down the offer, but um I don't know. I mean I I would

I would make sure everyone's writing. Uh have to write something every for every class. It doesn't have to be long. But the more you do something, the better you get at it. So I'm definitely a always be writing type of guy. And that would allow me to probably see someone's progression uh through the course of the uh semester. But um I don't know. It's it I did take some writing class. I mostly did journalism, but I did take some uh

Creative writing classes and I had this teacher named Harry Cruz, who was a southern Gothic type of writer. I I went to college in Florida and uh And he was he was more impressive to me as a Like he was the first actual author I'd ever physically saw was when I took first class with him. I ended up taking uh four classes but he only showed up for three of'em. But uh yeah, he had this uh history of uh disappearing. He wrote great books. Um

But I don't remember anything he said in three classes other than if you're gonna be a writer you gotta write every day, even if it's only for fifteen minutes. And that last part was really important because to uh

Taylor, even if you only get a chance to write fifteen minutes, you're not gonna lose the story. It's always gonna be In your head you'll always be in the tunnel, uh you know, the water tunnel, the water the story's swirling around you, and you'll be thinking about it and w and you can't wait for those fifteen minutes.

No, it's funny talking to you, talking to Lee Child. Lee Child worked in T V for Few decades.

You worked in journalism. I don't know, maybe there's something about this genre in particular, maybe there's something about being a novelist, maybe there's something about being an author who sells a lot of books where if you do something that is overtly commercial to start, with limited space, Maybe that teaches you how to communicate, trains you to write in a way that really resonates with a mass audience.

I hope so. Yeah, I I mean I don't wanna I don't want uh I don't judge anybody but I have found that people that have come to writing novels, writing fiction, from the non traditional means like journalism or T V or a lot of lawyers. Huh. Lawyers have to do a lot of writing and they have to be clear and they have to win people over. Um I I have found that those are g h really good training ground uh for then making the jump into uh into fiction.

Do you feel like you were talking earlier about editors wanting you to reinforce things more. Be more explicit and overt in what you're saying. I think I was watching an interview, I think it was with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, and I forget who was saying it, but they were talking about how. TV and TV in particular movies have changed.

And they're saying that one of the things that's happened is a you almost have to assume that people are watching it almost as a second screen. So they're making dinner while watching a movie, watching a T V show. So a lot of the plot points you need to reinforce over and over again. Do you feel like the reader has changed?

Do you feel like audiobooks have changed how writing needs to be done? Or do you feel like no, you know, I've been doing this since ninety two and uh it's been twenty what, thirty-four years? And it's basically the same craft. Like what was excellent in nineteen ninety two is excellent in two thousand twenty six. Is that a hard one to answer? I would Probably wrong, but I would say more no than yes.

Uh when it comes to books. Um I think TV definitely has changed'cause I have some experience in TV and they pretty much say you can expect that someone's uh on their phone while they're watching your show. And and and they know that statistically more people are watching with subtitles. Yeah. And uh and and uh but I don't know if that carries over to books. I think

I'm gonna contradict myself. I was gonna say books take your full attention if you're gonna read a book. Sure. But if you're gonna listen to the book, then you get more into that T V world because you can be driving or you can be jogging and you can be walking the dog. Um and I have to say that that is the growth market of publishing is uh a audiobooks. And uh there's more multitasking and creeping into everything I guess.

But I think as long as uh there are people and they and there probably are dwindling as they move more towards audio and so forth. But if you're you're holding a book it's hard to do anything else. Michael Connolly, thank you. Glad to be here. Thank you. Yeah.