Character First Writing: Practical Mini Lessons from Deborah Goodrich Royce

Hey folks, welcome back to the podcast. My name is Trisha Friedman and this week we are

speaking with the very well-known, very successful writer Debra Goodrich Royce, who's a psychological

thriller author, who's writing is shaped by an inter-disciplinary life in acting, producing,

and story-making beyond the page. If you teach ELA, if you teach creative writing, this episode

makes a very clear case that strong writers, well, they build from multiple disciplines. The

performance, sharpen's voice and dialogue, an understanding of human psychology, strengthens

motive and believable choices, and narrative structure grows from understanding how audiences

read, tension, and subtext. Before we bring Debra onto the show, I want to let you know that

if you are looking to learn with me, next month in April, I will be leading two days with

the International School of Amsterdam, a session about using empathy and ethics to better

lead this moment of AI in schools. There's a link over in the show notes to learn more about that

opportunity. Again, it's April 16th to 17th. Jeff and I always love connecting with listeners in

person. So if you're doing some professional development, if you are looking to sharpen your toolbox

of strategies for navigating AI, perhaps you will check that out and we'll learn together next month.

Okay, back to our guest. Debra is going to share how she pulls from her different ways of knowing

to develop character, to make scenes feel lived in and let plot emerge naturally. This is a really

great lesson for those of us who are teaching students that good writing is going to be the product

of wide reading, wide living, and translating insights across fields. Please welcome to the

Shifting Schools podcast, Debra Goodrich Royce.

Miss Royce, you're known as one of our best psychological thriller authors on the planet.

You've got this really interesting background, but I want to start from an angle that I don't think

you've talked that much about publicly, and that's the work that you're doing with the New York

Botanical Garden as a board trustee. I'm wondering for someone immersed in the wild world of

creating plot twists, is there something that you have taken away from the world of nature?

Or does that fuel you as a creative in ways that perhaps other aspiring writers should think about?

I love that question. Thank you so much, and I love the New York Botanical Garden. It is a resource

of 250 acres, green acres in the middle of New York City, and it abuts the Bronx Zoo and Fordham

University. So it's a vast stretch of open land or barely cultivated land in the middle of New

York. I think it does an extraordinarily important work with children. There's a program where children

come and learn to grow vegetables and then cook and eat them. Kids need to know about eating

fresh food and it's open all year and it's there, and they're also doing scientific research

around the planet. It is, I think it's one of our most important botanical gardens in the world.

And the work that you're doing to make sure that again, it continues to be a resource for young folks

and not so young folks is great. And I wonder if there's at all a parallel with this idea of

in order to have things that grow and are healthy, we have to tend to the soil. You have had multiple

books that are incredibly successful, but you started as an actor and I wonder if that is part of your

soil when you're coming up with your cast of characters and how to have phenomenal plot twists.

Is your foundation? Is that something that you see playing out in your most recent book? Like,

to what extent, I guess I'm asking, is best boy only possible because of the work that you once did

as an actor? Absolutely, 100% true. And I think that's really true of all of our lives. And if we're

creative people, we're drawing on everything. What do the comedians say? It's all material.

It is all material. And no matter what your childhood was, your adolescence, your educational

background or lack of it, it all goes into your frame of view and how you're able to put something

on the page and describe it and make it real for readers.

Your brand new book has this Abraham Lincoln quote at the beginning. I wonder if you want to talk

a little bit more about why that really sets the tone for best boy and maybe what that means to you,

as again, a person who's crafting thrillers where secrets play such a critical role.

So to paraphrase the quotation, I can't remember exactly. Nobody is a good enough memory to be a

liar or, in other words, if you lie, you're going to get tripped up at some point.

With everybody testifying these days, I think hopefully we'll see a little of that. But

I like to call my book's identity thrillers. This is not a genre, but I am fascinated by puzzles of

identity. I've lived a good long while on this planet earth. And occasionally I've met people

who are not exactly who they say they are. And when those revelations come, it's always shocking.

And it's always a moment of reflection where one looks back and thinks, how did I miss the

signals? And I do think if we're paying attention, as we go along, we become better observers,

as we get older, we see the signals. I wrote a book. My first book really was an exploration of

an early friendship, this dazzling girl, glamorous girl, gorgeous girl,

bigger than life girl. Zelda fits Gerald character that I was so attracted to as a friend

and followed her into bad situations, being a cocktail waitress in a bar. I had no business being

in. But my mother, who was obviously older at the time, met this girl and said, she's bad news.

Now, how did my mother know that then? Of course, she was right to a degree. The point I'm making

is as we get older, if we're growing, and we should be growing, and then I become a little more

attuned to picking up those signals. I want to go back to your work as an actor because I'm thinking,

I would imagine, tell me if I'm wrong, that also makes you hyper aware of our human capacity to

pretend or to take on a role that is not our true identity. I often joke with folks that

nobody knows the real me like my neighbors do, who have seen me taking out my garbage cans and

my sweatpants compared to professional me, who's a different entity. But is there something about

you learning that trait of how do I step into a role that is not me and understand all human

beings have that capacity to the extent that we've had the level of training as a professional

actor is maybe a different thing, but is that something that seems to resonate with your work?

Yeah, I mean, there's a basic range of human emotions. We all have reserves of fear and love and

lust and desire and jealousy and anger, and the whole spectrum, if we are mentally reasonably healthy.

And when you're an actor, you're called upon to play maybe a murderer, maybe a drug smuggler,

maybe a thief. These perhaps, I hope, are not things you've actually done in real life.

So how do you play that part? How do you play a murderer? Let's say you're playing a woman

who murders her husband. Super easy. What's upsetting her? And you think about that and you go

into your own self and find moments where let's say jealousy. Let's say he has a girlfriend.

So you find moments where you have felt jealousy and we can all call that up.

And the actor or the writer really learns to scratch at that scab more than is pleasant

for most people. When it comes then to writing a novel where the pressure is on you,

you're like the Olympian version of the plot twist, if that was a winter sport.

And I think in today's world, it is harder than ever before to genuinely surprise an audience

with something. What enables you to do that? I guess I'm asking when you're sitting down to work

on a text, do you actually start knowing what that twist is going to be? Or are you working from

character first as you were just walking us through how you used to do that as an actor? Where does

it begin? I don't begin with the twist and I love your question because I was on a writing retreat

and the cat skills recently and I was walking with another writer and we were talking about

this idea. Do you always have to have a twist and when do you abandon the twist? There are moments

if a plot twist is so far fetched that your reader ends up throwing the book across the room

and saying, oh, come on. There's really no point in having it. I don't think there's any point in

having a twist for the twist, say. There has to be something organic about it and the editor once

said to me, working on one of my books, he said, when you get to the twist, I want you to think about

the movie the sixth sense. And if you've seen the sixth sense, I won't reveal it if you haven't,

but there's this Bruce Willis film and the little boy who says, I see dead people.

There comes this big moment where you realize what's really going on and what the director does

at that moment is take you on a very quick series of visual images of earlier scenes that you've

seen from a different perspective and he turns the camera around and you see it from a fresh

perspective and you were able rapid fire to put together what you wish you'd seen up until that

point. So that's a good twist. If a twist those scenes paste it on, I think it's okay just to have

a good reveal and not a twist. I'm coming back to your work with the Botanic Gardens and you use

that word organic and it's almost, you know, if a pumpkin grew from a rose bush, that's not what

works. But for anybody who's ever, I recently just last summer planted a little pumpkin patch,

like there is the build up to it. I'm thinking of that as metaphor. You mentioned you were on a

walk with a fellow writer. This is something that's been important in your career, this idea of

bringing creative people together and listening to one another. Can you say a little bit more about

why perhaps fellow writers are the best companion species, if you will, for other writers? What

is that meant to you and what recommendations might you offer to someone who is saying I get to get

a group of creatives together? How can I do that in a way where we do grow together? We're not

trying to maybe one up each other or you mentioned as human beings. We are so full of fear. How do you

do that and not necessarily do it in a way that just amplifies the, is that person a better writer

than me and I clever, create of enough? That is the core question. I have benefitted from being a

part of two different writing groups in my life and both of them were composed of kind people

and people who were not trying to tear apart anyone else's writing. I would run from that room

if that happens because that is just the show off moment for the person who's spouting off.

Look, we are all works in progress all of us and we have things that we are exploring in our writing

and it's a brave thing to try to make that exploration because you don't know where you're going

and it's a wonderful thing if you can gather in a room with people and if they have the ability to

say, okay, I love this way that, for my way of example, you explore character, but I think it might

be, I would love it more if I understood a little bit more of that room that they're in. I don't

think I quite have the visuals. Now that's a positive way of saying, just grab the room a little more,

give specifics. So I think there are ways of encouraging your fellow writers, but

gently saying what might help the work more. That's a great way to frame that. What's going to

help the work grow more? I am wondering, there's a lot of people are talking about this phenomena

where if you are watching or you're picking out a TV show or a movie to watch from a streaming

service, it's like you've got three seconds to get that person's attention or they're going to,

no, I'm going to watch something else. And I'm thinking about the pressure that maybe is on a writer,

the way that you have started best boy is captivating. I also, oh gosh, I love to go back to the

1990s and spend more time there. You mentioned that you don't start your creative process with the plot.

I'm wondering if we can pivot to how do you figure out with such precision, how to start a book

like this in a way that absolutely sucks the reader in. That opening page, I'm just wondering

was there a lot of debate in terms of how you were going to start this book and how do you land on,

yeah, I've got to capture attention right from the get go.

Excellent question. I started at a different place. I started it in the modern era, which in

the case of the book is the time periods are really 1998 to 2018 with a couple touch points in

the mid 2000s in between. And I started it more in the modern life of the woman in her late 30s.

I think pacing in a novel is vitally important, but I might not think of pacing exactly as some

other writers do. I'm not interested in writing a novel that is like being shot out of a cannon

from beginning to end. I like things that go fast and then slow and then you have a chance to

breathe and you're resting and then something pops out around the corner. I think it's like a

piece of music, music to me is more interesting. I'm not a musician, but I've heard the composition

of a piece of music and when they're writing it, they're not only writing the notes, they're writing

the spaces between the notes, the gaps, the silences, how long is that pause? I think that is

crucial in a work of suspense, really in any written word. So I tried to begin with something

big. In a prologue, in this case, you were in the hospital with this teenage girl who's been

assaulted. So you're there, something big has happened. And that's a prologue. But after that,

then we're going to just pull it back a little and we're going to start seeing these little pieces

and thinking about what is it that we should be paying attention to now as we move along.

In closing, I think hopefully we are in an era where we're understanding it is so good for us

to be creative, to give time, to creativity in our lives. And at the same time, I feel like

that is such an opaque process for many people. Would you take listeners through the logistical

practicalities? What does it look like when you are beginning a new project? Do you have yellow

notepads? Are you sticky notes? Do you get right on the computer? Just logistically, what does it

look like for you to say? Okay, I'm starting a new project. Here's what I'm doing.

So I usually get an idea that jolts me and I am like everybody else. I live in fear that I won't

get another idea. There is always that demon that's right there. And I get an idea that jolts me

and I try to make time to write it down such as I have it. I do tend to write on the computer

not long-hand. And once I've set down the idea that I might ruminate or I might begin the process

of what if notes in best boy, the letter that was the idea. So what if the man writing the letters

telling the truth? I go down that rabbit hole. What are potentialities there? What if he's lying and

completely making it up? Why? And what would be some reasons that he would be making it up?

And then other things reveal themselves. And at the same time, I start describing my characters.

I will go back to these note sheets. I write happily for me in a greenhouse in a conservatory

that's attached to my house. So I have glass walls. I'm not putting anything up on the walls.

I read it a big table where my family used to enjoy dinners, but I've come and dear

with all of my notes. The other thing I do that's really weird and very analog. If I have a

non-linear book, which most of my books are non-linear, I print out calendar month at a page.

You can get them for any year. I had a book that went from 1979 to 2014. I print out the

pertinent months and they're all spread out in front of me. And I make little notes here and there.

And if it's non-linear, let's say this watch, for example, let's say the watch disappears at some

point. I better know that it was July 6th of 1979 that the watch disappeared because as I'm going

back and forth, I don't want to have somebody wearing the watch and I'm time stamping at July 15th.

It's a really old-fashioned tool. You can do it on your computer. I like it on this table

in front of me because it's a very quick eye scan. It doesn't take me from the writing.

I love that. I wonder if there's like a photo that you have of that somewhere or I need to take one.

I would love to see that. Thank you so much for that such a cool idea. I love that.

Thank you for taking us through your process and revealing a little bit of the

magic listeners. Get your copy of Best Boy. This is a real delight, I think, for a book group.

And I know that sometimes you actually do gatherings like that in closing. Do you want to leave folks

with what is the Debra Goodrich Royce book group experience or coming to see you speak at one

of your many upcoming events? What do your fans get from that?

So you can go to my website, DebraGoodrichRoyce.com or Instagram, Debra Goodrich Royce official.

I'll tell you one day why I had to put the official on. Which will lead you to my website.

I have really good book club kits. I worked with the most talented graphic designer

to create them. They have suggested questions. They have interviews with me. They have playlists.

I had so much fun with each and every book creating a playlist for the time periods.

They have a cocktail or a mocktail and downloadable bookmarks. And you can reach me through my website.

And I love zooming in for half an hour or so of questions with your book club because

this is a book I want to talk about in book club. There are so many things I can't discuss

that are in it. And I love pulling it apart with readers. And a reader's point of view isn't

always the writer's point of view. And both really inform the work as it exists out in the ethers.

I love that. The links to that will be over there in the show notes. Congratulations on the latest

book. And I have no doubt you'll have another idea soon if you don't already. Thank you,

getting so much for your time today. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to today's podcast. I'm sure you have heard by now I wrote a new book

and I want to take a minute to tell you directly why I wrote humans still required.

For the past few years on this podcast, we've been wrestling with AI in real time,

not hype, not panic, just honest conversations about what it means for schools and leadership.

This book is a result of that work. It's not about prompts or tools, it's about judgment,

it's about trust, it's about the leadership decisions you can't outsource. As I say in the book,

quote, control scales poorly, judgment scales well. If this podcast has supported your thinking,

this book will take it deeper. Thank you for being a part of this community. And of course,

you can learn more and grab your copy at shifteenschools.com.