Episode 35: Gretchen McNeil, YA Horror/Suspense Novelist
You want to write a book? Listen to this and you'll be all set. Dark YA novelist Gretchen McNeil joins Mary in an episode all about recognizing and executing a good story idea. They discuss the shifting young adult book market and embracing diversity, mastering storytelling structure and the importance of shaping the reader's experience, and the controversial subject of IP development.
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EPISODE 35: Gretchen McNeil, Ya Horror and Suspense Novelist TRANSCRIPT
Mary: Hello, this is Mary Kole with "The Good Story Podcast," all about the writing life, the publishing life, and everything in between. I want to thank our Good Story Company team. You can learn more about us at goodstorycompany.com, and I am thrilled to bring you today's show. Here's to a good story.
Hello, hello, everybody. Welcome to the "The Good Story Podcast." My name is Mary Kole, and with me, I have Gretchen McNeil. Gretchen, thank you very much for joining me. This conversation has been a long time coming. I feel like we sort of entered the publishing industry at the same time, maybe crossed paths at a BA here or there, but officially welcome, welcome.
Gretchen: Thank you so much. I'm thrilled to be here. When I saw the email from you, the name was like, oh, my God, I'm back to the early days of my publishing career when I had no idea what I was doing. And so many of the names, especially agents that were very active then, are just sort of burned into my mind as, you know, people that we were looking up to, following, things like that. So, it's wild that we're still here.
Mary: And how the mighty have fallen. No, I'm just kidding. We used to look up to them. No. And when we were talking just a few seconds ago, I said I hope you don't mind me saying this, but you are sort of an OG in the YA scene, and that could have been an insult but you seem to have taken it as a compliment. So, tell us about this illustrious career you've had.
Gretchen: Well, let me just say, first of all, that I've been very, very lucky. I'm very lucky that I'm still here, that I'm still publishing. Part of it is, you know, tenacity and stubbornness, but that's not always enough. Anybody who knows anything about publishing knows that so much of what we do is out of our control as creators. And so all that we can do is to keep creating and hope that agents and editors love our stuff and want to publish it. So, yes, I came on the YA publishing scene way, way back in 2011. I published my debut novel, "Possess." I had been around for a few years before that. I think I signed with my agent, Ginger Clark, in 2008, end of 2008.
So, I had written a few books that didn't get published and then we finally landed on one that found a home at Balzer + Bray. And since then I have published 11 more, all in the young adult space so far. Mostly murder mystery and horror novels. I do have one contemporary rom-com in there as well. I've published seven with Balzer + Bray for Harper Collins, and then five with one more coming with Disney Hyperion. And, you know, I've also been incredibly lucky that I've had two different properties adapted for the screen. My book "Ten" was adapted as a lifetime original movie in 2016 called "Ten: Murder Island." I added the Murder Island, so you know what happens there. And my two-book series of "Get Even" and "Get Dirty" was adapted as the BBC Netflix series "Get Even." So, it's been a wild rollercoaster of a ride that is for sure.
Mary: I have so many questions for you about, you know, what you see in the YA market and all of this stuff, but I have to say there is a really big trend for thriller, murder mystery that maybe hadn't reached full fruition by the time you entered the space. And so you clairvoyantly or somehow positioned yourself in, sort of, a fruitful vein.
Gretchen: And I do think that's part of the luck, right, that there weren't... And clearly, I am not the first person to write any of these books or these genres for young people. There were many authors that came before me, but there was, sort of, like a dearth at the time. There weren't a lot of new things. This was a time in publishing where there was a lot of paranormal stuff coming up, a lot of paranormal with heavy romance coming out. Not that that's changed a whole lot, but there weren't a whole lot of people writing horror, murder mystery, thriller stuff. And so I was able to gain a foothold for books that weren't New York Times bestsellers, that weren't, you know, getting nominated for huge awards and making a lot of lists. I also was very lucky that I had a lot of support from YALSA, the Young Adult School Library Association from ALA. They have always been really supportive of my books. I made a few of their lists, and I do think that helped keep my books present and alive in terms of ordering and reordering, especially from libraries.
But, you know, there isn't always that kind of luck on your side. Of course, I've been hearing literally for a decade horror is the next thing in YA and we're all, sort of, "Wait, is it? Are they going to buy more horror novels?" I mean, I know that's what I wanted to read when I was young. And I think one of the reasons that I write in these genres is because what I read growing up was a lot of gothic Edwardian and Victorian ghost stories, a ton of Agatha Christie, and you can definitely see those influences in my writing.
Mary: I was Christopher Pike all the way.
Gretchen: Yes. Oh, I mean, he was the man.
Mary: Yeah, well, maybe horror will do a jump scare one of these days and rise to prominence.
Gretchen: Knock on wood. I'll ruin the recording, but I'm metaphorically knocking on wood.
Mary: As has been foretold, yes. I think it's really interesting to sort of... And, I mean, I don't want to force us into this, sort of, like, retrospective conversation, but I do think that it's interesting and I think very transparent that you're saying, you know, yes, there is obviously something about you, your ideas, your writing style, your ability to connect with readers but also a sprinkle of luck, a sprinkle of market, a sprinkle of things outside of your control. I mean, from a holistic perspective, you as a person, how do you deal with some of that uncertainty? Do you just keep your head down? Do you try and forecast?
Gretchen: Well, that you can't do. I mean, you know, anybody that spent five seconds in publishing knows that this is an industry with a long leader, you know? Books go from idea to novel somewhere between, say, three months and 30 years, however long it takes the author, right? Once it's finished, it goes to an agent. Maybe there's notes. It goes to an editor. You have to wait for the submission process. That can take 30 years it seems. If you get a book deal, then you do the editorial process with your editor, and then from the moment that it goes to copy edits, you still have about a year until the book comes out. So, nothing happens with lightning speed in publishing. And so being able to forecast what might be the next trend is virtually impossible. And anybody who thinks that they can game the system in that way is probably going to be sorely disappointed. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it just takes so long to do these things that all you can really do is just write the book that excites you.
But it's speculative. There's nothing guaranteed, and you spend a lot of time working on a manuscript, on a book that may never see the light of day, that may end up...we used to call it trunked back in the days when you actually printed a manuscript out and took notes on it. Save the trees. But now it's, like, trunked in your file of unpublished book ideas on your laptop, and that's just part of it. I think anything creative, whether you work in fine arts, music, theater, it's all speculative. You invest a lot of time and energy in something that may not come to fruition. And that just has to be part of it. That has to be okay. And if you get bitter about it, you probably need to step away from the business because nothing stinks worse than a bitter author. Let me tell you. Nobody wants to hear published authors complain.
Mary: You have come out swinging, and you have said the quiet part loud. But I am very glad that you did because, you know, this is kind of lifting the lid on some of the internal chatter where it does in the slush pile at conferences, in conversation, that bitter author who has clung to that project, probably they're on the 30-year writing track and haven’t...
Gretchen: Yes. Yeah, clinging to the book.
Mary: Yes. So, you did mention that you had a couple of trunk manuscripts, a couple drawer manuscripts that you were working on before or during the time that you got your agent, before your first sale.
Gretchen: Oh, yeah, and since.
Mary: Okay, so let's talk about have you ever resurrected them or do you take the position of, you know, it was a learning experience that I needed to go through at the time. I don't need to revisit. I spoke with Laura Sebastian. She came and visited my Story Mastermind small group writing workshop, and she actually has dusted off with success a previous drawer manuscript. So, are they, kind of, dead to you?
Gretchen: So, there are a couple of books that will never be resurrected. A couple because they're terrible, a couple because they're just not right for where my career has gone. Like, I wrote... Don't email me, people, and ask to read it. You will not read it. No one's going to read this. But I wrote a historical adventure novel set during the American Revolution that will never see the light of day.
Mary: Wow.
Gretchen: And part of it is that it's just not...it's not a part of my brand anymore. and to go back and revisit that book and rework it would require resurrecting the research that I did for it. And that's not something I have the time for now that I have small children. But I had a book that came out last year called "Dig Two Graves" that I had originally pitched to a previous editor at a previous house under the title BFFs. And it wasn't the direction that my publisher wanted to go at the time, so they passed on it. And then later, I repatched it, and it became, you know, was it, 11th novel "Dig Two Graves" which is a YA take on "Strangers on a Train."
Mary: That's great. And was it in that instance do you think it was an issue of timing and fit, or did you have to, you know, do a lot of sort of restructuring of the project itself?
Gretchen: Well, let me just clarify. It was not a manuscript I had written. It was a proposal. So, one of the things... Just for those of you that know this, just bear with me for 30 seconds. In publishing, when you've published a few novels and you're working with the same editor, the same house, you don't always have to write the manuscript before you sell it. You can sell it on proposal, which means you write a synopsis, maybe you write a chapter or two. I've sold books on as little as a one-page, which is complicated because you need to deliver, right? You need to deliver enough cause.
Mary: It has to be one really good page.
Gretchen: One really, really good page. And of course it helps if you're doing, say, your, like, sixth book with the same editor at the same house. They know that you're going to deliver a book on time. They know what your oeuvre is, you know? And that helps. So, this one was a synopsis. It was a like a two-page synopsis, which then I fleshed out. But it did change radically from what I had originally pitched. There were no queer overtones in the original version that I pitched. And when I reread Patricia Highsmith's "Strangers on a Train," as most of her books... or not most. A lot of her books do, it sort of drips with the homoeroticism between these two characters, the male characters. And I was like, "I want to make sure that we get that in, but it's going to change because they're girls and it's going to be a different kind of relationship."
So, there were a lot of changes. Also, it had been, you know, six years. Life has moved forward in terms of all sorts of things. And so it changed, but I hadn't written a whole manuscript, so it wasn't like I had to go in and, like, retool the whole thing.
Mary: All right. So, I have a million questions for you and none are bubbling up in any order that makes any sense to me. So, let me step back and ask you... So, when you get an idea... Oh, takeaway here. Sometimes your door manuscripts will serve you and then, you know, float off into the sunset. Sometimes it is possible to revisit and make them a part of your bibliography. When it comes to casting around for a new idea, talk me through your process a little bit for premise and for ingredients. And it seems like, you know, "Strangers on a Train" was an inspiration for an idea. How do things sort of arrive?
Gretchen: I mean, I steal things from other people. I say that facetiously. It's not entirely untrue, but I'm probably more in line with being inspired of other people's great works. "Ten" very overtly is an homage to Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None." That's how I pitched it. It's right there in the description. We're not trying to hide anything.
Other things are a little more nebulous like I wrote a book called "Relic" that came out with Epic Reads that is inspired by John Carpenter's "The Thing," but it's not set in Antarctica on a research station. So, it's just sort of like the feeling the type of scare that that movie encapsulates. I wanted to bring that in. Sometimes it's a moment. there's a moment in "The Ring," the remake of the original starring Naomi Watts where, spoilers, the demon girl crawls through the television, sort of, after you think everything has been resolved. And then Naomi Watts's creepy little kid says, "Oh, mom, you weren't supposed to release her," and then all of a sudden broke into the TV, and it's an amazingly creepy and effective scene. And it was like that moment, that moment of we think we have it buttoned up but really we've just made everything worse. I wanted to have that moment, that feeling in a book. I think it was 359.
And the story has nothing to do with "The Ring" or any elements of "The Ring". It's a sci-fi horror novel, but I wanted that feeling. So, sometimes it's like reinvoking how I felt watching something or reading something for the first time. And sometimes it's a direct influence. Like, I was watching an episode of "Antiques Roadshow," like an old one, and they had this creepy doll called a peddler doll from Victorian times. And I'm like, "Oh, what could I do with that?" And not all of these ideas have legs. Some of them end up as nothing. Some of them end up as short stories because they don't really have enough meat on the bone for 80,000 to 90,000 words. But I think the ideas are always there. You just have to be willing to see them and think about, "Well, what if I did that with this? Or, you know, what if it was, you know, unicorns on Mars?" Don't write that. That's a terrible idea. But you don't know where the inspiration might come from, but your brain just has to be thinking like, "Oh, that's interesting. How could that be something?"
Like the book I'm working on right now, I'm working on an adult horror novel that was inspired randomly by a Rudyard Kipling poem, one very small couplet in the middle of this two-stanza poem. And I'm like, "I'm going to write a book based on that." So, you just don't always know, but being open to thinking about new things and then of course, always consuming. Consume books, consume art, consume music, consume visual media. That puts this, like, soup pot of ingredients in your mind, and then you stir it up and see what comes out. That's terrible metaphor.
Mary: No, no. You're a writer. You are slinging the imagery. Okay, rapid fire. How do you know or when do you know or when do you give up on whether something has legs? What does that mean to you?
Gretchen: It has to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and that sounds like the silliest statement I've ever made. But frequently a story has a beginning and an end but no middle.
Mary: Correct.
Gretchen: That's a short story, right? It just doesn't have enough development of additional themes, subplots, things that could go awry and send your character in a new direction. So, those sorts of things. And then of course, that middle stuff, the dreaded middle, right, writers? Like, is it interesting? Is it fun? If your character takes a turn to the left, is it just more of same or do you encounter ninjas or something like wackadoos? So, sometimes I have to sit down, and I usually do like a one-page which ends up being a two-page of, sort of, a pitch, which is a chunk of backstory and an idea of where the book would be going. And then if it sticks in my head and I keep thinking about it and thinking about it, then I write a longer synopsis. And if I can do a four-to-five-page synopsis, I know that there's enough in that length of a narrative synopsis to translate to a full-length novel. If I can't, if there's not enough meat there, then either I put it away until I can figure out what I'm missing or think about it in terms of a short story if I ever have time to write those. And that's where we go.
Mary: That is very, very helpful. And my focus has also shifted a lot to the middle, having that midpoint anchor where the character, you know, there's, kind of, a twist, you keep turning the screw. I think a lot of people do...
Gretchen: Yeah, I teach writing on the side because, you know, who doesn't have tons of time? And what I tell my students is something needs to happen near the middle of your book. It doesn't need to be as hard and fast as screenwriting where, like, it must be on page 85. But something needs to happen that either changes what your main character wants or changes why they want it. And that's what you need to think about. Like, sometimes telling students like, "Oh, it needs to be a reversal or a big change," can confuse them or make them think that it needs to be, like, you know, an explosion or Luke discovering that Vader's his father or something like that, right? But really it's just changing what your main character wants or why they want it?
Mary: Yeah. Yep. Need comes to the party. You know, I'm not very didactic about having a wound, you know, but I do think that that setup, when you talk about, you know, my little one-pager has set up and, kind of, like what happens after, I do think that it does play into the present of the story very much, certain things that have happened in the past. Why are you moving over to adult horror?
Gretchen: It's no reason other than that this specific story will not work if the main character is a teenager. She has to be at the very least in college preferably. In this case, she's a starting a graduate program. She needs to be an adult and she needs to have been away for x number of years. And, you know, there are certain legal constraints of being a teenager that, you know, you do sort of come up against with writing YA. It's never been an issue really for me in terms of content. Like, people ask all the time, "Oh, do you have to write less content because they're teens?" I say, "Well, have you read any of my books?" Like, they're gory blood fests most of them and nobody seems to care about that. But in terms of like, teenagers can't just leave high school at 16 and go live by themselves in an apartment and get a job without either running away or jumping through a lot of legal hoops. And I don't need that complication in this story, so she needs to be a legal adult and she needs to have, you know, been away for a few years. And she needs to have a certain knowledge base of a very specific thing that you could probably only get if you were in college.
Mary: That is a great, great answer. And, you know, you don't want this to go into a legal procedural emancipation direction or whatever.
Gretchen: Exactly. That's not what the story's about. It's about people dying in the woods so...
Mary: They tend to do that if the genre of horror at large is to be believed. Is adult potentially going to be part of your brand?
Gretchen: I mean, it could be. It's hard to know. I would love to be able to write some stories for the adult market, especially in the horror space just won't fit into YA and to kidlit for reasons that I just discussed. And I'd love to have that option. Again, it's essentially breaking into a new market. Like, if you read this manuscript when it's done, it's going to sound like every other manuscript. It's still my narrative voice even if the character is slightly older. So, I don't think there's a lot of difference in terms of content or voice. It's literally just the age of the character and what that means in terms of life experience.
So, there are some stories that I would like to write that need to be in that space and if I have time to do them between other contracts and, you know, I'm lucky enough—I'm metaphorically knocking on wood again, everyone—to sell them, great. But if not, I'm also perfectly happy to write YA. I've loved every moment of my YA writing career, and I definitely don't want to leave that behind either.
Mary: And how would you say the YA market... You know, we just said it's almost impossible to prognosticate about trends and things like that. It does seem like you added potentially a queer experience to one of your stories when you polished it for modern YA. So, are there any, sort of, YA movements or ideas or shifts that you've seen in the market that aspiring YA writers—I have talked before, believe it or not—could be aware of?
Gretchen: Well, I mean, you can't exist in publishing, at least in kidlit publishing, and not see that finally, finally we are beginning to see diverse voices in kidlit. This has been a long time coming. It has been an embarrassingly long time coming and a battle...
Mary: Long overdue.
Gretchen: ...for so many people to get their foot into the door and tell their stories. I wrote a debut novel with a main character who is half-Asian. And the reason that I did that is because I am from the San Francisco Bay area, born and raised, all of my friends or most of my friends growing up were not white like me. A lot of them were Asian. And I couldn't write a book set in San Francisco and not address the fact that most of the people that I knew growing up were not white. And so I did that, and I just wrote her as a girl who happens to be half-Chinese and half-white.
I don't know if I would make that same choice today not because I would be shying away from diversity but because her story is not mine to tell. Now my books don't deal a whole lot with a character's gender, sexual orientation, religious leanings, ethnicity, any of that. My books are like "Survive the Night," right? And my cast, in all of my books, have always been diverse, even when the main character is a straight white girl like me. I still will maintain that, but I do need to be very cognizant of the privilege of being an upper middle class white woman from California and the stories that I want to tell. I think maintaining the "survive the night," sort of, motivation objective for the characters means that I don't deal a whole lot with race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc. But I also can't ignore it.
I think the way that I approach who I'm going to write into my stories has definitely changed not because I'm shying away from diversity but because I understand now that these are not necessarily my stories to tell. So, that has definitely changed for the better in case anyone didn't get that. I am delighted that, when I see the announcements, you know, in the children's bookshelf and, you know, emails, that we see so many different voices, that we see so many different people of all different walks of life writing books in not just contemporary narratives of their experience in fantasy, in genre fiction, sci-fi, speculative. Like, that all needs to happen and so that is wonderful.
As I tell people all the time in publishing, like, the pie is limitless, meaning just because you get a piece of the pie and I get a piece of the pie doesn't mean that Bob over there won't have a piece left. The pie is always regenerating, right? So, just because she gets a book deal and he gets a book deal doesn't mean I won't get a book deal. However, because there is now a cognizance of making sure that there are a variety of stories that need to be told, it definitely means that old white ladies like me have less of a corner on the marketplace. So, the book deals that went to say 95%, you know, white women back in that heyday of kidlit of straight white women are now there's, you know, only 50%, which is still, you know, at least half if not more.
Mary: It's still pretty darn white heteronormative.
Gretchen: It's not as if like our stories are still not selling. Exactly. But it does mean that there's more of everything else and so slightly less of us, and that's just... That's just the way that it is, and it just means I have to write really good books.
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Mary: Well, speaking of writing really good books, something that you mentioned about "The Ring" caught my ear, and I really want to, sort of, dig into this for a little bit. With thriller mystery, suspense, horror, these categories, it really is about eliciting feelings in your reader, right? So, you're thinking about character, yeah, you're thinking about plot, but it seems like you have to remember why that reader is there in these categories and genres. And that is to feel suspense, to feel dread, to feel fear, to feel, right? That's why we sign ourselves up for a "Survive the Night" sort of vicarious experience. And so how do you take into account reader feelings or potential reader responses and how do you shape those, if you do, when you're writing in this category?
Gretchen: Well, the first thing you have to remember is that you are not going to be able to scare everyone, right? There's always going to be someone that's like, "Oh, that wasn't scary at all," whether it's true or not, or the person that's like, "Oh, I knew who the killer was immediately." Like, uh-huh, fine. Maybe you did. It doesn't matter. So, you're sort of going for like an aggregate right of reader experiences.
I think of writing the mysteries, the thrillers, the horror as reverse engineering. You want to create a certain type of moment, whether it's the reveal of who the killer actually is or, you know, one of the things that frequently happens in murder mysteries. We think it's this killer. We're sure it's him. We're sure it's him. We're sure it's him. And then the midpoint is that person is dead and the next victim. Uh-oh, we've had it all wrong. So, we start again. You take that moment and you're like it needs to land, you know, as soon as she opens the door or as soon as this thing happens, that moment needs to be a [vocalization]. So, how do we put the pieces in place so that when you knock the dominoes over, you know, it launches that final one into space?
And so you think about tone, you think about misdirection. You know, if anyone has had any experience with magicians, my first husband, magician.
Mary: No. No actual way.
Gretchen: Yes, yeah. I've had an odd life. The tricks are phenomenal, especially anything like closeup magic, right? They're phenomenal. And then you learn how they're done. And it's not that they're less phenomenal. I think, at that point, you appreciate the skill that it took to pull off this illusion, this card trick, whatever. But the [vocalization] moment is gone because you know how it's done, right? And so for me, it's making sure that nobody sees what you're doing. You know, have everybody watched, you know, something on a movie or on TV where, you know, a man is walking down the street and the camera zooms into the briefcase he's holding and then zooms back up. Well, immediately you're like, "What's in the fucking briefcase, right?" It's important that I know that the briefcase is there, and it's the director making sure that we know that the briefcase is there because it's going to be important. I want to do that but not make you notice that I'm doing that, right? I want to highlight the door at the end of the hallway being locked or closed so that the moment when it's open, it scares the crap out of you, right? But I have to do it in an organic way.
And so it's setting those pieces up and then of course, establishing the right tone, especially in, you know, anything tense: suspense, thriller, horror, which are, you know, they're all different shades of the same color. They need a certain foundation of tension, of creepiness, of the narrator's voice, of sharing the feelings that your POV character is having, that's how you telegraph to the reader how they should be feeling. And so if you can lay all that groundwork well, then the big moments, the big jump scare moments or whatever will land. We don't have a soundtrack. We don't have Foley work, you know, that you have in a film to elicit those big moments, but we can do it in a way that film can't, you know, by sharing the internal thoughts of your POV character.
Mary: That is the big difference. And I feel like sometimes writers try to write as if they're a film camera and not take advantage of the native, sort of, expectation of novel, which is that deep access, because in film, you have body language, you have dialogue, you have action, you have, you know...
Gretchen: Right, you have actors...
Mary: Yeah, interpreting...
Gretchen: ...who are interpreting, right, which is huge. And I teach a lot of screenwriters. I'm in Los Angeles. I teach a lot of screenwriters who are adapting unsold screenplays for novels. Bless their hearts. And this is the hardest thing...like, they know story and structure better. They could teach that. I know less of it than they do. Trust me. But getting them to share the thoughts and feelings in their character's heads can sometimes be like pulling teeth. And they feel like they're doing too much. And I'm like, when you feel like you're doing too much, you're probably just barely doing enough, you know? Like, go overboard. Go wild. And as soon as they allow that to happen, suddenly it opens it up. And then we understand why the character is making choices. We understand why they did this instead of that. And that's what draws the reader in and emotionally tethers them to your main character.
Mary: So, these feelings of dread, these feelings of suspense, what do you think that feeling is? I mean, for the character, it's, you know, "I want to stay alive." Is there something different that the reader experiences when they're peering over the shoulder? Like, what are you engineering for very specifically? Expectation gap?
Gretchen: Yeah, I'd say to be mercenary about it, what I'm really engineering is the inability to stop turning the page, right? You know, anytime you come to the end of a section, a sequence, a chapter, whatever, in a book, and you're like, "Oh, you know, I could put this down now and go do something else," the odds of the reader not picking it up and finishing it go up for everybody. Even for books you're enjoying, like, we all just like, "Oh, yeah, remember that book I started six months ago and didn't finish? Huh, what happened to that?" I want you to not be able to stop turning the pages of my book, and so part of that is knowing, as a chapter ends, is there something that we still need to know, something that we're still trying to figure out a new element that's been introduced right there that we need to see how it plays out.
Like, you know, in television writing, it's going to that cliffhanger before the commercial breaks. It's the same thing. You don't want people to turn the channel during the commercial. I mean, okay, there were commercial breaks on this thing called television back in the day, everyone.
Mary: Hey, depending on your Hulu subscription, you might still be familiar with the concept.
Gretchen: And, you know, theater, opera, especially, you know, from the very early days of those art forms, you wanted to make sure that the audience didn't leave because so much of your profit was made in selling beer and food to the audience that you wanted to make sure that they didn't leave at the intermissions. Operas generally have two intermissions. Shakespeare plays have, like, three or four, and you want to make sure that they don't leave. So, what do you do? You add a cliffhanger at the end of the act, and then people want to come back and see what happens.
So, there is an element of that in terms of when I'm actually writing and I'm structuring chapters, and these sequences that they just keep moving forward. And it sounds like a gimmick but I think it's what effective storytelling has been since the dawn of time, which is hooking the reader and making sure that they can't look away.
Mary: And so cliffhangers, new information, open loops. By that, I mean, you know, a mystery that still hasn't been resolved. What's in that fucking briefcase? Like, come on. You know, like, lingering, so acute and chronic mysteries. Any other things off the top of your head for that toolbox? And we don't call them gimmicks. Let's call them tools.
Gretchen: Tools, yes. I mean, I always go to the Chekhov shotgun, which is an old, you know...Anton Chekhov said if there's a shotgun on the wall in Act One, it had better fire by the end of Act Three, meaning don't layer in these elements that have no payoff. I read a book recently that... I actually really enjoyed the book and didn't enjoy the ending. And part of it was that it had one of these Chekhov shotguns that didn't fire. Like, there was this whole buildup about something and then it never paid off. And I was like, "Oh, you know, that would've been funnier if..."
It's silly. We were watching a Saturday Night Live sketch this week, which was like central park on the first day of spring. It was really, really funny. It's like they're out and it's all the weirdos that come out to the park. And there was a moment right at the end and I was like, "Oh, those two guys, they should have raised their heads out of the bushes behind them," because it was a joke that they had set up earlier. And I was like, oh, that would've been a great beat, you know? And it's seeing that, I think, too that really helps. Like, it ties it all together. It doesn't feel like the novel was created in sections that don't have any connection to each other, that it was, like, this one big, organic thing.
Mary: I like what you were saying earlier about directing reader attention and how much to pay attention to that closed door at the end of the hallway and how much to mention it. And obviously if you mention something, not every detail is going to be revisited, but how you plant those clues. So, do you outline... We know you do the one-pager, kind of, like, proof of concept. That is expanded out into maybe a more broad strokes five-page outline. And then do you bullet point this thing to what level of detail?
Gretchen: Well, it varies by project. I'm one of these people that has a really detailed outline for the first act. So, that's maybe the first 20% or so of the novel. And I know what I'm establishing: the who, the what, the when, the why, right, what the character wants, why they want it, what's in their way, what do they do to get around it, what are the stakes, and then send them...like, they make a choice that they can't go back from. And usually, like in a murder mystery, it's great. That's when you find the first dead body.
And so then after that, I have an idea of the big tent pole moments. Like, oh, I want to have this thing where, you know, they go over to the house and it's full of dead bodies, or I want to have this thing where, you know, she discovers that her sister's killer might be on the island or whatever it is. Like, I can't even remember any of my own books at this point.
Mary: Is this "Murder Island"? To be clear, is this "Murder Island"?
Gretchen: I mean, I have a couple books. My friends joke, they're like, "Never go to an island with Gretchen," because I have at least two books that take place on an island that are full of dead bodies and so...
Mary: That's the ultimate claustrophobic experience.
Gretchen: Yeah, you just don't want to go to an island with me, I think. And then I know what the ending is going to be. But between that, the connective tissue, it's a little bit exploratory. I do let things develop, and sometimes things stay right on target from what I imagined, but frequently character voices change. Their personalities make choices that I didn't see coming. A character who I thought I was going to kill off I decide to keep around, so things do change.
Mary: Awww.
Gretchen: I know. It happens very rarely, but when it does happen...
Mary: You're a benevolent God.
Gretchen: I know. So, I leave room for that, you know, exploratory side of writing within a framework. I need to have the carrot. I need to have the goal at the end. Sometimes I'll even write the final scene before I finish the book, sort of, giving me a goal. And then of course it completely changes, and I rewrite it, but it gives me a goal to go for. And I need structure for sure. I think part of the nature of writing mysteries means I need to have an idea of who did it and why and there's the beginning of your outline, right? So, I need to have that, but I also don't want to stay so rigid that if a character voice surprises me and makes a choice that I wouldn't have anticipated, that I don't have room for that. So, it's a mix of the two things.
Mary: I love that. I want to end our time together by talking about a project that you're involved with, which is IP development. Can you tell me a little bit more, not about specific projects, because that is the trade secret, that's the secret sauce, but you develop stories, concepts, outlines, you work with writers as a taste maker in this program. So, I would love to hear a little bit more about working with story in that way.
Gretchen: So, we mentioned at the beginning that I'm a very lucky individual. It's the luck of the Irish, I think, and an author named Dhonielle Clayton, who is a boss lady to the highest degree, she is a force to be reckoned with, and I'm incredibly grateful to count her as a friend. She started a creative endeavor called Cake Creative and an offshoot called Electric Postcard Entertainment. And it's an IP company, right? So, what that means is they develop story ideas. They hire writers to write treatment novels. It sort of depends on the project. And then an agent takes it out and hopefully sells it. And especially with writers who are new and don't have a lot of publishing experience, it's a great entrée into the industry.
The Taste Makers project is literally just bringing in a couple of published authors. There's Tiffany D. Jackson, Zoraida Córdova, Natalie Parker, and myself. We all write in, sort of, a variety of different genres, and we bring ideas that are not necessarily right for us to write, to be the author of, or that we sort of maybe don't have time to write for some reason. I spoke earlier about how I have to be very cognizant that some stories are not my stories to tell, but that doesn't mean that I don't have ideas for those stories.
And Cake Creative and Electric Postcard are a wonderful place to use some of these ideas that deal with a Black main character being accused of something in a very white place. But that is not at all my story to tell, but it would make I think a wonderful novel. And so we pitch them, we work on outlines, we find authors, and we work together. And my role is to, sort of, help shepherd the author through a process of outlining a story, of getting voice right and tone right for a genre that I know a lot about, because like I said, horror, suspense, it's so much about tone and setup and so I can use all that I've learned, all the tools or not the gimmicks, the tools that I've learned and help other authors, you know, incorporate them into their own writing.
And then, you know, I want to make sure that the writers who are taking this project and making it their own have room for their own voice and development and ideas. And so we, sort of, work together. And it's been wonderful, especially for somebody like me that has a lot of ideas. I was talking to a friend the other day about this that like too many, too many ideas. I have a lot of ideas, and I don't have time to write them all. So, Cake and Electric Postcard have been just a wonderful opportunity for me to still see my ideas come to fruition with the type of writer who should be telling that story. And also it's working with some of the smartest, most creative, and wonderful people that I've ever known in the industry who I also happen to count as friends. So, that also makes it wonderful when you get to do something fun and creative with people you love. I mean, what better option is there in the world?
Mary: It's just different approaches to story, and I think a lot of the things that we've been talking about, about structure, various ingredients, beats that you want to hit, you know…
Gretchen: Well, it's funny because in publishing for a long time, IP was like the dirty word that nobody wanted to talk about. You didn't want to talk about what books were IP. My #MurderTrending Series is IP. I have no problem sharing that. You can tell if you look at the copyright, it doesn't say Gretchen McNeil. It says Disney Publishing Group or whatever it says. There's nothing wrong with this. That is still my book. I still wrote it. It's still my voice, right? I feel complete ownership of #MurderTrending. Like, I poured everything into that book. There might not even be a book that is more me than that book. It is funny. It is gory. It has great aha moments. It pulls in pop culture references at a lightning-fast pace. It is the most me book, but I don't own the copyright, right?
In film and television since the dawn of time, this is how it operates. You know, when you see a movie and it's like written by Steve and Bob and you know Carmen and Janine, they didn't all sit down in a room and write it together. You know, like somebody wrote a script and it was handed off to somebody else who wrote another version of it. And whatever story elements they may or may not have incorporated determines whether or not they get a written by credit or story by or whatever and then maybe went to somebody else for punch up. And then there's probably like four or five other authors who don't even get that kind of WGA credit for the script who also worked on it. That's just how it goes, right? That is normal. Like, if you've ever seen the marked-up script pages from Empire Strikes Back that Carrie Fisher did, so much of the dialogue from some of those scenes between Leia and Han, she wrote. That wasn't in the script. She didn't get a credit for it, right? As though she was script doctoring. And that's just how it works.
So, in fiction, it's still I think a newer concept, and I think it's something that we need to embrace, not shy away from. There's no shade on the author's writing IP or there shouldn't be. They are still doing the work. They are still contributing ideas, and voice, and character, and texture, and all of the wonderful things that make these books what we love. But sometimes having more people involved in creating story is a good thing, right? We can't all have all the ideas all the time. I just said like, "I have all the ideas," but not all of them are good, and sometimes I need somebody to take some of the ones that aren't good and teach me how to make them good. And that is what this Taste Makers program, I think, really is.
Mary: We tell people all the time, it takes a village to make a book. That's what makes freelance editorial a viable career path. Hello, you know? The publishing house editors, the agents have a contribution, the designers, and the illustrators if you're writing for younger readers.
Gretchen: That's why I credit everybody in the acknowledgements. I always ask my agent and my editor who worked on the book in-house. I want to make sure that that village is acknowledged, whether it's copy editors or like, you know, the library and education people. Like, anybody who contributed to this book, it needs to be acknowledged.
Mary: And here, that writer's room, that collaboration process, that village really gets involved sooner rather than this sort of classic archetype of the "Genius in the Attic" frittering away, typing, typing, and then the manuscript pops out fully formed. And only then do we learn its fate, whether it was good enough to pass muster.
Gretchen: And I gotta tell you something, you know, the J. D. Salinger "Genius in the Attic" is probably not having as much fun as I have with the folks from Cake and Electric Postcard when we're talking about story. We're having significantly more fun. Trust me.
Mary: The attic is a bummer. No, sometimes the attic is a great thing, but I think there are just so many ways to make a book, tell a story, think of an idea and execute it. And I think in an hour, we have covered pretty much all of it.
Gretchen: A lot. Yeah.
Mary: So, there you go. You want to write a book? Listen to this and you'll be all set.
Gretchen: Here you go. Here's how to write a book, everybody.
Mary: No, you are a delight. So, many things to think about here. I hope everybody just goes and signs up for a class with you, reads your work, watches what Electric Postcard gets up to. Gretchen McNeil, thank you so much for hanging out with me and talking shop.
Gretchen: Thank you, Mary, from the OG to the OG.
Mary: Yes. No, I love it. One of my guests a couple of episodes ago was Sara Zarr, and that was another, sort of, like, [vocalization] moment of, "Oh, back in 2008."
Gretchen: Yes, back in the way back machine.
Mary: Back in the day. Back in the day.
Gretchen: Someone posted a photo recently on Instagram of, like, an RT convention from, I want to say, 2013 or '14, and I'm like, "Oh, babies." We were babies. We had no idea.
Mary: Well, I love it. I love to see you thriving. I love to see you finding different vehicles and avenues for what you bring to the table, and it was just awesome to reconnect with you.
Gretchen: Well, that's very kind. Thank you so much, Mary.
Mary: Of course. So, this was Gretchen McNeil. I will have places to find Gretchen in the show notes, and here's to a good story.
Thanks so much for joining me. This has been "The Good Story Podcast" with me, Mary Kole. I just want to offer a heartfelt thank you and bit of gratitude to the entire Good Story Company team. You can find out more at goodstorycompany.com and of course to all of you listening and taking the time to really dig into these conversations with me. This has been "The Good Story Podcast" and here's to a good story.
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