How to Build Tension in Your Thriller Novel with Author Erin Flanagan

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EPISODE INFO:
The art methodically rising tension is a tricky one...because there really isn’t a hard and fast rule. 

However, while talking to our guest today, I learned so much about how to incrementally increase tension over the course of a novel. 

Plus, we cover some major misconceptions about the publishing business. 

We’re busting myths out here so come along for the ride.

BIO:
Erin Flanagan is the author of two short-story collections and three novels including Deer Season, winner of the 2022 Edgar for Best First Novel, and the most recent Come with Me. She is an English professor at Wright State University and a regular book reviewer for Publishers Weekly. For more information about her and her writing, please visit www.erinflanagan.net or say hello on Twitter and Instagram at @erinlflanagan.

Tweet me @DavidRGwyn

Transcript

T108 - Erin Flanagan

Erin Flanagan: [00:00:00] And so I started sketching out the novel and by the end of the weekend, I felt like I, I knew what I wanted to do. Of course it changed completely. Like that sketch did me no good. I felt great about myself for like 24 hours. And then, then I started writing and oh hell broke loose.

David Gwyn: The art of methodically rising tension. This is a tricky one because there really isn't a hard and fast rule. However well, talking to our guests today, I learned so much about how to incrementally increase tension over the course of a novel. 

And to do it in a way that is believable for a reader. 

Plus we cover some major misconceptions about the publishing business. We're busting myths out here. So come along for the ride. I'm David Gwyn. 

Agented writer navigating the world of traditional publishing. During this season of the thriller one-on-one podcast. We're going to be focusing on building the skills necessary to write the kinds of thrillers that land you and agent and readers. I'm talking to authors agents and publishing industry professionals about the best way to write a novel. 

If you want the experts secrets, [00:01:00] this is where you're going to find them. Last week on the podcast, I talked to Mandy McHugh about how to write amazing dialogue. 

Mandy McHugh: So really just, you know your characters better than anybody else.

So really listen to the voices and what they're trying to come in and don't try to make them be anything that they're not. 

David Gwyn: You should definitely check that out. If you haven't already. I'll link that in the description. Today's guest is Erin. Flannagan the author of two short story collections in three novels, including deer season winner of the 2022 Edgar for best, first novel and her most recent novel come with me. 

She is an English professor at Wright state university and a regular book reviewer for publishers weekly. I had so much fun talking to Aaron. So let's get straight to the interview because you're really going to love this one.

Erin, thanks so much for being here. I really appreciate you taking the time to chat.

Erin Flanagan: Oh my goodness. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited. 

David Gwyn: So your newest novel, Come With Me, which, which I loved and is out now. It's a really fun read. So I'm, I'm dying to talk about it. I'm really excited to, we get to chat about it. [00:02:00] So before we do though, can you tell people what it's about? 

Erin Flanagan: Sure. It's about a woman, Gwen Maynard, she's in her early thirties and her husband dies very suddenly of a heart attack.

And she Comes to find out that he has reinvested all of their money in his tech company and left her basic, basically with nothing. And she's got an eight year old daughter she's got to take care of. She's been out of the workforce for about a decade. She ends up getting back in contact with this woman, Nicola, who she knew when they were interns back in college.

And Nicola stayed in the workforce, has worked her way up to an executive position and says, Oh, I could do better than You know, getting your recommendation, you want to come back to Ohio. I bet I can get you an interview. And Gwen moves back. And in a lot of ways, Nicola is just a friend she needs there to help her take care of her, help her find a place that's really close to where she lives, help her with her mom.

And before Gwen knows it, Nicola has kind of infiltrated [00:03:00] herself into all aspects of Gwen's life. And she's begun to realize maybe things are going a little too fast, a little too quickly. And she better, she better pull back. 

David Gwyn: Yeah. So like I said, I love this and it's so funny listening to you explain it.

Cause like. The tension, which, which I'm going to ask you about in a little bit, but and hopefully you're going to give us all your, your tips and tricks, but the tension just builds as we go. All of a sudden you're like, Whoa, what is happening? And what has happened? You start thinking back to like all the steps that got you there.

I think it was beautifully done. And just a really great story. So how did you come up with this idea for the story? 

Erin Flanagan: Well, it was funny. It was kind of out of desperation. All the best ideas, right? What else is there? What else is motivating me, if not desperation? But I have a great group of writing friends that we get together for a writing retreat a couple times a year.

We have one coming up this weekend. And the Thursday, we're supposed to leave on Friday, and the Thursday before, [00:04:00] my agent got a hold of me and said, The latest idea is not a go. We got to come up with something new. And I had thought, Oh, I'm going to go on this retreat. I'm going to start this novel.

It's going to be so fun. And instead I just show up in tears like, Oh my God, I got nothing. I don't know. And we started talking because all of the women were like, you've got this, it's going to be amazing. We'll come up with something. And we started talking about how we're now at a point in our lives where we've kind of found Our group of women who we pulled each other up, we support each other.

There's no competition. But we also started talking then about earlier friendships when we were younger and how those were a little more fraught in some ways. There can be a competitive edge. There can be some controlling issues when we're all trying to figure out who we are. And so one of them said, Katrina Kittle said, I think you should write about this.

And I'm like. Huh. And so I started sketching out the novel and by the end of the weekend, I felt like [00:05:00] I, I knew what I wanted to do. Of course it changed completely. Like that sketch did me no good. I felt great about myself for like 24 hours. And then, then I started writing and oh hell broke loose. But it was, it was a It was thankfully due to these women that I absolutely adore and not me, less adoring women in the background.

David Gwyn: That's awesome. And so this is, this is now your third novel, right, the third one that came out. So can you talk a little bit about your writing process? It sounds like you do some level of planning, plotting beforehand. Is that always the case or not necessarily? 

Erin Flanagan: No, it was so weird. That was the first time with Come With Me that I was writing Proposal for a book rather than a book first, which I was a very great position to be in but I was like, oh, I'm a pantser to my core.

So I was pretty nervous about that because I, I feel like the only way I can convince myself that a book is a book is to write this really bad draft of a book. So to come up with [00:06:00] the the concept and then the outline and all of that and the proposal ahead of time was really challenging for me. And like I said, I felt really great.

I'm like, Oh, this is what the platters are talking about. This is amazing. I got this little road map and I wrote about the first five chapters and then all hell broke loose. So I, I had to just really throw that out. And I met with my editor Later on in the process when I had like a pretty full draft and I'm like, so how tied are we to that proposal?

She's like, yeah, we got time. Don't worry. And really just let me kind of go with it. So the core of it stayed the same. Like I had to go back to the publisher's marketplace release saying this is what the book and I'm like, okay, that one sentence still matches. So I think I'm golden. Close enough.

Same title, everything else changed, but yeah. So it was, it ended up being a different experience, but somehow I ended up on the [00:07:00] same road of just winging it. 

David Gwyn: So it's such an interesting process. Do you, do you prefer to do it that way where you're kind of getting the go ahead on a project first? Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. 

Erin Flanagan: Well, ideally, I would like somebody to take the book. So, I thought, like, I thought, oh, this makes a lot of sense. Like, after my second novel came out, I thought, oh, so I guess they're just going to like what I do now.

And I wrote a draft of a novel, and they're like, actually, that's not the way it works. We don't love this idea. And I said, oh, okay. So then I, like, started kind of pitching some ideas, and that's how we got to come with me. But now I'm back in the position where I'm like, I just got to write what I want to write, I guess, you know, and it's kind of freeing in a way, but it's also like, it's, I don't know.

It's a balance. I feel like you've got the expectation of this is the novel I said I was going to write. And now I'm trying to form a novel to that versus the excitement of like, this is the novel I want to write, but who the hell knows if anyone's going to want to publish it, you know? So there's really, it's a pros and [00:08:00] cons of what kind of, what kind of stress do you want in your life?

David Gwyn: I feel like people from the outside looking in there, they often think like, oh, I just get the first book in and then everything else is gravy. And it really feels like Everyone's got like a different experience, but it feels like it's still the wild, wild west, whether you've written two books or not.

It doesn't matter. 

Erin Flanagan: I think that's true. I think there's all that sexiness of the debut. So everybody wants a debut, but then, you know, you're getting further in your career and you think, Oh, I'll be, I'll be settled. And I don't think, I don't know any writer who feels safe. Isn't that? And I think that's kind of awful because I think the safer we feel, the more we're willing to take risks and kind of branch out.

But I think you just have to figure out, you know, who are you trying to please here? You know, are you trying to please what you think the market's going to be? Are you trying to please yourself as an artist? And I don't think there's a right answer. One thing that's great about like, you know, I don't think there's Listening to podcasts [00:09:00] and having friends in the business is getting to hear that you're not the only one who feels like, Oh, I, I would have thought by this point, I would have felt like I had a home or something like that.

And everybody's like, no, it's, it's just an ongoing kind of difficult business to be in. And part of it, I think is that as artists, we didn't want to be in a business. I mean, good luck with that, right? 

David Gwyn: That's true. great. So I want to go back a little bit and talk about how you started writing. Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?

Erin Flanagan: Yeah. I knew it when I was a little kid. I didn't, I didn't have any idea that was something people actually could do. I grew up in a really small town. Nobody I knew was like interested in writing, but then I went to college and I took a creative writing class. And what really struck with me was. Reading more so like I love to like, Oh, I'm going to write in this class, but I started reading contemporary short stories and I was like, what in the holy hell is this goodness?

I had no idea. Like I thought, I thought we just stopped at O'Henry. [00:10:00] You know what I mean? And I was like, Raymond Carver? Who's that? And it just blew, like blew my mind open. And so I think from there, I really started getting into being a reader. And I think that's what really shaped me. As a writer, like I took a lot of classes, I, you know, all of that, but it was really kind of dedicating myself to reading that I think made the big difference and made me just love it so much.

Yeah. 

David Gwyn: And so I, I know you're a professor and so is that, is that kind of the track you ended up on, you know, following that, that reading bug that you caught, like, did you just kind of follow it all the way through? 

Erin Flanagan: Yeah, it was weird. I, as an undergrad, I was not. Not a great student. I think a lot of people say relate to that.

Yeah. Like, I'll tell my students by GPA sometimes and they're like, holy shit. And you're like, see, dream big. But no, so I took like four years off. After [00:11:00] undergrad and was the secretary for a while. I just knew that wasn't going to sustain me and ended up going back for literature. And then again, kind of fell into these creative writing classes.

And while I was there, I ended up. Becoming managing editor of Prairie Schooner, the Nebraska literary magazine. And I loved it so much that it really kind of pulled me into that world even more. And so since I was working at the university full time, I could take classes. And so I was like, well, I might as well try for the PhD.

So I just kept going. And then I didn't think I'd want to teach, but I, cause I'm I'm pretty introverted. And I was like, I'm not going to stand up in front of people. Like it just sounds awful and talk for all that time and ended up, it was just a really different kind of thing than like having to talk to people at a dinner party.

Like we're all there for a good reason, you know? And so I ended up, yeah, going on the job market and getting a job at Wright state. And I've been there now like 18 years. 

David Gwyn: Wow, that's great. That's awesome. Yeah. So I want to, I always, whenever I have [00:12:00] authors on here, I love to have them give their agent a shout out.

So you're repped by Jill Marr. Can you talk a little bit about what you love about working with Jill? 

Erin Flanagan: Oh man, she is a dream. I could not love her anymore. Like, from the moment we met, well here, this is such a little thing, but it meant the world to me. When she asked to see the full draft of Blackout when I was querying, that ended up being my second novel, she emailed me after, about a week into having it, she's like, Reading it and I'm loving it.

Has anybody picked it up yet? And just think about her showing her enthusiasm and wanting to know if she was still in the running. It just really made me feel like, well, she's a champion. Like she's somebody who's going to love, like loves to work with people and loves this business. And from the get go from the jump, when I got on the phone with her, I felt like I was myself.

And that might seem like a silly thing to say, but I had had an agent when I was. Yeah. And, and, and I, I, you know, I, I knew her when I was younger. And [00:13:00] she was, you know, this kind of New York powerhouse. And she scared the bejesus out of me. I, it would take me like three weeks to send her an email. And I'm like, I don't know if that's the healthiest.

And I feel with like, I'm sure Jill is like, you don't have to email me all the time. And you certainly don't have to do it in all caps with all these exclamation points. But I'm like, here I am, you know, I can really. Be myself with her and like, talk frankly about what I'm working on, what's going well, what's not, and I just, I just feel like she's always there and ready to support and she is just a mastermind to like the business side, chef's kiss.

David Gwyn: That's great. That's awesome. I feel like that's a glowing recommendation for anyone who's querying right now to send your stuff over to Jill. Absolutely. Okay. Let's pause there for a second. So far, we've talked about Aaron's background and how she got into writing. I also think it's so interesting to hear how writers of Aaron's caliber still have to work through rough drafts. Plus she busted [00:14:00] those common myths about publishing. Remember your career is just that it's a career. 

There's no coasting along in this business, no matter how long you've been in it. 

So you have to go in with that mentality. And the next part of the interview, Erin shares her advice about how to slowly build tension over the course of a novel. 

It's one of the more intricate skills in writing. And she even share some other important advice for us writers to hear. You're going to find this really valuable. So let's get back to the interview. 

So, I want to dive in and talk about Come With Me and talk about the suspense and how you managed to pull off this really great novel. So, like I mentioned kind of at the top here, that methodical building of tension that kind of happened over the course of this novel, and it was kind of that increasingly unsettled feeling that we got as readers.

How did you manage to pull off that, that tension? I mean, is it something, it sounds like something that you had plotted and then didn't have plotted and then maybe through the revision process, like, is it something that happens [00:15:00] naturally in your writing or, you know, can you talk us through how that comes, comes through?

Erin Flanagan: Yeah. Well, I, I think that for me, that pacing intention is one of the hardest things I come from short stories. So I'm still like trying to figure out, like, how do you. modulate that, I guess. And I think that's where, for me, a really great editor comes in. So Jessica Tribble Wells at Thomas Mercer was the editor for this one and for Blackout.

And I think she is so good at that, like about figuring out where your peaks and your valleys are. And one thing I knew going in to come with me that I would kind of have to balance was this feeling for the reader, maybe in the beginning, that they, they see long before Glenda's that Nicola might not be always with the best interests at heart.

And so you have to balance like the surprise of what's coming that kind of tension with that kind of delicious feeling of I know what's I know what I don't know how it's going to [00:16:00] come. But I know. that things are going to turn south at some point. So how long can you kind of hold that kind of tension for the reader before they're like, come on, Gwen, get it together.

Can't you see things are not going to go well. And so that was, I think, one of the things where Jessica came in and really helped me figure out like, when I was holding on too long to one kind of attention, and then. Like needed to switch to the other. So that, that was super helpful for me. 

David Gwyn: Yeah. It's, it's funny that you mentioned that cause I'm thinking now about novels that I've read where the character just is, is too dumb for too long.

And you're like, okay, I'm out. Like you're just, you deserve what you get. Like that's it. And I didn't feel that at all with, with Gwen and this character. And I think that that's probably a testament to you as a writer. And it sounds like to your editor too, that kind of worked through that. 

Erin Flanagan: Oh, thank you.

That's so great to hear. Cause that was one of the things That I read about and one of the things I really wanted to explore in the book was how smart women do kind of [00:17:00] fall into these relationships with people that are controlling because I think, like, too often we think, well, that was dumb. How did you not see that coming?

But I think it happens all the time, too. So I wanted, I didn't want her to be like Dumb. I wanted, I did want to like beat her down pretty bad in the beginning with like her mom can't help us a caregiver with her. She's going to have to take care of her mom. Her husband's died. She's had to move. She doesn't have any money.

So I did like Pile quite a bit on her, but then she had to find the resources to get past that. She was the character at the beginning that I felt like I, I knew, like, I feel like I'm the most like Gwen out of the two of them. And so I did want to be like, how, how can I make her smart, but also fall prey?

Yeah. 

David Gwyn: Well, I think that was it. I think it was so plausible the way that everything kind of fell in. Into place. I think it was, it just felt very much like to, to, to your point, like very much like a thing that could happen very much a thing that probably that does happen. And so I think that that's, that's really where, [00:18:00] for me, it felt so real throughout the entire process and, and not something where I was like, okay, it's, you know, it's clear to me that this is a novel, you know, like, why hasn't she realized, like, it felt very much like something that, that doesn't and could happen.

Yeah, that's, 

Erin Flanagan: that's like the, the, the greatest thing for me to hear just because I, I feel like with thrillers, sometimes you're right in that line of like, it's gotta be a little bit honest, like you gotta go a little crazy in a thriller, but you want, I want it really to feel like these are people, you know, that these are, you know, this is a very plausible situation.

So thank you. That's like my, my favorite thing to hear. Good. Good. 

David Gwyn: So I want to ask one more kind of plot question, which is, which is Nicholas. Backstory, the flashbacks that we get as we're reading, were they always there for you? Or is that something that came in later? Like where was, where did those flashbacks come in to the process?

And why did you decide to 

Erin Flanagan: do those? Well, when I, when I said, like, I had to throw the plot out, that, that was a lot of it. So the first time, like [00:19:00] the first run through, I had to write her from beginning to end three times. Like, I felt like I said, I knew Gwen somewhat, but she was the one. Nicola, Nicola. I don't even know how to pronounce her name.

Honestly, I can't remember. You get to choose, 

David Gwyn: I think. 

Erin Flanagan: Well, I don't, because I had it wrong in my head the whole time and then the audio book came out and I was like, I'll be damned. And my husband was like, I've been telling you this. I've been telling you, you've been saying her name wrong. She's not an Italian man.

But now I'm telling her which one is right. But anyway, so she She, I wrote her the first time where She was very much in, it was the present, it would go between Gwen and Nicola and it, it would be her thinking about her interaction with Gwen. So it was all this kind of like, almost mustache turning, mwahaha, I'm thinking about Gwen.

And then I was like, oh, all those snarky, funny things that she's saying in her head, I should put them in our dialogue. Like, she shouldn't be hiding things. She doesn't think she has, you know, things to hide from Gwen. So she, in that way, so she, [00:20:00] Then came out in all the scenes where she was much more herself on the page, but it still was just like it's, it's just kept stopping the tension every time I'd switch over to her.

Like I would have thought there'd be more tension. And then it was only when I went back to her childhood that I was like, Oh, I understand her as a character now. And that's where that all came in, was on the third run with her. No, she was not giving up any secrets. No, 

David Gwyn: no, no. So, my next question for you is, is just what are you working on now?

What's your next 

Erin Flanagan: project? Well, it's funny, I'm I'm back to, I'm just going to write the novel. I'm just not, I'm not even going to plot anything and, as always happens, that went really well for like 80, 80 pages. And now it's just this kind of unwieldy beast. There's this picture online of this drawing of a horse where like in the, in the first Like at the head, you can see the flowing mane and like the muscle in the chest.

And then it's just these [00:21:00] two stick legs by the end with this tail. And I'm like, that's every novel. That's every novel I write. So I'm almost to the end of a draft and I'm really loving it, but I don't, I still am not quite sure I'm going to stick it yet. So like, it's still just too in, too in the, in the process, but I am in love with it.

Can I say that? Yeah, 

David Gwyn: that's great. That's great. I feel like that's great. I do think it's funny. I think a lot of times having a lot of authors on here that sometimes hearing that as you know people who are who are aspiring to write that Sometimes it's it's helpful to hear that that like not everybody has it figured out even even when you've got a couple books a couple great books under your under your belt, but Sometimes I think it's disheartening to like, are people like, Oh, I wish like I, if Aaron doesn't have it figured out, I never will, 

Erin Flanagan: but here's the thing.

Here's the thing. I think that's stressing me out about this book. I think it's just, it's, it's past my abilities right now. And I think that's really exciting. Like, I think with every book, you're kind of striving to do something new. So it should [00:22:00] be scary. It's. If you feel like you have it all figured out or like, Oh, I know to follow these plot beats.

I feel like that's not as much fun. So it's kind of fun to feel like you're still a beginner. It is a little frustrating. I'm like, at some point, can this get easy, but it's also fun, right? Yeah, 

David Gwyn: That's awesome. That's good to hear. So. My last question for you is just where can people find you?

Where can people look you up? 

Erin Flanagan: Yeah. So I have a website erinflanagan. net. And I'm also on Instagram way more than I should be and Twitter at, at Aaron L. Flanagan. So, oh yeah, stop by and say hello. 

David Gwyn: That's great. And I'll link to all that stuff. So if you're, if you're looking to get in touch and find Aaron's books highly recommend I've loved, I actually have read all three of your books and I love them all.

So yeah. Yes, it's great. So I can't recommend it enough. Definitely go check it out. Her stuff. And like I said, I'll link that in the description. So if you're listening, easy access to, to get in touch with Erin. So Erin, this was so much fun. I feel like I could talk to you forever. This was a blast. 

Erin Flanagan: I really enjoyed it.

Absolutely. Oh my God. It's [00:23:00] delightful. 

David Gwyn: Okay. So that's it. Like I said, this was such a fun interview. I had a blast talking to Erin, definitely check out her books. And if you want more writing advice and information about how to make this year or the year, you get your agent or get published, definitely subscribe to the thriller one-on-one newsletter, where I give more practical information and advice from around the writing world. Next time on the podcast. 

I'm talking to Natasha Sass. A cozy mystery expert. So if you like thrillers, but are considering either a series potential or just interested in the cozy mystery genre, like I am, you'll love next week's episode. I'll see you then.