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

Summary

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

Host: David Perell
Guest: Michael Connelly (Crime novelist: Harry Bosch, Lincoln Lawyer)
Date: March 11, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, David Perell sits down with bestselling crime novelist Michael Connelly to deconstruct Connelly’s writing practice, the meta-mechanics of creating vivid characters, and how place, detail, and character interplay to produce unforgettable stories. Connelly shares insights gathered over 30 years and 100 million books sold, offering practical advice for writers and exploring the craft’s deeper philosophical questions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Power of Detail in Storytelling

• Observation over Note-Taking: Connelly spends time with real detectives, lawyers, and judges, observing them without taking notes to avoid freezing authentic behavior.
  “I never take out a notebook… I just try to watch for what I call telling details.” (02:02, B)

• Momentum and Selective Detail: Too many details slow a story; focus on a few that create the most vivid, essential impression.
  “A key thing, maybe the key thing is momentum, you know, and a lot of details create speed bumps.” (03:39, B)

• Example: The groove in a detective’s glasses, formed by clenching them during crime scene investigations, conveys more than a long description ever could.
  “That was kind of like all I needed to say about this guy.” (04:18, B)

2. Rewriting: Where the Magic Happens

• Revision Process: Each morning begins with rewriting the previous day’s work, both digitally and on paper.
  “I start every morning by rewriting what I did the day before.” (05:57, B)

• Marking Up with Pencil: After printing, Connelly uses personal shorthand in the margins (“RW” for rewrite, “NSG” for not so good—a critique borrowed from his mother).
  (07:04, B)

• Finding the Best Details: The search for telling detail often happens in later drafts rather than the initial writing phase.
  “In rewriting… I think this is a better detail, or I expand a detail… I’m emerged into a full story.” (05:05, B)

3. The Role of Truth and Research in Fiction

• First-Hand Knowledge: Journalistic background gives him enough foundation to write freely, only checking specific facts later.
  “I covered courts and I covered crime for about 14 years… I always want to be writing.” (08:13, B)

• Research Network: Relies on a cadre of experts (detectives, lawyers, judges) and a researcher for concise answers, keeping his writing flow uninterrupted.
  “I have a researcher… but I would rather be writing.” (08:51, B)

4. The Writing Routine

• Early Mornings: Writes before dawn, aiming for “6 to 11 every morning”.
  “The safest time is mornings. That’s where you’re going to get less interruptions.” (10:04, B)

• Balancing Writing & TV Work: Spends afternoons on set or in interviews, but mornings are sacred for writing.
  (10:44, B)

5. Character, Character, Character

• Central Focus: Everything—plot, setting, detail—serves character.
  “For me it’s character, character, character.” (11:03, A)

• Reality and Resonance: Strives to make fictional characters feel real by embedding them in authentic settings, using real-world details and contemporary events.
  “If the best way to sell this character that doesn’t exist to a reader… is to plant that character’s feet in as real a world as possible.” (11:39, B)

6. Writing Los Angeles as a Living Character

• Unique Inspiration: LA’s diversity and constant evolution provide endless material.
  “In each book I start out with the goal of ending up in a neighborhood I’ve never been in, fiction wise.” (12:48, B)

• Crime and Geography: LA’s highways, hills, and social stratification create unique narrative opportunities and “palpable friction”.
  “LA is the city of second chances. But not all second chances pay off.” (15:12, B)

7. Lessons from Raymond Chandler

• Chandler’s Influence: Chandler’s atmospheric descriptions of LA inspire Connelly’s sense of detail and character.
  “I read [Little Sister, Ch. 13] when I start a book … it has nothing to do with plot… but … some of those descriptions are right on right now.” (16:33, B)

• Details Convey Character: The narrator’s observations often reveal as much about the character as the city itself.
  “It’s about him… and he’s an outsider looking in.” (18:07, B)

8. Different Characters, Different Lenses

• Perspective: Each protagonist is a lens for seeing LA differently—by gender, age, role, or insider/outsider status.
  “I have the lens that is like a female’s view… My true outsider … is Mickey Haller, the Lincoln lawyer.” (18:49, B)

9. Dialogue as Character

• Distinct Voices: Diction and the rhythm of speech are primary vehicles for character—sometimes what isn’t said matters most.
  “Dialog is the most important part of character.” (20:54, B)

• Economy of Expression: Harry Bosch, for instance, is defined by how little he speaks (“he nods a lot”).
  “My editor would just keep a running count of how many times he nods.” (21:24, B)

10. On Conflict and Momentum

• Vonnegut’s Rule: Every character should want something on every page, even if it’s small.
  “Kurt Vonnegut… said… make sure on every page, every character wants something, even if it’s only a glass of water.” (24:13, B)

• Relatable Struggles: Small, everyday conflicts (traffic, bureaucracy) ground the high stakes of crime fiction.
  “Most of my readers… have never solved a murder… so you got to connect with them… traffic, bureaucracy.” (25:41, B)

11. Place as Character

• Triggering Memory and Depth: Geography cues memory and internal backstory—moving through LA often prompts reflection for characters.
  “You… want your characters to be moving forward and backward… you can do that a lot with geography.” (28:18, B)

• Murder as Societal Investigation: Crime becomes a lens to explore the city’s social fabric.
  “A murder is basically a framework for you to investigate something in society… through an investigation of a murder.” (29:28, B)

12. Finding Story Momentum

• What Sparks a Story: Usually an idea he wants to explore—a social force, a new technology, a moral question.
  “I need an idea I want to explore.” (31:52, B)

• Recent Example: Using AI as the catalyst for a courtroom thriller, “putting AI on trial”.
  (31:52, B)

13. Dialogue: Making the Fake Real

• Cut it in Half: Realistic-sounding dialogue is concise.
  “Almost as soon as you write it, you go back and cut it in half.” (41:27, B)

• Trusting the Reader: Subtext and nuance are often more powerful than explicit statements.
  “I eminently trust my readers… especially in dialogue.” (43:53, B)

• Conflict through Subtlety: Dialogue can be about one thing on the surface but hold deeper conflict beneath.
  “I love doing conversations that are on face about this, but they're really about that.” (43:53, B)

14. Heroes and Villains

• Hero Over Villain: Connelly is more fascinated by what makes a hero and the cost of confronting darkness, rather than exploring the villain’s motives.
  “I’m really interested in heroes and what makes them heroes and what sacrifices they make…” (47:20, B)

• Conflict and Moral Cost: The darkness encountered in crime-fighting can threaten the character’s own moral center.
  “If you go into that, some of it’s going to get into you. And a lot of the books are about what do you do with that…” (49:10, B)

15. On Starting a Book: Hooks and Triggers

• Not Always Immediate: Early in his career, he felt pressure to introduce big story triggers quickly. With experience, he’s more willing to let character and situation develop organically.
  “To me, it’s like a slingshot… Now I don’t even think about it.” (52:20, B)

16. Transitioning to TV and Film

• Difference in Tools:

  • TV/film: Action and visuals (“what you’re doing”)
  • Novels: Depth and interiority (“what you’re thinking”) “Books are always going to be deeper… you have that component of internal thought.” (57:28, B)

• Challenges of Adaptation: TV’s need to visualize every aspect can conflict with a novelist’s trust in the reader’s imagination.
  “I put enough telling details… for them to build Harry Bosch in their head… Then 20 years later, I said, this is exactly what he looks like.” (58:35, B)

• Writer’s Room Camaraderie: TV writing brought back the fun and collaborative dynamic he missed from his journalism days.
  “It was fun because it reminded me a lot of my newspaper days… writing room… camaraderie and water cooler…” (60:55, B)

17. Character Names with Meaning

• Metaphor and Resonance: Names should never be arbitrary—look for metaphorical resonance (example: Harry Bosch named for Hieronymus Bosch, with LA as a “modern day Garden of Earthly Delights”).
  “Don’t just slough off the name, think about it. Names as metaphors are great…” (36:03, B)

18. The Changing Craft & Industry

• Audiobooks and Attention: While traditional reading demands focus, audiobooks introduce multitasking, possibly changing how stories are absorbed.
  “As long as there are people… holding a book, it’s hard to do anything else.” (70:21, B)

19. Teaching Writing: The Core Principle

• Always Be Writing: Continuous practice (“write every day, even if only for 15 minutes”) is the foundational advice that shaped Connelly and would be the cornerstone of his course.
  “I’m definitely always be writing type of guy… you’ll always be in the tunnel, you know, the story swirling around you…” (66:22, B)

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Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

• On Detail:
  “Instead of five details, you pick the one that says something about the situation, the character.” – Michael Connelly (03:46, B)

• On Character:
  “Everything seems to be in service of character.” – Michael Connelly (11:13, B)

• On Research and Momentum:
  “I always want to be writing… Always be writing.” – Michael Connelly (08:13, B)

• On Dialogue:
  “Dialog is the most important part of character.” – Michael Connelly (20:54, B)

• On Conflict:
  “Make sure on every page, every character wants something, even if it’s only a glass of water.” – Quoted from Kurt Vonnegut (24:13, B)

• On Heroism:
  “I’m really interested in heroes and what makes them heroes and what sacrifices they make…” (47:20, B)

• On Writing Routine:
  “Write every day, even if it’s only for 15 minutes.” – Harry Crews, quoted by Michael Connelly (67:10, B)

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Suggested Listening Timestamps

• 02:00 – Finding and using “telling details”
• 05:00 – Connelly’s rewriting process: daily routines and practices
• 11:00 – The centrality of character in fiction
• 14:50 – What makes LA unique for crime fiction
• 16:33 – Raymond Chandler’s influence and details as character
• 24:13 – The necessity of conflict on every page
• 41:27 – Making dialogue realistic
• 47:20 – Focus on heroism over villainy
• 57:28 – The difference between telling stories on the page and on the screen
• 66:22 – Advice for aspiring writers

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Conclusion

Michael Connelly’s approach to crime fiction is anchored in deep character, vivid detail, and relentless writing momentum. Rejecting distractions and over-planning, he trusts both his instincts and his readers, returning always to the fundamentals: keep writing, go deeper into character, let setting shape the story, and distill every line to its essence. For writers and readers alike, this conversation is a masterclass in how unforgettable stories are built—one telling detail at a time.

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Transcript

[A]

Michael Connelly is a crime novelist who's famous for series like Harry Bosch and the Lincoln Lawyer. And combined his series have sold more than 100 million books. But then also they've become TV shows on Netflix, on MGM, and Amazon prime, where he's not just writing, but he's the executive producer. His fingerprints are all over the work. So want to ask him about it? How do you dream up vivid characters? How do you write about a city, a town or a place? And if you're somebody, you want to write, you want to come up with stories. Stories. You want to imagine worlds and put them onto the page, well, you're in the right place. You wouldn't believe it, but how I write costs a fortune to run. And it's thanks to Mercury that I can even do it. They're the sponsor of this episode in a banking platform that I've been using for the past four years to run my own business. When I started how I write, I expected finances to be an absolute nightmare. I got team members in four different countries. I had things to think about, like currency exchange and taxes and expenses, and. And I was just dreading it. But honestly, banking has maybe been the easiest part. I can't remember running into a single problem, and it's because I've been using Mercury. I switched over from other, more traditional banks because Mercury is so well designed. It's easy to get started, it's easy to use, while also feeling totally legit and secure. And Mercury gives me all the tools to run a global company, like virtual cards, unlimited users, and the ability to customize each user's access level to exactly what they should see. And you know what, if anything goes wrong, if I have any sort of challenge, I can always talk to their support team, which is super responsive and actually helpful, which is pretty rare these days. And all that is why I can't imagine banking any other way. Mercer is a fintech company, not an FDIC insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group and Column A members fdic. All right, back to the episode. I want to hear about detail. What do you focus on when it comes to details bringing stories to life? And what is it that writers get wrong?

[B]

I spend a lot of time with the kind of people I write about, whether they're detectives or lawyers, judges and so forth. And I never take out a notebook. I don't want anyone to kind of be frozen by seeing me writing down something they said or did. So it's really, you know, observation. And I. I just try to watch for What I call telling details. And they can be verbal, they can be in a story, someone talking about what they do, or very specifically about a case, an experience they had. But it can also just be something I observe about them physically or in their workplace, in their car, even. You just look for these details that, if you can get, you know, it opens up a window of imagination for you, for your viewer. I mean, it does for you as well as the writer. But you're. I'm always conscious of what's the reader going through, how is their imagination turning? And it turns on details. And so you always got to be. Be available for that. Your second part, what did writers get wrong? Well, everybody's unique. But I know as a writer and reader, I don't like to be hit with too much detail over details. I think in writing and reading, a key thing, maybe the key thing is momentum, you know, and a lot of details create speed bumps.

[A]

So it sounds like what you're going for is the fewest things that create the most vivid picture and keep the momentum going.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And that's what I mean by telling detail. Instead of five details, you pick the one that says something about the situation, the character. You know, I often tell this story. I was one time standing in front of a detective at his desk, and I had been at crime scenes with him and knew that at each crime scene, he would take his glasses off and hook the earpiece in his mouth as he was observing, you know, the victim of violence. And when I was sitting at his desk, I saw that he had a groove in the plastic of his earpiece from. And I realized his teeth are clenched when he has those moments. And that was kind of like all I needed to say about this guy to convey. You know, I took it and put it into fiction, and it said a lot about the character with just one little moment like that or one little piece of detail description.

[A]

Yeah. As you're. As you're writing detail and you're working through drafts, do you feel like those details are something that come out in the editing process and the rewriting. The rewriting. Okay, okay. Finally, like, draft four, draft five, I found the detail. Or do you feel like, hey, you've seen it, you're thinking of the story? Actually, those telling details are pretty clear for you.

[B]

I think it's the latter. I mean, it comes later. It's in rewriting. Rewriting is a real key thing for me. And it goes both ways. I take details out when I rewrite, and I kind of strip it down to what is needed to maintain momentum. But that is often the process where I. I think better of it. I think this is a better detail, or I expand a detail, or it just comes to me. Because now I have a full story and I'm like, emerged into a full story. And I might know something that happens in a hundred pages that right now I could set up with a detail.

[A]

And how does that work? Is it like, okay, I got draft one on the left side of my screen. I'm going to rewrite it. Draft 2. Is it like I'm going paragraph by paragraph? How does that rewrite happen?

[B]

Well, there's. I have two. One is built in. So I start every morning by rewriting what I did the day before.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

And, you know, so that can be anywhere from three pages to 10 or depending on what kind of day I had the day before. And, you know, I write on a laptop. It's a digital world. But I really like to feel a paper. I've never read an ebook. I read books that I hold in my hand, and I kind of rewrite that way. So I print out what I do what I've written the day before. I'll print it out and I'll mark it up with a pencil. And then I put those changes into the digital form. And then I do a larger version of that. When I get to the end of a book, I print the whole thing out, go through it, reading it in paper and marking it up. And I go all the way through before I go back in and start taking the markings and suggestions and all that stuff. And, you know, I have a whole shorthand of ways of leaving notes and in margins and stuff like that.

[A]

Like a little personal code language.

[B]

Yeah, Like RW means, like, rewrite this whole paragraph. NSG means not so good, you know, which I got from, sadly, from my mother once, who was reading one of my manuscripts. And there I saw these NSGs, and I go, like, what's that?

[A]

Thanks.

[B]

And it's like, yeah, yeah. But she was a good critic. You know, she. She read a lot and loved reading mysteries. So she was a good one to say, like, oh, I. This is the guy who did it, right? And that kind of thing. But yeah, she, I, I took some of her shorthand into what I do as well.

[A]

Now tell me about truth, right? Because at least at the surface, very crude reading, you're like, okay, write fiction. Fiction's the opposite of truth. But no, it seems like in your. When you're writing, you're really trying to get the Details, right? Hey, you know, does this. This work? Well, it's not like the right way to describe this scene. So as you're writing and you get it down on page, and my sense is you're not doing a lot of research there. And then towards the end, it's like, okay, let's make sure that this works. So how does that work in terms of your own kind of validation process on your own, and then sometimes talking to other people to say, hey, hey, hey. Did I get these details right?

[B]

Yeah. I mean, there's two things. One is I was a journalist for a long time before I started. Started doing this. I covered courts and I covered crime for about 14 years. So it gives me a kind of a rudimentary knowledge of how this is done that allows me to write and not spend a lot of time researching. And so, like, I always want to be writing. And I have a cadre of people that help me with my books, you know, ranging from detectives to lawyers and judges. And I can shoot them texts and emails, phone calls while I'm writing, depending on the urgency of when I needed the information. I also have a researcher who's basically an Internet researcher. I mean, I could go on Google and get this and get that, but I would rather be writing. And so I'll shoot him a message. And he's worked for me long enough that he knows I'm not looking for page after page after page of something. I'm looking for a concise answer to my question that I can digest quickly and then incorporate into what I'm writing. So it's really about maintaining momentum. Always be writing. You know, I. You gotta eat. And so a lot of times I will meet people for breakfast because I'm not going to be writing while I eat, so I might as well meet someone who can help me or answer a question. And so that. Yeah, so the process is all kind of organized so that I can be writing.

[A]

Okay, so you're saying always be writing. So, like, what's any given Tuesday? Like, I don't know, what'd you do today? Did you write today? Is it. How do you structure your life in order to get writing done?

[B]

Well, I find that the safest time is mornings. That's where you're going to get less interruptions. So I like to be writing before it's light out. And I did that today. I'm very lucky in that my work has inspired television and so forth. I live in Los Angeles. I'm close to these productions. I'm not like somebody who has to watch over my stuff. But, but there is, there is a good purpose to being there from time to time, even if it's just to be a cheerleader.

[A]

This on the TV sets, huh?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. So I try to write for a minimum of like 6 to 11 every morning and then I might go off in the afternoon to a set, to an interview. But if I can get like 6 to 11 in, I'm pretty happy.

[A]

I saw somewhere that you said realtors talk about location, location, location. And for me it's a character, character, character. Why is character so important?

[B]

I think that's what people read books for. You know, everything's important but, you know, but everything seems to be in service of character. Your plot, you know, where you set the story, all really important stuff. But I think they're really about character. And so that's always front of mind. You gotta always be thinking, you know, about how you're, how and what you're delivering this character, you know, to the reader. You were talking in the last question about details and I really didn't answer, but that the answer is character. You know, I write books about a person, a character at the center of a book who does not exist. And so I just adopted this philosophy that if the best way to sell this character that doesn't exist to a reader who's going to be a smart reader is to plant that character's feet in as real a world as possible. So you. So I endeavor to get the details right, the details of the job, the details of the geography, the details of the weather, the details of the history. My books are very contemporary and so I'm constantly picking stuff out of the, the real world that's that has happened or is happening to put into my books and see how my characters react to it.

[A]

What do you like so much about

[B]

writing about LA that it never stops giving? I mean it's such a big place, it's such a quickly evolving society that there's always something new. I'm up to like 42 books now and in each book I start out with the goal of ending up in a neighborhood I've never been in, fiction wise, you know, in a book. I want to take my readers to someplace new in la. And it's become pretty clear to me I'll never cover the city. You know, it's too big, it's too sprawling, it's too different. I mean, I've now been published over almost 35 years and places I wrote about in early 90s are gone and they're Different. And I can go back to these places and kind of categorize that change. So there's a lot on the pallet here to draw from. And. And of course, it's. It's a lot of fun to draw from it. I sometimes feel like I have an unfair advantage to other writers because I write about la.

[A]

Well, also, when it comes to, do you know, the work of Jeff Mana? So Jeff Mana, he wrote, I think it was a book called the Burglar's Crime, A Burglar's Guide to the City. And he talks about crime in LA and how it's distinct, how it's different. So I was thinking about this, you know, prepping for this interview, like, what are the things that make LA distinct? You know, you got the hills, and then you have a lot of flat space. I mean, even more, you got the highways. It's a city that was probably patrolled by air more than any other city. When I think of crime in la, I think of car chases. You know, you got the big car chases with the helicopters, then you got the tundra, you got the LA river in all the movies. And just like the vibe of sort of this, like, retro kind of concrete of the LA river. Yeah. What is it about la? How is crime here different from other cities?

[B]

Well, I think it starts with the uniqueness of the place, as you just have mentioned. It's got all this stuff. It's got mountains, deserts, ocean. The variety is pretty amazing. And it's also a segregated city, segregated by freeways, segregated by a mountain chain that goes right through the middle of it.

[A]

It.

[B]

And it's also a place by virtue of being the entertainment center of. Of possibly the world, but a major entertainment center. It kind of wears its heart on its sleeve. There's so many people that come here from some other place, I did myself, that come here because wherever they were at, it wasn't working for them. And this is the city of second chances. But not all second chances pay off. And. And so the, the haves and the have nots, and. And the difference between them, I think, are more noticeable in this city than, say, Pittsburgh or something. And. And that. That creates a. A sometimes pa. Palpable friction. And that's what you're looking for when you're writing crime fiction.

[A]

Yeah, I went back and there's a Little Sisters by Raymond Chandler. And I know that that book inspired you, so I just read. I think it's your favorite chapter, chapter 13. And this stuck out to me about LA. No moon, no fuss, hardly A sound of the surf. No smell. None of the harsh, wild smell of the sea, the California ocean. California, the department store state. The most of everything and the best of nothing.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, that's why I read that. That's like me raising the flag. I read that chapter when I start a book just because it's a pretty short chapter and it's like five pages and it has nothing to do with plot. It's just like Chandler through his guy Marlow decides to take a break and drive around the city and describe it in very sardonic, cynical terms. But I'm not sure, I don't know if it's on there, but I think that book was published in 1939 and some of those descriptions are right on right now. And you know, to pull that off the, you know, the, the department store state, to pull something like that off and, and to read it now and. No, that's accurate then. And as it is now, you know, that to me is the definition of art. And that's what people like me aspire to. And that's why I read that before I started writing a book.

[A]

Well, you can see the details you're talking about, right? And I pulled another quote. Malibu. More movie stars. More pink and blue bathtubs. More tufted beds. More Chanel number five. More Lincoln Continentals and Cadillacs. More windblown hair and sunglasses and attitudes and pseudo refined voices. And waterfront morals, by the way. Waterfront morals is like a killer, a killer line, but it's just like boom, boom, boom. It's these details that, yeah, paint a picture of the scene, capture the essence of a place.

[B]

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

[A]

character for you as you're writing. You have different characters that you're working with. Do you feel like you can actually see? It's like putting on different lenses over your eyes. Do you feel like you see LA differently through different characters?

[B]

Yeah, especially, I mean, some are similar but you know, I have the lens that is like a female's view of the city and you know, a male dominated bureaucracy. I have the wisdom view through Harry Bosch is now in his 70s. And then I, I, my true outsider, I believe is Mickey Haller, the Lincoln lawyer, because, you know, he's not a guy with a badge and a gun. And the defense attorney is kind of traditionally seen as an outsider, a guy who's, like, looking at the standards,

[A]

the

[B]

power and might of the state and figuring out how can he find the cracks in that and work them bigger, wider?

[A]

Okay, so we're talking about how do you get your writing done and if you're thinking about work and how you can be more productive there? Well, I recommend a tool called Basecamp. Basecamp is a project management tool, and it's different from the other ones, which are loud and noisy and cluttered. They're feature bloat. Basecamp says, no, no, no, no, no. We're going to keep things simple so that you can focus on what actually matters, which is just getting the work done, you know? Now, for us, Basecamp is a place where we can track what we're doing with how I write, when episodes are being recorded, where we're recording them, the web publishing day, all those sorts of things in one place for our entire team to look at. And I had the founder of Basecamp, Jason Fried, he came on the show, and I noticed that he really cares about writing. He cares about manifestos. He cares about great copy. He cares about telling a great story. And him and his co founder, they've written five books, and I can tell you that they bring the same care and attention to detail to their books as they do their software. So if you're thinking about work and you're asking, hey, how can I be more productive? How can I make my team more cohesive? Well, then I recommend Basecamp. All right, back to the episode. If you have these different characters, it seems like then you're developing different voices. How does that work?

[B]

It's a lot of things, and some of it is diction. I mean, I think dialog is the most important part of character.

[A]

And by that, you mean two people going back and forth having a conversation?

[B]

Yes. Or not. I mean, just how a character speaks and how much they speak says a lot about them. I mean, by design, you know, my original character is Harry Bosch. I've been writing about him since 1992. Well, publishing him since 92, writing about him much longer. But, you know, I wanted him to be a guy who felt like an outsider, even though he had a badge and a gun and, you know, basically was symbolizing the power and might of the state. I didn't want him to feel comfortable about it. And I think that came out some in his dialogue and it also came out in how he didn't use dialogue. He's a guy who nods a lot. He's a real economy of words guy, to the point that I used to have a editor who, on the margin, this is early on when we actually edited on paper, would just keep a running count of how many times he nods in a book. And it was like, you know, he's nodded 540 times and we're only on page 200, you know, that kind of thing. But I, but that was a, that's a character thing. I, I didn't want him to say yes or no. I just want him to nod. But I, I, there's just little, I don't know if you want to call them tricks, but there's little things you do that I think can, can give a character a distinct feel for the reader.

[A]

And how do you tactically relate to these characters? Is it like a felt sense you have or like, you know, you have a little like a different room in your house where. 360, it's like a map room, but for character and all their little tricks and quirks and stuff like that.

[B]

Now, because that would, that would like, indicate that I thought I had longevity. And, you know, I, I don't think that the writers who feel like they're going to be able to do this for their whole life are rare. You know, if I knew what I knew 30 years ago, I would have started keeping journals that had all this information. But I keep nothing. I never have. And I've only had two copy editors over my entire career, and they have a Bible. So they've been able to catch me on a lot of stuff that I don't get correct from book to book. Usually it's 10 books ago I said this, and it doesn't match with what I'm saying presently. But I don't really worry about that because again, it comes back to momentum. I don't want to. My eyes are focused on my, the screen of my laptop and the words I'm writing, and I don't want to look away to look at an outline or to look at a journal. That said, this person had green eyes back then. I just don't want to take my eyes off the screen. I just want to be writing and moving a story forward.

[A]

Tell me about conflict. How does conflict let character unfold? Let the story keep that momentum?

[B]

Well, I would say one of the best pieces of advice I ever read, I didn't get this personally, obviously came from Kurt Vonnegut, whose Books I loved. And then he was asked once in an interview, what's the best piece of advice you can give a writer? And he said, make sure on every page, every character wants something, even if it's only a glass of water. And that, to me, is the distilled essence of writing. And that's conflict. It's what you want. And, you know, and so I often do that. I look at a page and say, do I have Kurt's advice covered here? Does everybody want something? And it's really important, you know, to have that. And I was more religious about it in the early days. You know, I. You know, I. I had Bosch as a smoker, and it's a society where you're, again, not supposed to smoke. So, like, he always wanted a cigarette, but he couldn't have one. That was my little way of making sure there was conflict on every page, you know, and. And again, that shows something about character that a. In the first place, he is a smoker, and it shows that he's kind of stepped outside of traditional or standard society, and he's looking in. So there's all kinds of ways that you can use conflict to deliver character. And I'm lucky that in a crime novel, there's building conflict. You know, I have to find a murderer. I have to get my client and not guilty. You know, so you have these big things, and you. You build in all kinds of layers of small ones, and bureaucracy is a huge one, because you're also looking for conflicts that your reader can relate to. You know, most of my readers, probably 99.9%, have never solved the murder, but they're reading a book about a guy trying to solve a murder. So you got to connect with them, with stuff they do know, and that's, you know, the bureaucrats that don't help Harry Bosch because they just don't have to. That kind of stuff, you put in stuff. Traffic. The traffic I dealt with today, you put in stuff that everybody can relate to while you're delivering the big conflict, which is something they probably have no idea about.

[A]

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

[B]

Well, it's like, what's your guy doing in. In the car while he's not moving? Because this is la, you know.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Or what does he do to avoid it? I mean, it gets a little bit like that Saturday, like Saturday Night Live skit where they make fun of how Los Angeles people, like, say, just take this and do that. You know, everyone has directions they want to share with you. But. And then I, you know, I was late to this interview and I had to call and say, my. I actually have my GPS on when I'd be arriving. So it's an important part of life out here. So it's got to go in books and. And you got to find ways to use it. My main character, Ari Bosch, lives in the hills and has a view of the 101 Freeway. And there's probably hasn't been a book I've written about him where he doesn't go out on his back deck and we find out what the traffic report is. You know, the ribbon of lights not moving. That kind of stu.

[A]

Yeah. How does Place become a character? You know, like, even just reading what people have written about your work, they're like, man, the city of Los Angeles is a character. It's not just like the stage that the game is being played on. It is a character in the book itself.

[B]

Well, you can use it. You know, you want your characters to be moving forward and backward in time, you know, remembering things, delivering how they came to be, who they are and where they are. And you can do that a lot with geography. You know, again, I hate calling it a trick, but it's a trick, I guess. You know, like Harry Bosch will go into a neighborhood or go into a restaurant, and then that will kick off a memory of when he was there with his mother or when he was there with his wife. And so it's a way of using geography, again, to deliver character. I mean, you started this conversation with the character question, and really all questions lead back to that. And so that. That's how I view it. Like, what can the city of la, the physical city of la, do to help me deliver who Mickey Haller is or Harry Bosch is?

[A]

And it was Richard Price who said, every murder mystery is the tale of a city, something like that. So how does the city show, particularly in murders?

[B]

Richard Price, his thing is up there of Kurt Vonnegut. He said someone was baiting him because he's a fantastic writer. And I guess someone interviewing him should have been. Thought he should have Instead of writing crime fiction, should have been writing the great American novel or something. And they said, why do you write? I. They didn't say this part, but the question really was, why are you wasting your talent on a murder story? And his answer was, when you circle around a murder long enough, you get to know a city. And that is. That's precious. And that's true. And that's probably why I write murder mysteries. And. And it's Harry Bosch who actually added that part about every murder is the tale of a city, but it's true. A murder is a. Is basically a framework for you to investigate something in society. And so you can tell a lot of stories about a city through an investigation of a murder. Because by, you know, by the kind of crime it is, by the kind of detectives that work on it, they can go anywhere. They have license to go anywhere in society. It goes back to Chandler and some of the essays he wrote about writing detective stories. That the detective, by virtue of their position in society, can pierce all veils of society. And that, to me, is like an invitation I couldn't turn down. I love that idea about writing, writing crime fiction, because you can take your character anywhere.

[A]

Sometimes when I think of stories, I imagine. And I want to know if you're like, yeah, I agree with that, or you're like, no, that's nonsense. But I almost imagine that sometimes all you need to tell a good story is, like, you show up, you match a beautiful building, right? So you're in Barcelona, kind of an art nouveau door. And you see the door, you're like, oh, that looks interesting. Then you open the door, and you enter this sort of big hallway, and you go, wow. And it's like, that's all you need to write the story. It's almost, once you enter, the rest of the story can kind of unfold. And so I'm wondering with you, what is the thing that you need in order for the story to get momentum, in order for you to get propulsion so that you can enter the tale and find that momentum?

[B]

I need an idea I want to explore. You know, I just had a book come out that is a legal thriller, but it's about AI It's a technology a lot of people don't understand. A lot of people are afraid of. A lot of people think it will change the world for the better. So it's a debatable thing that's happening to all of society. And so to me, that was the ignition point for that book. I wanted to fashion a story that would Essentially put AI on trial, and you'd hear all sides of people, quote, unquote, testifying in a court case. But what they're really talking about is, where are we in society with this new technology that has the power to both change things brilliantly for the better and also to bring things down? You know, that's a big picture idea, but I wanted to just compress it into a square, a courtroom, and use that courtroom as a framework to look into this and ask questions, not be didactic. I don't think the book tells anyone what to think or what to do, but it does ask questions, and that was the starting point and ending point for that story.

[A]

How would you break down the different perspectives beyond the sort of cliche of it's gonna save the world and it's the we're going to do.

[B]

Well, I did some. Some research, or I should say, I had my researchers give me stuff. And. And. And that's what's wonderful about a courtroom thriller, because you have. You just bring in witnesses, and then you have other witnesses that. That counter that. So you can get every point of view that you're interested in delivering to a reader into a trial. The. The big task with courtroom thriller is they all lead to one or two answers. It's either guilty, not guilty type of thing. And so it's. It becomes repetitive. And. And you got to keep thinking of ways, how can I do this differently? Because every trial ends thumbs up or thumbs down. And that. I don't like being hemmed in like that. You know, when I write a book about a homicide investigation with detectives, I can go in many different directions. But when you apply what you're doing to legal throwers, you can get shoehorned in and. And it's not comfortable.

[A]

Yeah, with Harry Bosch. He's into jazz. Are you into jazz?

[B]

Yeah, I am now. Wasn't that way all along. It was a decision I made. Again, I was trying to do whatever I could to make him feel like an outsider. I came to wanting to write these books from Raymond Chandler and guys who wrote about private eyes. And what was intoxicating about those books, especially when I read them as a teenager, was they were about outsiders looking in, and usually cynically at society, which is perfect for a teenage boy. But then I became a journalist, and I had access, you know, to police departments. I talked to 100 real detectives a week. I walked into police stations, and I had a press pass where they had to let me in. So I knew instinctively I got to use this. This is what I know, and I'm going to use this when I write my. My first novel. And. But I couldn't leave that Raymond Chandler stuff behind, so I did wherever I could. I tried to make Harry Bosch feel like a guy who didn't belong, who felt that he was an outsider, even though he had an insider's job. And so I kind of went from there.

[A]

So what's in a name? I mean, we can get to Harry Bosch and the name itself, but how do you think about naming characters? What's important, what makes a name kind of feel right?

[B]

Good question. I mean, you start with this idea that your primary purpose, almost your sole purpose, is deliver character to your reader. So never miss a chance to say something about character. Have everybody on every page want something that says something about character. So don't like, just slough off the name, think about it. Names as metaphors are great, especially if it's a metaphor that matches what you're trying to do. And I mentioned one of Chandler's essays where he said, the detective has to pierce all levels of society. So when I was writing my first published novel, the Harry Bosch novel, in the first draft, his name was Pierce. No first name, just Pierce. And then I can't even remember why this happened, but something happened that reminded me of Hiran, Ms. Bosch, the 15th century painter who I had studied in college, not by my choice. I took a humanities class and the teacher, the professor, was fascinated by Bosch. So therefore we studied Bosch for about a month. And this was pre Internet, where it's very easy to find his work and study it if you want. But he was very obscure when I studied him. I'd never heard of him until I took that class, and I never heard anyone mention him afterwards. So I was going along, all right, with the name Pierce. And that was a good call. I mean, a good name. I think it would have some deeper meaning. But something reminded me about Bosch, Hieronymus Bosch. And I decided to use that name because I knew it would be intriguing. It wasn't like you could just type that name into the Internet. That book came out in 1992. And so I knew people would either have known the paint, known of the painter, and gotten the admittedly strained metaphor I was going for, and that is that, you know, Bosch's most famous painting is called the Garden of Earthly Delights. And I was kind of going for the metaphor that LA was the modern day Garden of Earthly Delights. And so I knew some people might get that and then there'd be people that Wouldn't get it. And they'd be intrigued about where does that name come from? And so I thought it was, quote unquote, a win win situation in terms of a character name.

[A]

Well, my parents live in Denbos, where he's from. So I spent a lot of time thinking about that painting in particular. And all over the city, there's like the little characters around. And it's funny because when you first look at that painting, you're like, okay, this is very strange. And then this is the way I feel about a lot of paintings at that time. There's kind of a spookiness almost like, ah, get away from me. With a lot of medieval paintings. But then if you keep looking, I think you can only really understand medieval art once you start laughing because it was very imaginative and it then gets very goofy. And that's the thing that as I spent more time with that painting, I discovered is how funny it can be at times.

[B]

I mean, that's why we studied it for a month or the painter. But it was mostly spent on that painting. Yeah, the painting's in Madrid at the Prado. And once I was over there on a book tour and my publishers arranged for me to go into the Prado while I was closed and spend an hour in front of that painting by myself. Except for a, you know, museum guard was there. But that was pretty amazing experience.

[A]

Is it big?

[B]

No, it's not as big as you think it would be. In fact, the. It's a pretty amazing accomplishment. All the little details, because they are small. Yeah.

[A]

I went to go see Monica Peace in Brussels, and we had driven down from Holland down to Brussels. I don't know, I was probably 11 years old. It's like, we're going to go see Monica Peace, this famous statue. And I was like, oh, my goodness. You know, we're driving a few hours and the statue was no bigger than my torso. And I remember just being like, what? I felt like I'd been scammed.

[B]

Well, David's pretty big statue. So I don't know if your parents have asked you the question, why is he called Harry? Because when I've gone to Holland on book tour, the question I get from every single reporter is, why do you call him Harry, short for Hieronymous? And they always point out that that's the Greek or the. I'm sorry, the Latin root of the name Jerome. And so he should be called Jerry.

[A]

Oh, really?

[B]

My mistake. Wow.

[A]

Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. It's fake, but it's real. It's real. But it's fake. I mean, it's so core to what a story is, but also a dialogue. Dialogue in a book is so different from the dialogue that you'd hear at Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks. Right. It's more dense. And we're talking about making something feel real. Right. So how do you make dialogue feel real when the essence of it is that it's fake?

[B]

Well, I think one thing you do is almost as soon as you write it, you go back and cut it in half. You shorten it. I mean, I think that's one of your first questions is what do writers do wrong? I think they, they create dialogue that doesn't sound real. I was lucky. I. I worked for newspapers before they pretty much migrated to online. And so when I was working for newspapers, I had a finite amount of space to tell a story, especially crime stories, which usually were second tier, unless it was a huge crime. But for the most part they'd be saying, like, give me six inches on that. And so I learned to have an ear for dialogue and for dialogue that carried information. No fluff, because I didn't have the space. And so if I quoted like a police detective, the quote had to have information that I felt the reader needed, and that wasn't repeated in the body of the story. And that was my practice for 14 years. And so I couldn't help but bring that into what I do as a book writer. Now, of course, I can write as much as I want, 400 pages, 100,000 words, and I don't have that kind of constriction, but I carry that with me anyway. And so I just try to make dialogue carry meaning, carry information to the reader.

[A]

Now, when I think of dialogue, the word that then comes to mind is conflict. And obviously we've been talking about conflict with the cigarette, right? Man, I want a cigarette. Should be having cigarettes. There's a sense of almost internal conflict there. But, but how about conflict between people? That's a different kind of conflict. So how is that the same? How is it different?

[B]

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

[A]

The editors generally want things to be more obvious. Yeah, okay.

[B]

Or, you know, I get the things in the margin about wanting more to explain what's going on here. But I eminently trust my readers, you know, to pick up on the nuances of conflict, especially in dialogue. And so I love doing conversations that are on face are about this, but they're really about that. And it's really about the conflict these two people are having.

[A]

Okay, break that down for me.

[B]

Take it from your own life. I mean, it's like in your own relationships, this happens all the time. And in your own relationship, you have the added thing of tone, which you don't get on a piece of paper. Sure. But you can infer that kind of stuff. And like, I was writing a scene this morning that was about someone telling Harry Bosch he should cool his jets, that he should at his age and he's fresh from getting a new knee. Like, I'm really playing into his real age, which is in the 70s. They're trying to tell him to slow down, but they're telling him the opposite. They're acting excited about it, but they drop in a few words here and there that show their concern.

[A]

Yeah. As you were saying that, I was thinking about, during the holidays every year, there's conflict that shows up in conversations, and it's people talking about the stuff going on in their family.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I don't know why this year felt like there was a lot of conflict in different friends lives. So, you know, I had a lot of conversations, and, you know, you talk to someone about, oh, we have this. This. This drama about the coffee machine. Hey, we got this drama about locking the front door. We got this drama about, hey, you didn't clean up the front seat of the car when you left. And it's like a whole thing. And actually, the deeper thing that's going on is about. It almost comes back to this question of, like, do you love me? Am I loved? And the smallest things just had these, like, these cosmic scale of importance to people. Because the thing that people were actually bitching about really came down to, I feel like you don't love me, or I feel like you ignore me or something like that.

[B]

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

[A]

But that's a really small, a really small specific conflict. That conflict doesn't need to be. Hey, you want iced tea? I want iced tea. There's only one iced tea left. And it's 110 degrees outside and there isn't any water. Conflict can be, hey, you look so young back then. And all of a sudden it's like, oh, my goodness, do I look old now? Have I, you know, will you still love me when I'm no longer young and beautiful? The Lana Del Rey line. Like, the smallest thing can have conflict is what I'm getting from you right now.

[B]

Maybe it's all about, as you said, do you love me? All conflict leads to that.

[A]

Tell me about heroes and villains, how villains magnify the hero and how the hero magnifies the villain.

[B]

It's funny, I, I don't spend a lot of time on villains. I, you know, there's writers who love that. I'm not that interested in the motives of villains. I'm really interested in heroes and what makes them heroes and what sacrifices they make to be the hero of a story. And I, I know it's a balance. I had a friend, Stephen Canal, who created lots of TV shows and wrote books and. And he had a sign over his desk that said, what's the bad guy thinking? And, you know, I could put that on, like 10 lists, Alyssa. 10. You know, with Richard Price and Kurt Vonnegut and all that.

[A]

What's the bad guy thinking?

[B]

Yeah, you know, you might be writing about the good guy. I might be writing about Harry Bosch. But you got to remember there's a bad guy out there that he's looking for, and what's he doing? What's he thinking? And I am conscious of that. But I'm not one of these guys who wants to get into the psychological motives behind a violent crime. And I think that's a worthy thing to understand in society. Society. But I leave it to other writers. I rather concentrate on what it takes to be the good guy in a story. To, to be willing to, you know, risk going into that kind of moral darkness, to bring order from disorder and. And to risk yourself, because I think there is a cost to doing that. And I really think that's at the. That's the thesis of a lot of what I do, is to explore that. And, you know, when you. I think when you do the kind of work that most of the people I write about, I mean, I think the exclusion is Mickey Haller. But, but I, but I think even a Lincoln lawyer goes into Darkness in his world. But if you go into that, some of it's going to get into you. And a lot of the books are about what you do with that. You know, that darkness that gets inside and what you. How you try to protect yourself and stop it from metastasizing into, like, kind of a moral cancer that can lead you astray. So that, to me, is a noble battle. And I'd rather write about that noble battle than the flip side of the person who has lost that battle and acts out against society or against people in horrible ways.

[A]

You know, we were talking about how when you're writing a novel about a murder, most people haven't experienced that. So then you have to make things that are relatable. Being in traffic, going to the grocery store, whatever it is. And is there something similar where you have a character and what you gotta do in order to have a good character is to fundamentally anchor it to something deep about life, which is, you know, you're asking this profound question here, which is, like, if you're called to confront evil, you're called to fight chaos, bring order to it. How do you not let the stuff that you see spread and metastasize is the word you use and sort of overtake you? That's this very deep philosophical question. Do you feel like that emerges? Is that something that you're trying to do consciously? Is that an important thing in a story? Or is it just. That's just going to be there and you sort of think about that, realize that that's what you're writing about in retrospect?

[B]

No, I don't think it's in retrospect, and I think it's important. And it might be only important to me, but writing a book is a journey. It's not. It might take you two days to read a book, but that book was written over quite a long time. I mean, I'm a fast writer, but it still takes me 10, 11 months to write a book. And I need things during that period of time to keep me going. And I need, like, a higher calling, if you will. And I need to be exploring something. That's a bigger human question. And that's why I say this fight against the darkness that gets inside. I'm very conscious of that as I'm writing books through my whole career. I really think I don't have to look back on my career and go like, oh, that's what that was about. I mean, I've known it's what it's about almost from the beginning.

[A]

What Matters at the start of the book. Hooking people in, setting the scene.

[B]

I would say if you looked at my early books, I did have the trigger. To me, it's like a slingshot. You have so much time to pull it back, but at some point you got to let it go. And I used to think you got to let it go within 10 pages or then it became 25. And now I don't even think about it. I don't think it's funny you should bring that up, because the thing I was writing this morning, I just started writing a book about two weeks ago. And so I'm like, only on page 30. And I don't outline my books. I just kind of write by instinct. And I started a new chapter, and it was a conversation with a. It was Harry Bosch meets somebody for lunch. And that does not pull back the slingshot at all. And it's just him talking. I'm kind of updating the reader on where Harry is right now through his conversation with a friend. And in a way, it's like chapter 13 of the Little Sister. It doesn't advance the plot at all. It doesn't pull the slingshot back at all. And I probably would have never risked that at page 30, 20 years ago, 15 years ago. Now I feel I can. And so that has changed over time. But, yeah, you're looking for the trigger, whatever you want to call it, the slingshot. You're always looking for something that kind of drops the car into drive.

[A]

So page 30. Walk me through. I don't know what do you. Without giving too many details about the book if you don't want to, but, like, where are you at on page 30 in the book? You got a general sense of theme. You got a general sense of character. You kind of know where it's going to go, or you just like. I don't know. I kind of figured out the first 30 pages. I'm now kind of here for the ride, and I've almost surrendered to something deeper, like the story has a momentum about it. I'm actually in the passenger seat, and the story itself is in drive. Where are you at in relationship to your story right now?

[B]

I can only answer that by saying where I'm at in relationship to my overall writing and to the people who read my books and where I am in the world. So we've talked a little bit that I have these television shows going that are based on my books, and they're based on my books, but they influence me back. You know, I'm involved In the shows, I read the scripts, I write some of the scripts. And TV usually has a shorter time to lock your viewer in. And they call it the teaser. And it's usually six pages of script at the most, where whatever's going on in that episode, the slingshot's been let go. And, and so in this book I wrote, I, I wrote two chapters that are really nothing about the plot, but they're, they're like an anecdotal story based on the true story that a detective told me about how they, how he solved the case. And I thought it was, you know, brilliant, but not, it could not sustain the whole novel. It was an anecdote. And so I decided to start this book, two chapters with that anecdote. And it has nothing to do with the rest of the book, but it, you know, and, and Harry goes through this little case, helps somebody solve a murder, and then he drives home and, and Mickey Haller, his half brother, who's a lawyer, is waiting for him and he gives him a piece of news that, that starts our story. And the piece of news is not enough to say that's a slingshot. It leads to him being intrigued and looking into a case from his past, his far back pass. And so he starts looking into a story, a death that happened 60 years ago, knowing full well, I mean, I'm challenging myself here, knowing full well that whoever did this is probably dead, happened 60 years ago. And so when you're telling a reader that he's not going to corner some bad guy and there might be gun battles and all that, it's, you know, you're really, I'm really gambling that I've earned what I've just said, that the reader's going to stick with me because he's pursuing a case that, where he wants to find an answer, but he probably won't find a real person alive.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, you're unique in that. Out of all the writers I know who've had their work commissioned into movies, TV shows, you seem to be just about the most involved in the on screen stuff. And my question for you is, I almost have the image of a butter knife and a steak knife or something. What is like the same tool, but they're not the same tool? What does the screen, tv, movies, what do those allow you? How do they allow you to tell a story that books don't allow you to do? And what do books allow you to do that TV and movies don't allow you to do?

[B]

Well, I mean, books are always going to Be deeper. You have that component of internal thought. You know, when you write a script, you can never say what anyone's thinking. And that's why I don't hold myself out as a good script writer, because I am too steeped in my world of writing what Harry Bosch is thinking and what's the bad guy thinking. In tv, it's what's the bad guy doing? I guess it's a different form of storytelling. I'm involved, but not to the degree a lot of people think I am. You know, I get involved in the first season of a show just because I want to be there for the transfer of it from page to screen. But very quickly, I learned who I can trust and whether these people have the best in mind for the. The main characters. And that kind of lets me step away. And so, you know, my name is on every episode, but it doesn't mean I'm there and all that.

[A]

Tell me more about TVs, about what you're doing. Books are a little bit more about what you're thinking.

[B]

Yeah, it's just. It's visual storytelling, and it also. One of the hesitations. It looks like I have no hesitation because I do all these shows, but it was not without a lot of thought because, you know, I'm primarily, by far, a book writer, which means I'm steeped in the amount, in what's important about reading, and that's, you know, the majesty of imagination. And in all, you know, I've written over 20 books about this guy, Harry Bosch, and if he added up all my descriptions, it's less than five pages, because I, As I've said before, I imminently trust the reader. And so I put enough telling details in there for them to build Harry Bosch in their head. And that's what I did for more than two decades before there was a TV show. So I kind of betrayed them. I said, build Harry Bosch for yourself. And then 20 years later, I said, this is exactly what he looks like, this guy on the TV show. So I can't tell you how many times I've been approached by people saying they don't watch the shows because they have Harry Bosch in their head and their heart. And I totally respect that. But as a storyteller, I just. I want to hit all the, you know, we're back to baseball. I want to hit all the bases. And so when opportunity came, especially for serialized storytelling, which is the streaming world, really brought that, the advent of that. I mean, I know HBO is doing it and some cable, but streaming was Totally built on serialized storytelling. So I was attracted to it because I knew if I could get a good run, I could really deliver these characters that I write about in full space, you know, and, you know, we ended up getting like 98 episodes of Bosch. There's now going to be 50 of Lincoln Lawyer. And so you can really deliver character when you have that kind of space to tell your stories. And that's pretty much why I did it.

[A]

What's a Hollywood writer's room like? Did you do that? Were you in a writer's room sort of sitting around? Or was everyone just sort of going solo and then you'd come together and edit together? What was that like?

[B]

It was fun because it reminded me a lot of my newspaper days. So I went from like a newsroom where lots of camaraderie, pranking, joking, you know, water cooler, talking. And then when I reached a point where I could be a full time novelist, I went from that to like a room by myself. It was quite a difficult transition. Just back then the noise of keyboards in a newsroom. It was so loud. Totally. And so many years go by and I'm still doing the solitary thing and we get these shows going and. And it was fun. There's about seven to nine people and you sit around a board. It's like a boardroom, big oval table and everyone has a spot, cork boards all around and. And you put up three by five cards and you kind of dope out the episodes and the season. And there's a lot of camaraderie and water cooler and pranking and joking and it was fun, it was even addictive. And I probably stayed longer than I needed to. But it's not an all day thing. Basically. Writing room is set up with eight or nine very small offices surrounding the boardroom. And like you go in there from like, you know, 10 to 12 or 10 to 2, bring in lunch. Then everyone retreats to their little offices to do the writing. They've been assigned whatever episode and so forth.

[A]

So a writer's assigned a specific episode.

[B]

Yeah, everyone contributes to all episodes in the room, you know, throwing out ideas. And then there's a boss, a creative boss called a showrunner.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And they're the kind of the final arbiter of like this is what we're going to do in that episode and it's assigned to somebody and they, they go off and write in the. Usually in the afternoons. So which I didn't have that component. So to me it was a part time thing and I'd Write at home in the mornings, go in around 10, and then come back in the afternoons and go back to my books.

[A]

We talked about Raymond Chandler a little bit, but what is it about his novels, his work, his writing that inspired you so much?

[B]

I think it was, you know, I grew up in Florida and I read his work long before I ever set foot in LA. I didn't come to LA till I was 30 years old. It was just something about the way he could use his character to capture a city. And again, it wasn't a city I'd been to, but I'd seen it in movies and TV and all that. But it wasn't a city I knew. But I felt I knew it through his books and, you know, so when I arrived at 30 to work for the newspaper, one of the first things I did was follow the track of chapter 13, where he basically circles the city, goes out through the valley, out to Malibu, and then back in through Hollywood, Santa Monica and Hollywood and all that. And it's still a track you can take. There's freeways now, he didn't take freeways, but you don't have to take the freeways. And then you'll get the kind of view that he got as he described the city along the way.

[A]

You know what I think of when I think of la, I just realized, I think of this sort of the neon and then those sort of 1950s, 1960s pastels. That's what I think about with that kind of Disneyland original font. There's sort of this, I don't know why this word came to mind, like whirly swirly sort of font. And there's a cheeriness, there's an optimism about it. And then what you get is you get these restaurants that are almost these mini worlds. Like I was driving to West Hollywood last night from LAX and I passed this diner. The diner's, you know, it's got the fake sort of palm trees and whatnot. It's got these cool sort of triangle angular shapes. It's sort of just this bygone world. And then when you go sort of Santa Monica down to Venice towards lax, you swore to get it there, but it's very distinct to this area.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I think this place still shows the massive growth that happened after World War II. Oh, absolutely. And so many of those mid century structures are still around and they're revered, you know, people who keep them exactly as they were and does make it distinctive. Especially when you get outside of the, the entertainment sectors like Hollywood. But if you go up into the Valley. A lot of it's still preserved. A lot of it doesn't work anymore, you know, or. Or has been fallen into disrepair. But the places that. That kind of revel in it. Some of those neighborhoods in West Hollywood have it. And a lot of the arcade apartment buildings, they're very cool.

[A]

So tell me this. If you were invited to a college, you got a semester to teach a course, to say, hey, this is how you do what I've. The kind of writing that I've figured out how to do. How do you structure that curriculum? What are the core principles they're trying to teach people?

[B]

Wow. I'd probably turn down the offer, but I don't know. I mean, I. I would. I would make sure everyone's writing. I have to write something every. For every class. It doesn't have to be long, but the more you do something, the better you get at it. So I'm definitely always be writing type of guy. And that would allow me to probably see someone's progression through the course of the semester. But I don't know, it's. I did take some writing class. I mostly did journalism, but I did take some creative writing classes. And I had this teacher named Harry Cruz, who was Southern gothic type of writer. I went to college in Florida, and he was more impressive to me as a. Like, he was the first actual author I'd ever physically saw was when I took the first class with him. I ended up taking four classes, but he only showed up for three of them. But yeah, he had this history of disappearing. He wrote great books, but I don't remember anything he said in three classes other than if you're going to be a writer, you got to write every day, even if it's only for 15 minutes. And that last part was really important because to. Even if you only get a chance to write 15 minutes, you're not going to lose the story. It's always going to be in your head. You'll always be in the tunnel, you know, the water tunnel, the story swirling around you, and you'll be thinking about it, and you can't wait for those 15 minutes.

[A]

You know, it's funny talking to you, talking to Lee Child. Lee Child worked in TV for a few decades, I think it was. You worked in journalism. I don't know. Maybe there's something about this genre in particular. Maybe there's something about being a novelist. Maybe there's something about being an author who sells a lot of books, where if you do something that is overtly commercial to Start with limited space. Maybe that teaches you how to communicate, trains you to write in a way that really resonates with the mass audience.

[B]

I hope so. I mean, yeah, I. I mean, I don't want to, I don't want. I don't judge anybody. But I have found that people that have come to writing novels, writing fiction from the non traditional means like journalism or TV or. A lot of lawyers, huh? Lawyers have to do a lot of writing and they have to be clear and they have to win people over. I have found that those are really good training ground for then making the jump into fiction.

[A]

Do you feel like you were talking earlier about editors wanting you to reinforce things more, be more explicit and overt in what you're saying? I think I was watching an interview. I think it was with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, and I forget who was saying it, but they were talking about how tv, in particular movies have changed. And they're saying that one of the things that's happened is you almost have to assume that people are watching it almost as a second screen. So they're making dinner while watching a movie, watching a TV show. So a lot of the plot points you need to reinforce over and over again. Do you feel like the reader has changed? Do you feel like audiobooks have changed how writing needs to be done? Or do you feel like, no, I've been doing this since 92 and it's been 20, what, 34 years, and it's basically the same craft. What was excellent in 1992 is excellent in 2026.

[B]

That's a hard one to answer. I would probably wrong, but I would say more no than yes when it comes to books. I think TV definitely has changed because I have some experience in TV and they pretty much say you can expect that someone's on their phone while they're watching your show and they know that statistically more people are watching with subtitles. But I don't know if that carries over to books. I think, I mean, I'm going to contradict myself. I was going to say books take your full attention. If you're going to read a book, sure. But if you're going to listen to the book, then you get more into that TV world because you can be driving or you can be jogging and you can be walking the dog. And I have to say that that is the growth market of publishing is audiobooks. And there's more multitasking creeping into everything, I guess. But I think as long as there are people, and they probably are dwindling as they move more towards audio and so forth. But if you're holding a book, it's hard to do anything else. Yeah.

[A]

Michael Connolly. Thank you.

[B]

Glad to be here. Thank you.

[A]

Yeah.