Ken Follett Quotes
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I'm a great planner, so before I ever write chapter 1, I work out what happens in every chapter and who the characters are. I usually spend a year on the outline.
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Movies have influenced all writers, not just thriller writers.
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The research is the easiest. The outline is the most fun. The first draft is the hardest, because every word of the outline has to be fleshed out. The rewrite is very satisfying.
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I went and looked at one of these great cathedrals one day, and I was blown away by it. From there I became interested in how cathedrals were built, and from there I became interested in the society that built the medieval cathedral. It occurred to me at some point that the story of the building of a cathedral could be a great popular novel.
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The CIA's research program is described in a book called The Search for the Manchurian Candidate.
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I don't think there's any great mystery to writing female characters, so long as you talk to them. If you lived in a monastery and never met any women, maybe it would be difficult.
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There was a very serious communist strain among American intellectuals before the war. America was a more tolerant place in those days, and Communists were not treated as pariahs. That ended with the McCarthy era.
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Thrillers have been traditionally very masculine books; the women characters often rather decorative.
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When I'm writing a woman character, I don't think, 'What would a woman do?' I just think, 'What would this character do in this situation?'
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I started writing stories in my spare time.
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For success, the author must make the reader care about the destiny of the principals, and sustain this anxiety, or suspense, for about 100,000 words.
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We all now tell stories by cutting from one dramatic scene to the next, whereas Victorian novelists felt free to write long passages of undramatic summary.
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I start with the history, and I ask myself, 'What are the great turning points? What are the big dramatic scenes that are essential to telling the story?'
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There is no point in asking a man a question until you have established whether he has any reason to lie to you.
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I like to create imaginary characters and events around a real historical situation. I want readers to feel: OK, this probably didn't happen, but it might have.
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I wanted to be some kind of captain of industry. Then I wanted to be in advertising, and then I wanted to be a newspaper reporter.
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There is a real connection between Philosopy and fiction.
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Well, for people who want to write best sellers, the best advice I can give is to say that the novel has to engage the reader emotionally.
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With hindsight, we see that the Soviet Union never had a chance of world domination, but we didn't know that then.
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The thriller is the most popular literary genre of the 20th century.