Chris Whitaker is the award-winning author of Tall Oaks, All the Wicked Girls, and the New York Times bestseller We Begin at the End. Chris’s latest book, All The Colors of the Dark, is a Read with Jenna book club pick and is currently being adapted for television. We sat down with Chris to discuss all things writing related.

Tell us how you got into writing.

Through therapy actually. I was mugged and stabbed and had PTSD, I didn’t know it was PTSD because I wouldn’t ask for help from everyone. I found my way to the library, I’m a big library goer, and I borrowed a self help book with a technique where you take the traumatic incident and write about it. You change the people involved to fictional characters, you change the location to the last place you were happy and you change the outcome to something you have control over. I didn’t do well in school, didn’t do creative writing or an MA, I just did this kind of writing as therapy. I didn’t want to be a writer though, but this got me through the stabbing time. I picked it up again when I lost all the money working in the stock market. It wasn’t until I was about 30 that I seriously considered writing a story. I was 30, working in the city, life seemed okay but I was really unhappy. I thought, what’s the thing I always turn to when I’m in trouble, what helps the most? And it was writing. I read a book called The Last Child by John Hart and he’d quit his successful law career to become a writer, so I followed him. I just quit my job and decided to write a book. I didn’t know that authors can get paid badly, and that it’s hard to get an agent, or a publishing deal. I earned way less and smiled way more. It was totally worth it.

Can you describe your writing process for us?

There’s never any outline, I begin with the characters, like the two line pitch I gave you and I know how the story will end. What happens from A to B is kind of an organic mess that goes on for years, I kind of write my way through it. I go down lots of dead ends, and then turn back again. It used to feel like I was overwriting, I wrote maybe half a million words for this book and then cut it back to 130K. It’s entirely necessary for me to get to know the characters. The only way to know how they react in any given situation is to put in the hard work and grind it out slowly. There’s probably a better way to do it and I could be more efficient but I have yet to find it.

What’s the biggest challenge you face with writing?

Letting go, I think. I really don’t like it. It’s the hardest part of it, to turn it over. I feel like it’s never quite finished, apart from this book. [All The Colors of the Dark] is the only book I’ve been properly nervous about publishing, because I feel at the moment, it’s the best I’ve got. It was the absolute best I could do, and by the very end of it there’s not a word in the book that I could’ve changed, and that’s the first time that’s happened.

What advice would you give to someone who is in another career and wants to become a writer, or has an idea?

I would say be fearless. I was, and sometimes I got told early on that as someone living in London, I had no business writing the stories I was writing. Had I not had the resolve and conviction to just trust what I knew to be right, that I was writing the stories I wanted to write, you need to be quite strong at the beginning because you get a lot of conflicting advice and the only person whose opinion matters is your own.

How has your style, or writing changed since you started writing?

The scale, the scope of the story has changed massively. I feel more confident as a writer, I feel better able to describe what I can see in my mind. I think the character’s are a lot deeper, Duchess was the first time I was like, “I’m going to spend a year in the life of this character and get to know everything about her. I don’t have anything in common with her but I’m confident I can do this” and I certainly wouldn’t have done that in books one and two. The first book was slightly more plot driven. It’s just evolving, I care way more about the characters. I still love my debut and the characters in it, but Duchess, Patch, Saint, they’re kind of etched in my heart.

How do you challenge yourself with each successive novel you write?

I don’t see it necessarily as a challenge, I just think how much more can we get to know someone, can we get to know the character? That’s the basis of it. If writing Duchess was looking at a girl’s life over 12 months, what happens if we take this level of detail, and get to know two characters or a group of characters or a town over 27 years? Is it possible to do it and can it be done in one book? The answer throughout was, it can’t be done, but it was at the end, when I felt like I was in the dark, my editors come in and show you the way, like flashlights through the dark, they guide me to the story I want to tell and help me tie it up. It was tough – every time I finish writing a book, I think I can never do it again. I really genuinely think that, like I can’t possibly do this again because it shouldn’t be this hard. But I do it again, and I’m doing it again now.

All the Colors of the Dark

All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker

In 1975 America, girls are disappearing in Monta Clare, Missouri. When the daughter of a wealthy family is targeted, a local boy named Patch saves her, but this act leads to heartache and a quest for answers that blurs the line between triumph and tragedy. Chris Whitaker’s novel intertwines a missing person mystery, a serial killer thriller, and a love story, exploring the shadows of obsession and the light of hope. This Jenna’s Book Club pick ““hits like a sledgehammer . . . an absolutely must-read novel” according to Gone Girl author, Gillian Flynn.

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