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barrylyga OP t1_iya8kq0 wrote

Reply to comment by Ok-Character7754 in Hey there, r/books! I’m Barry Lyga, author of 27 novels in a variety of genres and I’m here to answer your questions honestly…or to make up shit if I don’t know what else to say — AMA! by barrylyga

  1. I never map it out in advance. I start with a beginning, an ending, a main character, and an epiphany the character will have. Then I write. Sometimes I'm wrong about any of those things, but those are the four things I need to get started.

While writing, I will often jot notes to myself about how I see things playing out, but I stay flexible. Nothing is written in stone.

  1. Inspirations? Wow, so many... Classics like Milton, Poe, whoever the hell wrote Beowulf... Genre guys like Haldeman and King... Comic book writers like Moore, Levitz, Bates, Conway... John Barth. Timothy Hallinan. Mark Frost!

  2. Cliches... Lean into them, then lean far away. Let the reader think they've seen it before, then take a hard, HARD left turn.

It's funny you mention the "street urchin who can save the world" trope because I always wanted to write a book where a Mysterious Stranger knocks on a kid's door and is like, "You are the Chosen One! Only you can save us!" and the kid is so freaked out he commits suicide. And it's, like, page 4. What the hell happens next???

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Ok-Character7754 t1_iya9t5n wrote

Thanks you very much for such a detailed response I really appreciate it. Aha that would be amazing I would 100% read that and would love the morbidity of it. I have just been reading up on your ‘ I hunt killers ‘ series so I can see how you enjoy flipping the cliches on there heads. Anyway again thanks for the pointers, I’m away to get the first in your series on my kindle 😊

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