Does it Take a Twisted Mind to Write Twisted Stories? | Better In Person

**Stephen Dubner** (0:00)
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Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. You are about to hear an audio version of a new TV talk show we're making called Better in Person. Our guest this week is the mega bestselling author, Harlan Coben. As thriller writers go, Coben is particularly generous. He nearly always heals your nerves, at least a little bit, after he's done shredding them.
If you would rather watch this episode, go to the Freakonomics YouTube channel, or you can watch Better in Person on Apple Podcasts. You can watch it on your phone, but really it is a TV show, so I'd suggest you use a bigger screen if you can. But like I said, this episode you're about to hear in the Freakonomics Radio feed is audio only. As always, thanks for listening.

**Harlan Coben** (1:00)
I always love this question. If you weren't a writer, what would you be? One of my friends says, a US Senator. I'm like, oh please. I'd be a duvet cover, dude. I got like no other marketable skills.
This is Better in Person with Stephen Dubner and Harlan Coben.

**Stephen Dubner** (1:20)
If you rate books for living, even if they turn out to be very successful, which is unlikely, it's even more unlikely that you will have enough leverage to turn your own books into films and TV shows. But Harlan Coben has done that. He has produced 12 series on Netflix, his books have sold 90 million copies, and he still seems to be at the peak of his powers.
I've known you a little bit for a while, and I like you a great deal. I mean, I'm just saying that. Thank you.

**Harlan Coben** (1:49)
I like you a great deal.

**Stephen Dubner** (1:50)
I appreciate that.

**Harlan Coben** (1:51)
Can we really turn the cameras off for a minute? We're done. It feels very intimate here.

**Stephen Dubner** (1:57)
But.

**Harlan Coben** (1:57)
Yes. But? Wow, I love it a but.

**Stephen Dubner** (2:01)
I'm a little bit edgy, and I'm edgy because I've been reading a lot of Harlan Coben.

**Harlan Coben** (2:05)
Uh-oh. Wow.

**Stephen Dubner** (2:06)
Like, you got your hooks in me because there are all these characters where they're placid on the surface, but very turbulent inside, where you think something is one thing and it turns out to be another where there's some fear, unknown quantity lurking, and it has me in a state of deep, I'm not going to say anxiety, I don't feel bad. I just feel, like I said, on edge. Yeah. But I want to know how you feel about making people feel that way.

**Harlan Coben** (2:37)
It's interesting. That's a different response than I usually, because at the end, usually the world comes back together.

**Stephen Dubner** (2:44)
It does, to be fair.

**Harlan Coben** (2:46)
It may not be.

**Stephen Dubner** (2:47)
At the end of each book, we're saying.

**Harlan Coben** (2:48)
I may not have happy endings. In fact, quite frequently, I like to have devastating endings. My favorite endings usually, I see how they're runaway. Runaway is one of my most devastating endings.
But the world put back together, and I think of it more as escapism, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way. So I'm actually happy about that. I do want things to linger in your head. It sounds so corny, but I still want this to be the book that you go to bed at 11 o'clock and say, I'm just going to read for 10 minutes. Next thing you know, it's four in the morning, and you're a little delirious, and you're kind of happy.
And it was, I called the novel of Emerge, and that book you take on vacation, but you don't want to leave your hotel room because you have to know what happened. And I love, as a reader, having that feeling, and the idea that as a writer, I can give that feeling to somebody makes me happy. And I hope what makes the books work, and what makes the difference is it's easy to stir the mind, it's easy to stir the pulse, but has to stir the heart. And so, I have to make you care about these people in order to work. I have no interest in action movies or action things. I'm not big on violence or gore. I never have them in my books. That sort of seems always very internal from the viewpoint of a person involved in the action sequence. What do you mean by that? So in other words, it's what you are thinking. It's like, as though I had just punched you in the face, it's not like his hand went, it's what you are thinking, oh my God, this fist is flying at me. What am I going to do? That fucking hurt, that sort of a thing. So I try to make any of the action sequence internal. When you film, it has to be complete opposite. It's external. That doesn't really interest me. When we're filming those scenes, I'm not really all that much engaged.