Harlan Coben and Bill Nighy on the Art of the Plot Twist

Connor Boyle (0:00)

Hello, I'm Connor Boyle, head of programming at Intelligence Squared. In this episode, we're joined by one of the world's most successful thriller writers, Harlan Coben, in conversation with the award-winning actor, Bill Nighy. Drawing on Harlan's new book, Plot Twist, they explore what makes and create thriller, how to keep an audience guessing, on the strange mix of self-doubt, confidence, obsession and discipline that goes into creating a best-selling story.

This conversation was recorded live at Conway Hall in London and we hope you enjoy it. Now, let's go to the episode.

Bill Nighy (0:39)

Calm down.

Crying out loud. Good evening and welcome to an evening with Harlan Coben. You might wonder, and I wouldn't blame you if you did, why I'm here.

It's actually I got off at the wrong stop. I'm here because I had the good fortune to work with Harlan recently a couple of years ago in one of his TV productions. And one of the great pleasures of the job was getting to know Harlan. And it's not often without embarrassing him, it's not often, particularly at my time of life, that you make what you can, I hope, confidently call a new friend. Yes, all right, all right. God save.

Harlan Coben (1:19)

Embarrass me, embarrass me.

Bill Nighy (1:21)

Please, what's the matter with you? You're like children. No, so, anyway, so that's why I'm here, and I'm as big a fan of Harlan as I expect, as I presume you are. So I'm gonna start with some questions, and I'm gonna start with a good place to start. Did you always know you wanted to be a writer? How did you become one, and why thrillers?

Wow.

Harlan Coben (1:45)

First of all, thank you all for being here. How great is this?

Bill Nighy (1:48)

Bill Nighy!

Harlan Coben (1:52)

I'm just so pleased that you're here, my friend. Thank you so much. Because that's the only way I can get people to actually come see me, is that they knew you were coming.

So writers, and we'll go through a bunch of them, I guarantee you I talk about, writers say a lot of things that really annoy the shit out of me. One of which is whenever they're asked, when did you first know you were gonna be a writer? The answer is always I always knew I would be a writer. When I was a four month old fetus, a pen formed in my mother's womb and I scratched out several sonatas.

And when I was five years old, this is my favorite part, children gathered around me in the playground as I told them pirate tales of whoa, now you got beaten up in my neighborhood for that and I didn't grow up in a tough neighborhood. I was in college and I worked a job at the Costa del Sol of Spain, which I know many of you went to on Thompson tours in Portland, used to be there. And I was kind of bored out of my mind because there's nothing to do when you don't really speak Spanish. I was there because my grandfather owned a travel agency and I started to write and I wrote an entire novel there. And from that, the novel was shit, it was pretentious and pompous and self-absorbed. But then I decided to write what I like, which I don't call thrillers or suspense that we do. I call it the Novel of Immersion, the book you take on vacation, but you have to keep reading it, you know, you stay in your room. When I get those emails from you kind of people saying, oh, I took the book to bed at 11 o'clock at night and I thought I'd only read about 10 minutes and the next thing I knew it was four in the morning, I'll be honest, that arouses me.

That turns me on and so that's how I started to write them.

Bill Nighy (3:49)

And tell us about your life as a writer. You write in your book that success, or at least commercial success as a writer, didn't come quickly. Tell us about that part. What inspired you to stick with it?

Harlan Coben (4:01)

It's a good question. Today's world where everybody thinks you have to be successful right away and so for those who don't know, my third book was my first Myron Bolitar novel and I got a $5,000 advance and three books later for the fourth book in the Myron series, and I don't want to brag, but by the fourth book in the series, I moved up from $5,000 to $6,000.

Didn't you have the same though? I mean, you weren't an instant star, right? You're acting, you started where?