#197: Chris Pavone — Writing the Modern Thriller, Sustaining Tension Over Action, and Defining Success on Your Own Terms

Edgar Award–winning novelist Chris Pavone on creating tension that never lets up, editing a book to make it bigger rather than just better, and turning a single apartment building into a portrait of a whole city.

You'll learn

• Why every book has to be one clear thing before it can be anything else.
• How two decades of editing other people’s books prepares you to write your own.
• The offhand note from a legendary editor that quietly transformed a debut, and why the vaguest feedback can be the most useful.
• What it means to edit a book to make it bigger, not just to make it less bad.
• Why tension, not speed, is what truly keeps a reader turning pages.
• A counterintuitive case for telling readers what’s coming on page one, then making them wait for it.
• How to keep generating questions and withholding answers without ever feeling coy.
• The one-page document worth months of tinkering before a single chapter gets written.
• What turns a story set in a city into a genuine portrait of that city.
• When to separate your hopes from your expectations, and what success can actually look like for a working novelist.

Resources & Links

• Chris Pavone’s Website
• Chris’ Newsletter
• The Doorman
• Ernest Hemingway
• Doubleday Publishing
• John Grisham
• The Expats
• Pat Conroy
• Jamaica Kincaid
• Knopf Publishing
• Adele Parks
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• James Bond Films
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
• The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
• Jack Reacher by Lee Child

About Chris Pavone

Chris Pavone is the New York Times bestselling author of The Doorman, Two Nights in Lisbon, The Paris Diversion, The Travelers, The Accident, and The Expats, winner of the Edgar and Anthony Awards for best first novel. He was a book editor for nearly two decades and lives in New York City with his family.

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