A Conversation With Robyn Harding on the Importance of Conflict in Page-Turning Thriller Novels (Killer Writers)
I’m talking with internationally bestselling author Robyn Harding, author of the new book The Drowning Woman. “Robyn, after I read The Drowning Woman, I knew I had to talk with you about conflict. Even at home, I know you have two deadly rescue chihuahuas, so conflict is something with which you have experience, even on a personal level.” We both laugh. “I thought the book was fantastic. I read a lot of books. This was definitely a page-turner. From the first line, you had me. There’s no prologue in this book, no teaser. It jumps right into the story. Conflict: first paragraph.”
(A Conversation With Amulya Malladi.)
“The first chapter is the setup of the story,” she says. “Especially in a thriller, it’s how you set it up as enticing, exciting, and as immersing as possible. People pick up thrillers for a thrill, and adding conflict to the opening is a great way to do that. There’s so much you can learn about a character initially by putting them into some kind of pressure situation. Give her a bit of backstory so we know who she is, and then when something happens in that moment, it launches her into that story.”
Robyn Harding (Photo credit: Kyrani Kanavaros)
I’m curious. “Many thriller writers start with some sort of a prologue that has nothing to do with the current action, but you jump right into the action.”
“There’s been a little bit of backlash against the prologue in recent years,” she says. “Whereas it’s more challenging—and maybe more fulfilling—to add another plot point as opposed to taking something that happens later in the book and bringing it to the front. Starting with something active and exciting that’s not really part of the inciting incident produces an intense and emotional scene right off the bat.”
“Starting in the action of the actual story. Robyn, all of your characters are completely at odds, not only with each other, but each within herself. It’s conflict, conflict, conflict. Inside.”
“It’s a fish-out-of-water scenario. One of my protagonists was a successful businesswoman, ran her own restaurant, and she ends up homeless. Her whole internal conflict is this is not who I am, this is not how I want to be looked at, I don’t want to be judged, because she doesn’t see herself as a homeless person. And that’s sort of the first line of the book. How did I view the homeless before I became one of them? She’s suddenly fallen into a point that she never could have seen herself getting to.”
“And that makes for a great opening.” It makes me think. “It’s a great technique throughout the book.”
“Everyone who ends up in conflicting circumstances has a story.”
“And the goal then is to capitalize on that internally, what is reality and what is one’s self-image?” I ask.
“I think it comes down to stripping away security and comfort. That is a universal experience. With everything stripped away, how far is a character willing to go?”
“So that’s internally, but then you create external conflicts, as well.”
“The characters I created are damaged. One is homeless, and one is in an abusive marriage. They’re so isolated, both of them, that they need each other. But can they trust each other? Is one using the other and vice versa? And so there is a lot of inherent conflict in their circumstances. And they are so connected because they don’t have anybody else.”
“Do you find the extreme of homelessness and the other extreme of society culture presents a conflict in society itself?”
“One thing that I’m always drawn to is the facade that people present, and the judgment that is inherent in society. And so, in this case we have one character, the abused woman, living in our cliffside mansion, and she’s feeling judged by other women and society in general as a trophy wife, and she’s painting a picture of perfection when it’s anything but it. Her relationship is horrible. And then we have another woman who’s facing the judgment and scorn of being homeless when she used to be a successful member of the economy, running her dream restaurant. And now she’s suddenly looked at with scorn. There were even superficial things that I added like she loses all her make-up, and I thought even that as a woman who is used to presenting herself a certain way in society and suddenly she doesn’t have make-up, she doesn’t have her blow dryer, she doesn’t have anything that existed in her little ecosystems. All those things stripped away show that societal conflict.”
I open a page in her book. “And you used conflicts in location and nature.”
“There is a drowning scene.”
“That’s the one I’m looking at.”
“They’re in the Pacific Northwest. It has harsh environmental elements. She’s homeless. One’s abused. It’s an urban survival story.”
(A Conversation With David Baldacci.)
“For both women. And then you incorporate technology, a lot of conflict with technology. The irony of a homeless story with technology working against the human spirit.”
“Yes,” she looks up as if remembering. “I did quite a bit of research. I have a friend who was a homeless outreach worker for many, many years. And he told me about these dumb phones that people get that don’t have data, but in this day and age you cannot live without a phone, you know? You can’t get any sort of social support. You can’t pick up a shift at a job. You definitely need it. But she has a different level of technology than someone with more sophisticated technology that’s living a comfortable life.”
“And on the flip side,” I point out, “you have bad guys who are using technology in ways that make you freak out and want to throw your phone away?” I flip to another dog-eared page.
“There’s some definite spyware being employed by some of the sophisticated baddies.”
“So in terms of all of this conflict, does it come from trying to figure out at the very beginning what your characters care about?”
She thinks about it a moment. “When I write a thriller, I always start with the premise, and a premise is often conflict, right? A premise for me is often what would you do if…? There’s inherent conflict in the whole bringing two people together. Then also the wants and the needs. There’s a lot of conflict in what characters want. But then, in my case, they need to come together and help each other. But what they want is to use each other to get further. So yeah, I think that there’s, especially with a two-hander like The Drowning Woman, which specifically has two protagonists, the conflict between them is everything, even though they may at times unify, it’s sort of like they’re bumping together and breaking apart all throughout the story.”
“Almost on every single page.” I turn to another section, one with a small aside, but one that I thought mattered. “And you set really big goals for all of your characters. Everybody has a big goal. Even Randy, the bartender, has got a pretty good goal.”
“It sort of ties into every character having an arc,” she says. “Even the smaller, superficial ones. Everybody has something that’s propelling them forward. Whether they get there or not, you don’t know, some of them won’t, but it’s nice to have that propulsion.”
I lean forward. “When you write your stories—or wrote this story—do you have any tips for setting up obstacles between the characters and their goals?”
She ponders for a moment. “I think that, especially in a thriller, every chapter should be moving the story forward, but also holding the characters back from getting what they want. I know the characters are going to betray each other. I know there’s going to be a huge discovery. How bumpy can I make it for these characters? How many problems can I throw in their way? I want to make it really difficult for them to get there.”
I shift back in my chair. “Thinking, then, that’s plot twists.”
“A twist is jarring the reader’s expectations. To make it easier on yourself, think about this beforehand. Think, ‘What are the readers expecting this to be?’ and go with something completely different.”
“So there’s conflict between you and the reader on expectations of what happens. The Drowning Woman is an incredible study in conflict. I recommend readers study it. Any advice you want to give before we close?”
“One thing I always encourage writers to do is finish something.” She looks at me with dead seriousness. “It’s easy to start a project, I’ve done it myself many times, and then abandoned it, and think, ‘Oh, this isn’t the one. It’s not original enough.’ But until I actually finished projects, I didn’t really have an understanding of what it takes to write a full novel, of understanding the story structure of a whole novel. Even if this isn’t going to be the one that you send out, I think writing a full manuscript, a full story is really an important learning experience. You’ll find a sense of accomplishment.”
“And that brings us to one of the greatest conflicts,” I say, “sitting down and writing 400 pages. With all these conflicts in mind, everyone needs to do it, especially overcoming this last one.”
She smiles. “No matter what happens with it, if you wrote it, that’s impressive in itself.”
“Yes,” I say. “Yes, it is.”
____________________
Robyn Harding is the bestselling author of The Perfect Family, The Swap, The Arrangement, Her Pretty Face, and The Party. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with her family and two cute but deadly rescue chihuahuas.
Robyn’s book link: https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Robyn-Harding/2118717773