Jennifer Lynn Barnes: Offering Readers a World to Sink Into
Jennifer Lynn Barnes is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than 20 acclaimed young adult novels, including The Inheritance Games trilogy, The Brothers Hawthorne, Little White Lies, Deadly Little Scandals, The Lovely and the Lost, and The Naturals series: The Naturals, Killer Instinct, All In, Bad Blood, and the e-novella, Twelve.
Jen is also a Fulbright Scholar with advanced degrees in psychology, psychiatry, and cognitive science. She received her Ph.D. from Yale University in 2012 and was a professor of psychology and professional writing at the University of Oklahoma for many years. She invites you to find her online at http://www.jenniferlynnbarnes.com or follow her on Twitter @and Instagram.
In this post, Jennifer discusses hitting it big 20-plus books into her career, how that allows her to dive deeper into her stories, and more.
Jennifer Lynn Barnes (credit: Kim Haynes Photography)
Name: Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Literary agent: Elizabeth Harding, Curtis Brown
Book title: The Brothers Hawthorne
Publisher: Little, Brown Books For Young Readers
Release date: August 29, 2023
Genre/category: Young Adult Mystery
Previous titles: Author of 23 prior young adult novels. Young Adult Mysteries: The Inheritance Games (plus sequels The Hawthorne Legacy and The Final Gambit), The Naturals (plus sequels Killer Instinct, All In, and Bad Blood), Little White Lies (and sequel Deadly Little Scandals), The Lovely and the Lost, The Fixer (and sequel, The Long Game). Other Young Adult Novels: Nobody, Every Other Day, Raised By Wolves (and sequels Trial By Fire and Taken By Storm), The Squad: Perfect Cover (and sequel The Squad: Killer Spirit), Tattoo (and sequel, Fate), Golden (and sequel, Platinum).
Elevator pitch for the book: The grandsons of a deceased, puzzle-obsessed billionaire deal with the lingering effects of their unusual upbringing as they confront the unknown sides of their twisted family tree and race to solve puzzles on opposite sides of the globe.
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What prompted you to write this book?
As I came to the end of the Inheritance Games trilogy—in which billionaire Tobias Hawthorne dies and leaves his entire fortune to a teenage girl he’s never met, with the caveat that she must move into his secret-passage-filled mansion and live alongside the family he just disinherited for a year—I felt like I’d brought Avery (my protagonist) through an incredible character arc, taking her from an emotionally closed-off teenager living in her car and just trying to survive to someone who was ready to take the reigns of the massive Hawthorne fortune, use her power in this world, and thrive. She’d changed and grown so much over the course of the trilogy, and I felt like trilogy was an origin story—hers!
But at the same time, I also had the sense as I finished The Final Gambit that the Hawthorne brothers—particularly Grayson and Jameson, on whom The Brothers Hawthorne is centered—were still mid-arc. Their grandfather’s final, elaborate game—namely, Avery—shook things up for both of them, setting them on their own journeys, but I ended the trilogy keenly aware that both brothers were still dealing with the scars of their upbringing and the ghosts of their past. They were still Works In Progress, still becoming.
In The Brothers Hawthorne, I really wanted to explore that—and also delve deeper into the idea, present in the original trilogy, that when it comes to the enigmatic Hawthorne family, there are always more games to be played, more puzzles to be solved, and more mysteries waiting right around the corner.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
I came up with the idea for The Brothers Hawthorne when I sat down to write out a strategic plan for what I wanted the next five years of my career to look like. This happened about two months after I’d finished the first draft of The Final Gambit (book three in the original trilogy) and just after book two, The Hawthorne Legacy, was published.
I then started alternating between revising Final Gambit and journaling on Brothers Hawthorne. The initial ideas for Jameson’s and Grayson’s stories never changed, but there was so much to flesh out and explore that I spent over a month just journaling on what I wanted the book to look like, asking myself questions and brainstorming every potential answer to them until the right combination of answers fell into place. From initial conception to publication took just under two years.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
There really weren’t with this one, other than the ongoing shock that I’ve experienced going from being a mid-list writer to one who has had a series that suddenly hit, 20-plus books into my career. I wrote my first published book when I was 19. I’m almost 40 now. As a series writer, I adapted to the reality that I never knew if I was going to get to continue a series, so I always had to balance my desire for series-long arcs with the reality that any book could be the last one in that series that I was able to sell.
To suddenly be able to stop writing with contingencies in mind and be able to unleash my full creative vision, to be able to challenge myself to think big and go as epic as I wanted? That was a totally new experience for me—and one that, this many books into my career, I never expected (or even dreamed!) that I would have.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
Across 23 prior books, I had written almost exclusively in first-person, with only one of my prior books written in third. For this book, I knew from the beginning that I wanted a very tight third-person limited point-of-view, alternating between being in Jameson’s head and being in Grayson’s head.
But what I really had to wrap my mind around, as the writing got underway, was how to structure the two stories so that each brother’s plot line had all of the big structural moments, twists, and plot points that it would have had if it were the only story in the book, while also finding a way to layer the two stories on top of each other in a way that worked.
Ultimately, in order to figure out the best points in the narrative to switch from one point-of-view (and one plot line) to the other, I had to pay a lot more attention to how each story broke down in terms of individual sequences, with each sequence being a complete and compelling dramatic unit that ended on a huge note and somehow also fed readers back into the other brother’s plot line. The biggest lesson for me here was the importance of trying to think of structure both in terms of the global story and in terms of the more micro-structure of each individual section of the book.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
The biggest thing I always want to offer readers is a world they can sink into and characters they can invest in. I’m a former psychology professor who scientifically studied the psychology of fiction, fandom, and the imagination.
I know that the relationships readers form with their favorite characters and fictional worlds can have incredible real-world effects, and from a more personal point-of-view as a reader myself, I know that when my life is hard and stressful, it becomes that much harder for me to find a book that I can really lose myself in. When a book does offer me that escape—when it makes me feel a sense of wonder and like I’m not alone, just from reading the pages—that’s an incredible gift.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Create a giant, ever-evolving list of all of your favorite things in fiction—characters, tropes, settings, tiny little details, all of it! I call mine my “Id List,” and it is ENORMOUS—just pages and pages of things that I love in books or movies for no particular reason at all.
Helicopters! Paternity revelations! Scenes set on rooftops! Characters eating ice cream! Bubbly, high-energy characters who should not be given coffee under any circumstances! Over-protective older brothers! High fantasy-style court politics! Fake dating!
In between projects, I go back to my Id List and actively work to identify more and more things that I love, and then when I begin writing a new project, I am conscious about using my Id List as license and a guide to put SO MUCH THAT I LOVE in my books. It brings me so much joy as a writer and ends up solving a surprising number of craft problems for me as well.
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While there’s no shortage of writing advice, it’s often scattered around—a piece of advice here, words of wisdom there. And in the moments when you most need writing advice, what you find might not resonate with you or speak to the issue you’re dealing with. In A Year of Writing Advice, the editors of Writer’s Digest have gathered thoughts, musings, and yes, advice from 365 authors in dozens of genres to help you on your writing journey.