A Gentleman in Moscow

The novel began from one simple sentence about a man living in a hotel. In a Geneva hotel, Towles recognized a man in the lobby from the year before, which gave him the premise: a guy lives in a hotel for a long time. Within minutes he had set it in Russia, made the man an aristocrat under house arrest, and put the hotel across from the Kremlin, spanning the Revolution to the Cold War.

Each of his novels has started from a premise short enough to fit in one sentence. Only a premise that grabs hold gets developed. "guy lives in a hotel for a long period of time that's interesting"

How I Write▶ 13:00

Judge an idea by how many doors it opens at once. Towles calls it "the opening of doors": a promising idea feels like walking into a mansion where every door starts opening, with a room for this and a room for that. That rush told him a man trapped in a hotel could carry a whole novel, with many layers, people and events.

He does not need to write anything down at this stage; the feeling of possibilities is the test.

How I Write▶ 1:08:05

Sketch the scaffolding fast while the premise is hot. He wrote the key elements of A Gentleman in Moscow in about an hour and a half in the Geneva hotel room, and the scaffolding of nearly every key event in three days.

How I Write▶ 13:00

Plan the whole book first so the poetic mind can write freely. Towles planned the novel in handwritten notebooks for about two years, then drafted for about a year and a half, followed by two or three full revisions. If he had to solve setting, people and plot while writing, the analytical side would dampen the poetic side.

Early notebook questions were concrete: the Count meets a young girl in the restaurant who becomes his first friend; what prompts the meeting and what do they say? He thought scenes through while walking to work and wrote them by hand in whatever order grabbed him that day.

How I Write

Write the first draft for yourself, then edit as a debt to the reader. The first draft carries every whim, digression and vanity. Editing is mostly taking things out: the redundant, the cliche and the boring, until only what belongs to the story remains.

He rereads his pages as if for the first time; if a section bores him on the third read, a reader will surely find it boring. "You don't wait to become inspired and then go to your desk, because if you do that you will never make any progress."

How I Write

Ask what the character would notice, and the best details follow. The narration is third person but stays close to the Count's mind rather than omniscient, following his foibles, mistakes and humor. The line noticing the coffee was still hot, so the waiter must have run up the stairs, came from asking what the Count, who cares about cuisine, prompt service and people who do things well, would see.

Towles says at least 90% of the passages readers love are things he would never say as himself, and he would not have thought of the coffee passage on his own. When it works he thinks "well done count you nailed that." Count Rostov's French reflects Moscow society around 1900, though Towles does not speak French and weaves in every bit he knows.

How I Write▶ 20:28

Give readers the key rooms early when they stay in one place. The reader spends almost 30 years inside the hotel, so Towles established its key rooms early, letting readers feel they are walking through it as events unfold. He added and removed details until a few elements brought the space to life.

Too spare and the place could be anywhere; too specific and it becomes cold, cumbersome description. "the description can't be so spare that it could be anywhere"

How I Write▶ 9:30