Gone Girl

The crisis in Gone Girl grows out of Nick's own mistakes. Nick flubs the police interview, takes a selfie, and accidentally flirts with a woman bringing a casserole, so his own traits make things worse. Flynn calls her thrillers character driven and says the twist was never the reason she wrote the book.

She builds a story rather than planning suspense, piling crisis on tension until the dread arrives as a side effect. She points to Scott Smith's The Ruins and A Simple Plan as books where everything is the characters' fault just by being themselves.

How I Write▶ 3:25

A slow first half works if something keeps happening. Flynn built Gone Girl's long first half like the clicks up a roller coaster, with small events piling up so the twist lands harder. Some readers nearly put the book down before the twist, yet it sat at number one for weeks.

She disagrees with the note that audiences quit if nothing happens in five minutes. "If you're doing a slow burn, you have to earn it."

How I Write▶ 38:20

Nailing down logistics lets readers follow a bonkers plot. Flynn wrote Gone Girl in a basement room covered in sticky notes and checked details such as whether the FBI could date Amy's handwritten entries, which fixed a plot hole.

She writes first, then asks experts whether something could happen, not whether it would. "I think people go there with me cuz I nail things down."

How I Write▶ 41:30

Readers follow a character they are curious about, not one they like. Early rejections of Sharp Objects said women only want aspirational heroines like Bridget Jones; Gone Girl proved that wrong. Flynn's only test for a character is whether the reader wants to know more.

She writes violent, layered women because fiction had plenty of male anti-heroes and few anti-heroines. Curiosity comes from a hidden motive or choices that don't add up.

How I Write

Flynn knew she had Amy when she heard her in daily life. Standing in a supermarket line, she caught herself thinking Amy would hate the woman ahead of her. She gets the voice by living inside the character, like a method actor.

"I knew I had Amy when I was standing in the supermarket line one day."

How I Write▶ 1:05:00

Cool Girl came from a three-pages exercise written just for itself. When stuck, Flynn writes three good pages that may never be used; the Cool Girl essay was written in a single afternoon that way. She cut it and restored it twice, keeping it because it was only a page and she liked it.

Earlier attempts at Amy's backstory, parents running a bespoke dating agency and Nick and Amy as rival columnists, felt too on the nose or like an Aaron Sorkin script. Her rule is that exercises are not written for the book, or they turn self-conscious.

How I Write

The setting moved because Chicago gave Amy too much room. Flynn wrote about 100 pages set in Chicago before it stopped making sense: the city offered too much chance to remake yourself. Amy had to be dragged from her beloved New York to a place she resents, and Missouri fit.

She likes the Midwest because it is under-written, neither southern nor big-city noir, so she can make it gothic. She found New York harder to write because everyone thinks they already know it.

How I Write▶ 6:00

Flynn wrote about three versions of Gone Girl rather than switching books. She treats writer's block as ordinary problem solving and stays in the same book; starting a new one means hitting the same wall about 50 pages in.

She spent most of her twenties learning not to abandon a book at the hard part. "Don't start another book."

How I Write▶ 33:00

Write the opening last, once you know the book. Flynn pictures herself diving in a few paragraphs along, then returns to write an opening that sets theme and mood. Gone Girl's opening about the shape of the wife's head makes readers uneasy about Nick.

Her husband considers the Sharp Objects opening her weakest and says she should have gone back to fix it.

How I Write▶ 1:07:36

Cut any scene whose reason you can't say aloud. Writing the screenplay, Flynn found Fincher acted like a good book editor by asking why each scene was there; answering either sharpened the scene or showed it should go. Her first script ran exactly 120 pages, and Fincher's first note was to put more of the book back in.

The book was number one for about 10 weeks before anyone wanted the film rights. The film was nominated for an Oscar.

How I Write▶ 1:01:35