Sharp Objects

A mystery gave the drafts an engine the themes alone lacked. Flynn's early drafts of Sharp Objects were a series of conversations about women and violence that went nowhere. Attaching those themes to a murder mystery forced the plot to move because the next clue had to arrive.

She says one early draft had characters talking, then going into another room to attack a trapped bird. Dennis Lehane's Mystic River showed her the way, and the mystery let her themes be larger and less obvious. Quote: "forces you to keep moving because the next clue has to happen."

How I Write▶ 1:12:13

Flynn found the killer while drafting, then planted the clues. In the first draft of Sharp Objects the eventual murderer was not even a character. She discovers who did it as she writes, then rewrites to drop in clues and make sure none are obvious.

She calls the first pass a creative gush and the second strategic, and says it works for her rather than as advice for everyone. Quote: "Huh, that person's a killer. Weird. I did not know that."

How I Write▶ 34:00

Write the opening last, once you know the book's theme and mood. Flynn pictures herself diving in a few paragraphs along and returns to write the first paragraph after the book is done. Her husband thinks the Sharp Objects opening is her weakest and that she should have gone back and fixed it.

How I Write▶ 1:07:36

Readers follow a character they are curious about, not one they like. Early rejections of Sharp Objects said women only wanted aspirational heroines like Bridget Jones and would not read about unaspirational women. Flynn's test is only whether readers want to know more about the character, and Gone Girl later proved the rejections wrong.

Curiosity comes from a hidden motive or strange choices that don't add up. Quote: "I say nothing matters except are you interested in knowing more about this character."

How I Write▶ 20:45

Camille's own flaws make the mystery harder to solve. Camille self-harms and is back in a bad place, so she makes decisions and then tries to undo them while chasing the killer. Flynn builds suspense by putting a character's own traits in the way of the plot.

She points to Scott Smith's The Ruins and A Simple Plan as books where everything is the characters' fault just by being themselves. Quote: "tweaks of a person's own character in the way"

How I Write▶ 3:25

Sharp Objects was written to put women on fiction's dark side. Flynn wrote it at the height of shopping-and-shoes chick lit and asked where the women who don't care about shoes were. She saw plenty of male anti-heroes and few anti-heroines, and wanted violent women who are tortured, hurt and angry rather than cartoonishly evil.

She calls the idea that a woman would never hurt anyone "demonstrably incorrect" and says the novel lets her layer a violent woman by going inside her head.

How I Write

Emma came from a sweet photo with menacing eyes. A vintage photo of a little girl in braids holding a purse hung near Flynn while she wrote. The girl looks like everything a little girl should be, but her eyes say otherwise, and she became Emma.

The photo is titled Livia, after the notoriously diabolical Roman empress.

How I Write

Flynn kept writing Camille through her day job out of obligation. She wrote Sharp Objects while working on Jackass filming for her day job, because she felt she owed Camille. She describes earning a character's voice by living inside it like a method actor.

Quote: "A lot of getting published is just being a stubborn human."

How I Write