Essential Storytelling: A Conversation With Brian Freeman

Brian Freeman is author of the thrillers Immoral and Stripped, which are available now in paperback from Headline. Immoral won the Macavity Award for best first novel and was a finalist for the Edgar Award for best first novel and the CWA New Blood Dagger Award. Stripped was named one of the top 10 mysteries of 2006 by a leading American reviewer. His third novel, Stalked, is due out in the UK in September.

In this Tangled Web exclusive, Brian talks about his approach to thrillers and his influences among other writers.

One of the most common questions I get from readers is: Who are your influences? That’s a tougher question than it sounds. As writers, we work very hard to carve out a distinctive niche for ourselves in style, character, and plot. On the other hand, inevitably, we also stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. When I was growing up, I read authors like James Michener, Leon Uris, Irving Wallace, and Robert Ludlum. My work today may not bear much similarity to theirs, but I learned essential storytelling lessons from them. And I’m still learning lessons from other authors.

Take Michael Connelly. One of my priorities as a thriller writer is pace. I’m a fanatic about pace – constructing a book where the reader has to keep turning the pages to find out what happens next. That’s partly a function of laying out the story in a way that pulls the reader from one chapter to the next. However, it’s equally a function of style. What I love about Connelly is the cleanness of his writing. He doesn’t let his voice get between the reader and the story. You don’t even notice how good the writing is until you go back and study his construction of sentences and paragraph, to see how elegant they are. That’s the standard I reach for when I’m editing my own prose.

Peter Robinson offers a different lesson about characters and settings. One of my other priorities as a thriller writer is to build characters who struggle with difficult moral choices. The heroes are not all good, and the villains are not all bad. In fact, many readers have commented that the most “immoral” character in my first novel was the victim. I see that kind of depth in Robinson’s characters, and I see something else, too – a dramatic sense of place. Thrillers are enriched by extremes, and the cold loneliness of Yorkshire comes alive as a character in Robinson’s books as much as his people. I try to do the same in my books, whether it’s the bitter winters of Duluth or the seamy, scalding Strip in Las Vegas. Making your setting real is a part of making all your characters real.

So when I construct a book, I’m always building on the experience I’ve gained as a reader. The next question is, what do you bring to the pages that’s truly yours? My books involve crimes, detectives, and complex puzzles, but I wouldn’t call my books police procedurals. I’m trying to cover a different landscape. My focus isn’t on the minutiae of how the crime gets solved. Instead, it’s about untangling the emotional and psycho-sexual backstory that made the crimes happen in the first place. I don’t generally write about murders driven by cold motives like money. I write about emotions that carry ordinary people away like a tidal wave. I hope that’s why readers respond to the books, because they see a part of themselves in every character.

Want to continue the conversation? Talk to Brian about his books Immoral and Stripped by sending him an e-mail at brian@bfreemanbooks.com.