"Michael Connelly is a crime novelist who's famous for series like Harry Bosch and The Lincoln Lawyer. And combined his series have sold more than a hundred million books. But then also they've become ..."

"How do you dream up vivid characters? How do you write about a city, a town, or a place? And if you're somebody you want to write, you want to come up with stories. You want to imagine worlds and put ..."

"I switched over from other more traditional banks because Mercury is so well-designed. It's easy to get started. It's easy to use while also feeling totally legit and secure. And Mercury gives me all ..."

"All right, back to the episode. I want to hear about detail. What do you focus on when it comes to details bringing stories to life? And what is it that writers get wrong? I spend a lot of time with t..."

"And that's what I mean by telling detail. Instead of five details, you pick the one that says something about the situation, the character. You know, I I often tell this story. I was one time sitting ..."

"Yeah. as you're as you're writing detail and you're working through drafts, do you feel like those details are something that come out in the editing process and the rewriting, the rewriting, okay, ok..."

"And how does that work? Is it like okay I got draft one on the left side of my screen. I'm going to rewrite it draft two. Is it like I'm going paragraph by paragraph? How does that rewrite happen? Wel..."

"like a little personal code language. Yeah. Like uh RW means like rewrite this whole paragraph. NSG means not so good, you know. Um which I got from sadly from my mother once who was reading one of my..."

"Now, tell me about truth, right? Because at least at the surface, very crude reading. You're like, "Okay, write fiction. Fiction is the opposite of truth." But no, it seems like in your when you're wr..."

"Yeah. I mean, there's two things. One is I was a journalist for a long time before I uh started started doing this. Um I covered courts and I covered crime for about 14 years. So it gives me a kind of..."

"Okay. So, you're saying always be writing. So, like what's any given Tuesday like? I don't know what you do today. Did you write today? Is it How do you structure your life in order to get writing don..."

"Um you were talking in the last question about details and I really didn't answer but that the the answer is character. Um, you know I write books about a person a character at the center of a book wh..."

"Yeah. And so I'm constantly picking stuff out of the the real world that's that has happened or is happening to uh put into my books and see how my characters react to it. What do you like so much abo..."

"Well, I think it starts with the uniqueness of the places you just have um mentioned. It's got all this stuff. It's got mountains, deserts, uh ocean. Um it the variety is pretty amazing and it's also ..."

"Yeah. I went back and there's a little sisters by Raymond Chandler and I know that that book inspired you. So I just read I think it's your favorite chapter, chapter 13 and this stuck out to me about ..."

"Um but uh I'm not sure I don't know if it's on there but I think that book was published in 1939 and uh some of those descriptions are are right on right now. And you know to pull that off the you kno..."

"Well, you can see the details you're talking about, right? And I pulled another another quote. Malibu, more movie stars, more pink and blue bathtubs, more tufted beds, more Chanel number five, more Li..."

"Okay, so we're talking about how do you get your writing done and if you're thinking about work and how you can be more productive there well I recommend a tool called Base Camp. Basecamp is a project..."

"And I had the founder of Base Camp, Jason Freed. He came on the show and I noticed that he really cares about writing. He cares about manifestos. He cares about great copy. He cares about telling a gr..."

"Um but I but that was a that's a character thing. I I didn't want him to say yes or no. I just want him to nod. Um, but I I there's just little I don't know if you want to call them tricks, but there'..."

"Tell me about conflict. How does conflict let character unfold? Let the story keep that momentum. Well, I would say the uh one of the best pieces of advice I ever read. I didn't get this personally ob..."

"um you know and uh and again that shows something about character that a in the first place he is a smoker and uh it shows that he's kind of stepped outside of um traditional or standard society and h..."

"Well, it's like what's your guy doing in in the car while he's not moving because this is LA, you know? Um or what does he do to avoid it? I mean, it gets a little bit like that Saturday like Saturday..."

"Yeah. How does place um become a character? You know, like even just reading what people have written about your work, they're like, man, the city of Los Angeles is a character. It's not just like the..."

"I I need an idea I want to explore. You know, I just had a book come out that is a legal thriller, but it's about AI. It's a technology a lot of people don't understand. A lot of people are afraid of...."

"Well, I did some some research or I should say I had my researchers give me stuff and and and that's what's wonderful about a a courtroom thriller because you have you just bring in witnesses and then..."

"And uh I mentioned uh Chandler, one of Chandler's essays where he said the detective has to pierce all levels of society. Uh so when I was writing my first published novel, the Harry Bosch novel in th..."

"Yeah. The paintings in Madrid at the Praau once I was over there on a book tour and my publishers arranged for me to go into the Praau while I was closed and spend an hour in front of that painting I ..."

"Oh, really? My mistake. Wow. Um dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. It's fake, but it's real. It's real, but it's fake. I mean, you're you know, it's so core to what a story is, but also a dialogue in a boo..."

"And so if I quoted like a police detective, the quote had to have information that I felt the reader needed and that wasn't repeated in the body of the story. And um that was, you know, my practice fo..."

"the editors generally want things to be more obvious. >> Yeah. Okay. and or uh you know I get the things in the margin about uh wanting more to explain what's going on here. But um um I eminently trus..."

"Yeah. As you were saying that, I was thinking about uh during the holidays every year there's there's there's conflict that shows up in conversations and it's people talking about the stuff going on i..."

"Tell me about uh heroes and villains. How villains magnify the hero and how the hero magnifies the villain. It's funny. I uh I don't spend a lot of time on villains. Um I you know there's writers who ..."

"you know with Richard Price and Kurt Vonagget and all that. >> What's the bad guy thinking? >> Yeah. You know you might be writing about the good guy. I might be writing about Harry Bosch, but you got..."

"You know, we were talking about how when you're writing a novel about a murder, most people haven't experienced that. So then you have to make things that are relatable, being in traffic, going to the..."

"What matters at the start of the book, hooking people in, setting the scene. I I would say if you looked at my early books, I did have the the trigger. Um to me, it's like a slingshot. You you have so..."

"So, page 30, walk me through I don't know what do you without giving too many details about the book if you don't want to, but like where are you at on page 30 in the book? You got a general sense of ..."

"Yeah. I mean, you're unique in that out of all the writers I know who've had their work commissioned into movies, TV shows, you seem to be just about the most involved in the on-screen stuff. And my q..."

"Tell me more about TV is about what you're doing. Books are a little bit more about what you're thinking. >> Yeah, it's just it's visual storytelling and and it also one of the hesitations. It looks l..."

"What's a Hollywood writer's room like? Did you do that? Were you in a writer room sort of sitting around or was everyone just sort of going solo and then you'd come together and and edit together? Wha..."

"We talked about Raymond Chandler a little bit, but what is it about his novels, his work, his writing that inspired you so much? >> I think it was, you know, I grew up in Florida and I read his work l..."

"So, tell me this. If you were invited to a college, you got a semester to teach a course to say, "Hey, this is this is how you do what I've kind of writing that I've figured out how to do." How do you..."

"you know, it's funny talking to you, talking to Lee Child. Lee Child worked in TV for few decades I think it was you worked in journalism. I don't know maybe there's something about this genre in part..."