Dave Eggers

when an actor will take a character infinitely further than you even wrote on the script, because it's theirs now.

But for me, I guess, you know, there are all kinds of scars and things that happen to these two, and every time they come back together, they come back with all of their baggage and scars from in between, but most of it is

at least alluded to, even if we don't get a full recounting of it.

But it's so funny how quickly you can just gesture at something and be like, well, that was that time, you know, that stretch when I was a junkie.

And like, you can pick up everything from that.

And...

If you trust the reader, which you always should, they want that too.

They don't want it to be over explained and talked down to and have it like, all right, now we're going to go through what it's like to, you know, fall into a heroin spiral and whatever.

It's like, especially these two

talk to each other with a real top spin and a real like, it's quick and banter that you have somebody you've known all your life.

They can't get away with anything with each other, which is the case with, you know, I've had the same friends since grade school and there's no pretending on anything.

They know you inside and out.

I took no creative writing classes in my life outside of one in high school.

I was a painter and then journalist.

And so I'm like weirdly ignorant about how regular college or MFA programs work.

But I taught.

We have this center called 826 Valencia.

It's like a writing and tutoring center in San Francisco.

And we publish student work.

I would work with high schoolers every week.