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Chapter 1: Who is Lisa Jewell and what are her accomplishments?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
My next guest who's sitting here with me in the studio has sold over 12 million books worldwide. And those books have been published in more than 30 languages. And her twisty, turny storylines leave you turning the pages long after you promised yourself that you'd turn in for the night. And I say that from personal experience. Her new book is called It Could Have Been Her. I am.
And she's with me here in the studio, Lisa Jewell. Lisa, the reason I said that about, you know, the book, I forgot to bring your book with me today because I was very late last night, way past my bedtime. And you do that thing where you write nice short chapters. Yes. So I say to myself, I'll just do one more. I'll just do one more. And the next thing it's 11 o'clock.
That is done on purpose. That's my dream image is of a reader with their eyes kind of, you know, exhausted and trying to go to sleep, but they can't.
It's such a skill, though, isn't it? Did you have to learn how to do that for thriller type books?
I think it comes naturally because I write without a plan. I have to keep myself in the game. I have to keep myself invested in the story because I don't know what the story is until I've written it. Don't you? No, I haven't got a clue. So I'm constantly having this feeling like something needs to happen. Something needs to happen.
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Chapter 2: What inspired Lisa Jewell's new book 'It Could Have Been Her'?
Somebody needs to say something strange or somebody needs to discover something. Otherwise, this story is not going to move itself along. So that just lends itself very well to a reader's psychology when they're reading.
So when you see authors who plot out their storylines and they've everything charted, that's just, that's not you. That doesn't work for you.
It
isn't it incredible that we all do the same job and we all end up with the same product at the end of it but we all do it in such different ways and yes there are some writers who are absolutely anal about planning in advance and writing long outlines color coding whiteboards mood boards research um and then there are writers like me many writers like me who just open up their laptop and type chapter one and then just get going and see what happens but do you need a spark
Do you need something to fire off? There is always a spark. And when you actually get to the end of one of my books, you wouldn't know what the spark was because the spark gets lost in what actually ultimately becomes a full length 90,000 word story. But the spark is the thing that has that has to get me onto the page.
Last night, my heart was thumping when I was reading about Jane, the main character, 25 years ago, having had a few drinks on her own, not feeling great in a pub, having a chat with this man who says to her, come and work with my family as a nanny. And she gets in the car and she goes with him and it's a Very, very strange, odd situation that she finds herself in in the house.
Was that the spark for that book? You would think, wouldn't you?
Yeah, I thought it was. Actually, that got added in on the third or fourth draft of the book because my editor had said Jane turns out to be the sort of amateur sleuth of the book. And she said, I don't know what her motivation is for being so invested in this missing girl case. Why is she so invested? And I had to find a reason for her to be invested.
I thought, what about if the house that the girl's gone missing from is a house that she remembers from her long distant youth? So that's where that came from. So that was absolutely the antithesis of the spark. That's so interesting.
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Chapter 3: How does Lisa Jewell create suspense in her writing?
She's walking them on her land. And this little white Westie appears from nowhere. Yeah, a lost dog. She takes it to the vet, has the chip check. Turns out that this dog actually comes from London. Yeah. So she decides to take a day trip to London to return this dog to its owner.
And as she approaches the house, that's when she realises, and now you know the truth of this, that this happened later down the road, that that was the house that she visited when she was in her 20s with the strange man who made her feel very uncomfortable. So actually it was the dog. The dog that took you into the story. But really the dog is nothing to do with the story. Lovely dog, but...
Not really pivotal to the meat of the story, just gets the story going.
And Jane is a woman in her 50s. She's 55, yes. She's lived a life. She has. She's still living a life.
She's still living her best life, absolutely.
Still looking for the old adventure, isn't she? Yes, yes.
She's certainly not looking for a man or a happy ever after. She's just looking for the next chapters of her life.
I loved her for that reason.
You get into your mid-50s and you think... I don't want to sound morbid, but you think I've got another good 20 years. What are those next 20 years going to look like? And that's exactly where we find her at that spot of like, you know, I'm healthy. I'm fit. I'm here. I'm alive. I've survived so much. I'm awesome looking.
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Chapter 4: What role does spontaneity play in Lisa Jewell's writing process?
I'm so cool. Everybody loves me. But what are the next 20 years of my life going to be about? So that's where we find Jane. And I just think that's a very interesting juncture in a woman's life.
And if I go back then to None of This is True, which was another big hit for you, that's sort of based around the true podcast world, isn't it? Was that something that you were listening to, those podcasts?
I would say less podcasts and more Netflix documentaries. I very much wanted to recreate that sense of unease and disbelief that you have when you're watching those strange Netflix documentaries about people all around the world being manipulated and coerced and controlled and believing... believing the lies of scammers.
So you're sitting there going, how did that happen?
How did that happen? How did they allow that person into their lives? How did they believe all these lies? So it was less about the podcast and more just about the fact that while we're sitting here living our normal lives, there are people out there being manipulated and controlled and living the strangest, strangest stories.
And I just wanted to get into one of those, a sort of collision between two people who should never have met.
And that book has taken on a life of its own now as well, hasn't it? What's happening with it?
Oh, what's happening with it? Well, it's still selling very well. It's still one of my most popular and well-liked books in terms of a Netflix TV movie, which, you know, I mean, the whole thing is based around this Netflix documentary that's made about the events of the book. So, of course, Netflix... snapped up the rights to it when they became available. It's still going.
I mean, it's just a slow, slow process. Has that happened to you before that someone has come and said, oh, we want to turn this into X-Men? Every single one of my books... And it's kind of, I've learned not to get frustrated about it because there's no point because it's just, they enter into your lives, these TV producers and film producers, and they are genuinely excited.
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