Everyone who has ever tried to write crime fiction understands the importance of pacing. It’s not enough to have a plot that sounds exciting on the jacket copy—getting the plot to move in a way that keeps the reader breathlessly turning pages is another matter altogether.
When I first read Alex Finlay’s work, I understood what people meant when they said they couldn’t put a book down. Every chapter tipped me over into the next; every scene made me want to go on to the next one. When I contacted Alex to see if he’d be up for an interview for this series, I was hoping we could talk about how he structures a story to maintain that sense of fervent anticipation, but I had no idea that he’d introduce me to another master of pacing: Terry Hayes, author of I Am Pilgrim and the forthcoming The Year of the Locust. Hayes knows how to keep the reader on the edge of their seat, and more impressively still, he manages to keep it up for over six hundred pages.
Why did you choose I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes?
I read it for the first time about a decade ago, and it was one those rare books that you just can’t wait to get back to. There are a lot of great books out there, but those ones that make you just want to rush back home or finish dinner quickly so you can get back to them—those are few and far between. It was so compelling to me as a reader, and as a writer, I marveled at how Terry Hayes broke convention. I can’t imagine going to my editor and pitching a six hundred plus page thriller, for one thing, and he kept me going through the whole thing.
I also admired the way he switches things up on the reader. The first scene is what seems like a fairly normal crime—a body found dissolved in acid in a bathtub—but then it blows up into this epic journey with the fate of the world at stake. For me, that was just great.
Do you know Terry Hayes, or have you heard anything about the editing process for this novel?
I don’t know him, but around the time the book came out, I was writing this column for Suspense Magazine that was called something like “America’s Favorite Suspense Authors on the Rules of Fiction.” Over a two-year period or so, I interviewed something like seventy of the leading crime, thriller, and mystery writers, and it was a great education for me, but I also used it as an opportunity to meet some people whose work I admired. Terry Hayes isn’t an American, but I threw him in the mix, and I remember talking to him a little bit about the length. He said it was actually fifty thousand words longer when he signed the contract, so that was interesting. He had to cut it down from that first draft.
I’ve been reading a lot of spy novels for this series. Terry Hayes seems so confident in the way he portrays the world of espionage, which it sometimes seems that nobody really understands. How do you think he makes it so plausible and so convincing?
I’m not a spy novel reader myself, so maybe it seems authentic to me because I’m not tapped into that world. I felt like he captured a vibe, and it’s kind of intangible. That’s a long-winded way of saying that I don’t really know how he did it, but it’s definitely convincing to me too.
I’d love to talk about the structure of this novel. There are all these quick cuts between chapters, and nearly every chapter ends on a cliffhanger, which is part of what makes it such a propulsive read. Do you know anything about how he planned it out?
I don’t, but I think tapped he into something about how our attention spans have changed for the worse in the last couple of decades. I think he realized that one way to combat that for readers is to give them a lot of stimuli. With him, it’s constant changes of pace, changes of character, changes of time. Who doesn’t like to mix it up a little bit? Each chapter, each vignette, is so interesting in itself, and they function almost like short stories, but they also connect up to the main storyline in this really brilliant way.
This book has been optioned, and it’s easy to imagine it as a movie. Because Terry Hayes has done so much screenwriting, I assume that he was thinking in those terms when he was writing too. Do you have any thoughts on the way he employs the techniques of film in this novel?
I’ve seen some of his movies, but I don’t see any of that necessarily in the book other than with the pacing maybe. I haven’t written any screenplays myself, though I’ve read a lot of books on the format for a novel I was writing that included snippets of a screenplay. The form definitely suits my writerly tastes. You know, some writers love to describe everything in detail, the emotions and the trees and the house, but that’s not my style. I can write dialogue all day, and then I’ll often just put a note to myself to fill in the details of what the place looks like.
Even though this book is very fast-paced, there are about a million different settings and Hayes makes you feel like you’re there with every one. How does he do that, and without much description?
I think it’s the little details. There’s a scene near the beginning where the main character drives over the hill into Paris and sees the Eiffel Tower on the horizon. Hayes doesn’t have to throw the travel guide at you, because little details like that help me to visualize it in my head. For me, that’s the gold standard for thriller writing—when you can use very few words, but create a whole picture in someone’s head.
Do you think Hayes did a lot of research for this book? How do you approach research in your work?
Well, either he did a lot of research or he’s like that guy in the commercial, the most interesting man in the world. I mean, we go from forensics to Swiss banking to torture methods, and there are about a thousand other subjects that he seems to know inside and out. My approach is basically backwards: I write the whole book, guess about anything I don’t know, and then, about three weeks before my deadline, I frantically start calling experts. I don’t want to get a lot of angry emails, basically, but it’s totally the most inefficient and backwards way to do it. On the other hand, I feel like if I started with the research, I’d probably procrastinate and just get lost in the sauce and never get words on the page
Do you know anything about Hayes’s forthcoming novel, The Year of the Locust? I looked it up, and it looks like it’s been delayed since 2015. Do you think it’s ever coming out?
I’ve been tracking it, since Pilgrim is such a favorite of mine. The publisher and Hayes put out a press release, and it’s coming out in February 2024. When I spoke to him, he said he envisioned Pilgrim as the first book in a trilogy, but I don’t think this book is part of that series. He obviously writes at his own pace and does what he wants to do, which is pretty admirable.
Is there anything else that you learned from this novel that you think you might use in your own work?
This book is a great example of a really elaborate structure with multiple perspectives and multiple timelines. And I think it’s a masterclass in writing a great hook, in the sense that the first chapter really reels you in. But I also think this book is kind of proof of the old saying that there are no rules in writing as long as you can pull it off. I’m not generally a no-rules person–
I do think there are elements of craft that are probably necessary for aspiring writers who want to get in the door. On the other hand, this was a debut novel and Hayes certainly broke every rule. It’s inspiring, if not practical, and I was saying to my wife this morning, “I want to write a book like Pilgrim someday.” I’d love to do something epic like that. It’s just great.
