Unlike Jessica, I’ve worked hard to accept that failure is normal, that there’s no one right way to be, and that if I tell myself I’m successful, poof! I am. I’m the arbiter of value in my own life. Who else’s opinion matters, in the end?
Jessica tries to think of herself and others as “good” or “bad.” Do you think people can be just one or the other? Do you think book characters follow the same rules?
I don’t think anyone is good or bad—I think we all hold a range of possibilities, and our circumstances tug, seduce, compel, or command certain things out of us. These interactions form patterns of behavior that concretize over time until, often, the way we behave is more a matter of habit.
I think the fact that we can recognize a range of possibilities within ourselves and within one another is the reason we find storytelling so compelling. We want to trace the good in the people we might otherwise call bad, uncover the bad in the people who appear good. We’re all hungry to explore our complexities through book characters, so in that way, I do think they follow the same rules （the interesting ones, at least!）。 The license book characters have is they get to explore the outer limits of our good and bad tendencies, extremes most of us wouldn’t be able to get away with. So in that way, reading a book is like watching an experiment unfold: What could happen if I leaned into certain possibilities within myself?
As much fun as it is to watch your characters crumble, you highlight the weight of trauma, insecurity, toxic friendships, and expectations bearing down on them. Do you have any advice for college students, or anyone else, who are trying to manage that weight?
My advice is hard-earned from personal experience, so it might not be right for everyone. With that said, the most important thing I have done is to work on no longer feeling ashamed of myself or anything that’s happened to me. That’s my advice: let go of shame and guilt. Shame can creep in and manifest as a lot of other things—anxiety, sleeplessness, anger—so take the time to really explore yourself and the weight you’re feeling. Look at yourself the way you would a book character, putting together the narrative of your life and thinking about the many events that have shaped you, shaped your desires and your actions, good and bad. See yourself in your complexity, and then give yourself the grace and forgiveness you would give any interesting, complex character.
For anyone struggling with sexual trauma, allow yourself to feel the way you feel. Don’t get tamped down or hushed up by the world. Be full of rage, if you are full of rage. Allow yourself time to stop the world if you need to. Know you are loved in the full complexity of who you are and that you are not alone.
The best thing I discovered in college was that I had access to free counseling. （This is true of grad school, too.） What a gift. Talking to someone else about how you’re feeling is healing.
When all your characters have secrets, how do you get to know them? Did you have their failures and alibis mapped out before you began writing, or did you figure out their roles as you went?
Ah, people’s secrets are the best way to get to know them! That’s actually how I dove into each of my characters—I went right for the jugular. I do a ton of character and relationship mapping before writing any book, and especially for this one. I wrote pages about who each character was—not just the surface stuff but, more importantly, how they saw themselves, what they wanted in their heart of hearts, what stood in the way of getting what they wanted, and what, if taken from them, would make their lives crumble. Then I mapped their relationships with each other （Jessica and Mint; Mint and Caro; Frankie and Coop; etc.） and particularly with Heather. I was looking to understand how Heather could threaten each of them in ways that would make them plausible suspects, so she had to be connected to what they most wanted and were most afraid to lose.
Once I feel like I know what makes my characters tick, then I turn to plot. The plot grows logically and usually organically out of characters’ worst fears and deepest desires, and how those things interplay. And yes—I keep a very meticulous account of alibis and timelines! I actually overwrite those parts for myself beforehand, so I go into writing each scene knowing more than what’s explicitly on the page. Hopefully it contributes to a larger mood and tension.
How did you keep everything—the repressed memories, the motivations, the insecurities—straight once you figured them out?
I devoted a lot of time to imagining who each character was and how they felt about each other and themselves, so I felt like I knew my characters inside out. By the time I started writing In My Dreams I Hold a Knife, it was almost like they were friends whose stories I’d absorbed. After my pre-writing, I wrote an extremely meticulous outline, chapter by chapter, where I color-coded the different storylines so I could literally visualize the plots weaving together.