In a recent First Draft Friday, I was joined by bestselling thriller author L.T. (Lee) Ryan, author of the Jack Noble and Rachel Hatch series. We discussed how to develop characters that the reader will fall in love with during the first scene.
Here are some key takeaways for authors from my conversation with Lee:
- Understand the importance of characters: Lee emphasized the significance of characters in storytelling, especially in today’s fast-paced world where readers have numerous entertainment options competing for their attention. Compelling characters are essential for hooking readers and keeping them engaged throughout the story.
- Create relatable protagonists: It is important to craft protagonists that readers can connect with on an emotional level — ones with depth, vulnerabilities and relatable motivations.
- Focus on character evolution over the course of a series: Using his own experience with the character Jack Noble, he discussed how to maintain consistency while allowing room for growth and change.
- Balance collaboration and individual creativity: Lee explained how he works with others to spark creativity, offer fresh perspectives and help overcome creative blocks.
- Craft authentic dialogue: Lee gave specific examples of how he makes dialogue realistic, snappy, and aligned with the pacing of the novel
- Structure stories for impact: Lee discussed the significance of pacing, structure and cliffhangers in thriller writing. He believes that every chapter in every genre should end with a cliffhanger.
- Keep character growth in mind: Addressing the notion of character change, Lee offered insights into handling character arcs, especially in ongoing series. While acknowledging the importance of character growth, he emphasized the need to choose pivotal moments carefully and build up to them effectively over multiple books.
- Choose moments with weight: Lee emphasized the importance of choosing moments with significant emotional weight for characters. Whether it’s a moment of introspection, decision-making or physical action, these moments should carry weight and resonate with readers.
It was a great discussion, one you won’t want to miss! Click below to watch our 30-minute recording and hear the questions we answered from the live audience. Keep scrolling if you’d prefer to read the transcript.
More info:
Try out Marlowe, our A.I., for a critique of your novel: authors.ai/marlowe/
Check out L.T. Ryan’s books on BingeBooks.
Enjoy the show? Check out our past First Draft Friday episodes.
TRANSCRIPT:
Alessandra Torre: Hello everyone, and welcome to First Draft Friday. I am joined today by LT Ryan, also known as Lee. And we’re going to be talking all about how to create compelling characters. I am so excited for this show. It is going to be fantastic. Welcome, Lee. Do you want to just introduce yourself to the audience and talk a little bit about what you write?
L.T. Ryan: Yeah. All right. LT Ryan. For the last decade plus, I have been releasing numerous thrillers on Amazon. Came back to writing after quite a big layoff, through my 20s and early 30s and, just, you know, jumped in with my own kind of style and my own way of doing it. And it’s paid off.
Alessandra Torre: Lee is modest. I mean, you didn’t talk about your success, but Lee is a superstar. So if you get a chance to, check out his books. But also, this is someone who definitely knows what they’re talking about and knows how to create characters that readers stick with. And continue. You know, read through. So let’s talk a little bit about characters and why is focusing on your characters important?
L.T. Ryan: Right. So when I came back into writing and I looked at …My mom is always my avatar reader – what does she like? What does she watch? What does she read and why? And I thought about, you know, how was I consuming at this time? Pandora was where I got my music. We were catching up on all the shows we missed while raising young children on Netflix. We were bingeing everything, even reading-wise. You know, I grew up with Stephen King and Jack Ryan, you know, reading Tom Clancy. It was really the only thing my stepfather and I agreed on was Jack Ryan. But as I got older and my attention span dwindled, I found that those were tougher to read. And I really gravitate more towards, you know, Reacher Bosch, things like that. My favorite show was 24. I love Jason Bourne, the movies. I grew up reading the books, but the movies appealed to me more so as I started thinking about it. You know, you have this limited time and this is a decade ago. And it’s even worse now. You know, Facebook was just big at that time. Now there’s so much competing for attention. So you could make people laugh or make people cry over the story. But it just requires, I think, more than that now, you have to have a character that they’re going to fall in love with and want to be there with.
L.T. Ryan: You know, so when I had this idea for Jack Noble, and it’s something that started a decade before. My in-laws live in West Virginia near the Green Bank Observatory, and there’s no cell phone signal. And I always used to think what if there was a CIA camp there training people? That kind of stuff? So this character was kind of born through that. And when I started writing him, you know, the first thing that kept coming to my mind, I got this ex-CIA agent guy who’s now this kind of criminal. He’s at the bottom of his circle and he’s, I don’t want to say is morally bankrupt. But he was definitely making more withdrawals and deposits at this time. And so he’s got this meeting with a criminal boss who wants him to do a job or complete a job. And there was a little girl, right? So I’m right there thinking, what’s going to capture my mom’s interest if I write this story? And so he stops in the middle of all this to help this little girl. When we do Book One, what is now Book One, it’s a different place in his life. He’s still got some idealism left to him. He’s much younger, and he is basically the All-American boy who is going to lose his innocence. The story starts out like 2002. He’s in Iraq when most of the focus is on Afghanistan and he and his partner are kind of just doormen for the CIA. And there’s a family that is basically being abused. And so he steps in to stop this despite the orders he has. So right away, you’ve got this guy who is willing to sacrifice himself to protect those that need protecting. And, you know, from there, I think that just kind of captures that reader right away. It gets us empathy between them. They see the situation; they feel bad. They relate to how he feels and how he dives in. Like the pet the dog or save the cat kind of moment that you have. And a lot of times it’s going to come later in a thriller. And, and for me, with the way these books opened, it just seemed really natural to have him do that.
L.T. Ryan: You know, and so the character himself is, is, not necessarily a Reacher or a Bosch, you know, he’s an act first, think second. He’s more likely to run his head through a door than knock on and ask you a question. He’s balanced out by his partner through a lot of the books in Bear. He’s a big, gigantic guy, more willing to use his brain and solve problems. And the two play off each other very, very well. You know, and as we go through this series with Jack, once you get into Book Four, it’s mostly a continuing saga and his growth as a character. We have this start up here and his fall that happens through the first three books. Then he’s at the bottom, morally bankrupt. And so now it’s a redemption cycle. Coming back, he learns he has a daughter. He’s taking care of his friends. He loses people. People die throughout the series. People come and go and the things that drive him tend to be this, this fear of losing what he’s hoping the end goal is. As he has a daughter, it’s being with her, getting to her, getting her to a safe place, escaping this life that he has. And he finally gets there and he’s just pulled right back in, has no choice, has to give her to his brother. And they disappear. And so he’s always constantly going. It’s been a decade we’ve been going and doing this series now and it’s going on Book Fifteen and readers when they pick it up say it’s like it’s home, you know.
Alessandra Torre: Yeah. Or let me, let me ask you a few questions. So you said the first one you wrote was Book Four. And was it always going to be Book Four, or was it a later thought to go through and add books beforehand?
L.T. Ryan: Yeah. So I jumped into this. I just jumped into it. I don’t go too much into my background, but basically the company I left my job for collapsed overnight, and I had time. I got a friend who was doing this and having some success at it, and they knew my background and they were like, do it. So I did it. And, at the time, I think it was, if you remember, Johnny, Sean and Dave had a podcast. They were released in this episodic format. So I released that book in five, 100 page installments. I didn’t know what I was doing, actually.
Alessandra Torre: Yeah, I remember this is all the rage. And 2013, 14.
L.T. Ryan: 2012, 13. Yeah. It just connected with me so much. So then I was, well, people were finding this and I was having a little bit of success early and they wanted to know more. So I did the prequel book, which is now Book One. So it’s going to be two series. It was a mess, and I wrote out of order and I eventually tightened it all up. And for some people, it never mattered because, you know, by the time it really, really broke out, most of it was lined up. So, so yeah, it’s and there wasn’t any, any reason, rhyme or reason as to why I did it. I just kind of did it that way.
Alessandra Torre: And so how much did you know about your main character in the beginning? Was he fully formed? Did you know he had a daughter and that was going to come out later? Or how much did you know and how much did you just discover through the process?
L.T. Ryan: This character was probably the most interesting one because he was around for so long in my head. It’s a combination of, of various characters I’ve enjoyed reading, along with my own personal experience, my personal spin, things I wanted to do. And so it builds up over time. The daughter I didn’t know about right away, you know, that was kind of a thing that came through there was, okay, this would fit well here. There is a gap between Book Three and Four. Just the way it was structured when I did it initially, where she comes into play. So, you know, a lot of things, I really figured a lot out just on the move with the series, with this character, you know. And it’s allowed me to evolve other parts of it. His partner, Bear, there’s a four book spin off that takes place between Books Two and Three, but there’s a new spin off. And so the little girl that’s rescued ends up gravitating toward him as her father figure through the.
Alessandra Torre: Bear?
L.T. Ryan: Yeah, through Bear. And he really just kind of latches onto it and takes over doing that. And so I decided to spin this off and make it its own series. I mean, you say it this way. Reacher with a kid, which I told the agent, the film agent who sold the Reacher books in Hollywood that I. He had gotten kicked out of it. But so, you know, we have, this is a fun one to do with character because we have this child who was gone through a lot, a lot of abuse and just a lot of horrible situations like you would do in a thriller. And this other character, they’re kind of spurred off by an event in Book 13 onto their own. It’s a cool evolution because she ages a year every two books is how I’m doing it. And so we see, like the tics and the things that she’s developed over this. We get to see how she has to handle being around kids again when she goes to school. How she deals with pressure from people, and just trying to grow up. I mean, she’s 14, you know, and as a father who’s done 14 twice with daughters and about to do it again, it is a tough time. And you’re balancing this act as a father. So, you know, we have a character that’s been around for a decade, and we’re reinventing it. Here we are. We are showing these parts of his mind and how he deals with raising a child balances that with keeping her safe. He’s not going to raise her like a normal kid. Basically after ten books, she’s going to be off on her own in a series there. Continuing that growth.
Alessandra Torre: That makes perfect sense. And it is hard, I would think, to have 15 books with a single character. So when you’re looking at building your characters and when you talk about how important characters are, you have side characters in addition to those main characters, and you have a lot of characters dying. So, what do you think about when you’re creating the rest of the cast, like when you’re creating with her? Are you are you doing a lot of character development before you start writing, or does most of your character development come out as you write?
L.T. Ryan: It’s there a little bit initially. I don’t like to over develop, because there’s something that they’re going to reveal to me, too. They start to form here. With Jack, you know, I have multiple images of him, more so in the third person point of view stories. When it’s first person, you know, I’m just right there, sitting through it, hearing everything. But as I bring a new character in, I want them to counter him in some way. When I’m working with him just because he is so one sided on his purpose, what he’s doing. And then they kind of grow off that interaction. I’m doing that right now as I’m working through the next book, as he has he’s, at the job that he’s got and how that all plays out with this new character who will become another kind of not-sidekick to him. But a balance, you know, a sidekick. I like the opposite side, Saint and dice, you know, whatever you want to phrase it there.
Alessandra Torre: So it helps to create side characters that will conflict in some way with your main character and help them. That’s.
L.T. Ryan: The same thing with the antagonists, right? It’s their total opposite. But when you. If you do chapters in that antagonist’s head, it really gives you the opportunity to, to draw the reader into that person. Because if you remember that every character in a story is the main character in their own story.
Alessandra Torre: I like that.
L.T. Ryan: Then it really gets in there. And I have a tendency to, when I kill a bad guy, to make him human, make you start to like him, make you see him as a real person, and then he’s gone.
Alessandra Torre: And then he’s gone.
L.T. Ryan: Not all the time, but I kind of do that, you know, and so the biggest thing is that hook. With anything, you know, you’ve got to have that hook. Your story has to have that hook. The character has to have that hook. And these. It’s always been easy to get that going because they’re explosive action thrillers. With Hatch it was a little bit different. You know, the Hatch character came from me and Brian and we kind of stole from, an idea he had and an idea I had for the Clarissa character in Noble for her series.
Alessandra Torre: Brian is a co-writer.
L.T. Ryan: Brian Shay is my co-writer on the Hatch series. And we had these two different ideas that we were able to merge together. And we created this story based around, I don’t want to say female Reacher, but it’s a, you know, that kind of. She’s a drifter, former military, a strong, once again, a strong moral code to defend those who can’t defend themselves, won’t let any wrong situation stay wrong. But she’s a much more pensive character. She’s always in her head. She’s always stuck in her head. And so this one opened up. It’s more mystery based. So this one opened up with the scene of the crime, basically. And, this event is what draws her back to the town she grew up in. And she hadn’t been there in 15 years. And it’s her twin sister’s death. And so we open up with that, you know, with the discovery of the body and then a sheriff, and finally we get to her and she’s on a plane. And so there’s very minimal action with her for the first 8000 words. In the beginning, I was like, this isn’t right. We’ve got to do something. Get the audience hooked on her. You know, show her code. Show that she’s a badass because she is a badass. Keep her human. Make sure that she’s a real female. That’s always the number one thing with my female characters. I want the women reading it. So we added an opening scene, which is just her on her way before she finds out and, you know, takes care of somebody in a bar. You know, a guy who’s being abusive and does what she does best.
L.T. Ryan: And then when we jump in her head now, we see the softer side. Her thinking, you know,.when she gets there and she meets her niece and nephew she’s never met. All these feelings when she sees her ex-boyfriend in town. All the feelings that come in. So. So with her, we’re drawing people in initially with that hook, but then we’re really capturing the audience as they relate to her thought process. And one of the things I love is how many men that email and say, this is my favorite character now. You know, it’s such a good job to be able to do that. And, and I think there’s a lot of lessons learned along the way with growing up with Noble, the shorter Mitch Tanner series and the characters in that. We kind of figured out how we could do this, how we can structure the arc of the character a lot better than I do with Noble, which was a lot was off the cuff in the beginning. Since I started with Book Four, I got to take him from this All-American boy to someone you definitely don’t want to run into in a dark alley and then bring it back. You know, once I got to that point it was a little easier to create those kinds of arcs. But with Hatch, I mean, we knew the end of Book Nine the day we created that character. That upset a lot of people at the end of Book Nine. So if you read the series, it’s not my fault it was Rachel.
Alessandra Torre: We have a few questions. So is it cool if we knock out questions? So one question is, “You write a lot. It seems kind of on the fly and figuring out your books and plots as you go. Do you ever hit a block when you’re going through that process?”
L.T. Ryan: Yeah, yeah. And that’s why, you know, the number one thing for me now is collaboration. What collaboration has done. What it has opened up for me is absolutely amazing because. You know, you’re always trying to find that fifth or sixth idea for your plot twist. You know, you’re always trying to put your character in this new kind of danger and new situation. You know, while always maintaining, you know, and hitting that trope, right? And mystery thrillers hitting that structure that’s got to be nailed down. And, I have found that working with others, whether my stuff individually, current stuff or the people that we work with outside, helping them create characters, it goes so much faster and it gets you through. When I write Noble, I still go back to this. I just want a couple chapters and go. But everything else I now do want a little more structure with how we’re developing up front, how we have the character. Doesn’t have to be every little bit detailed, or you need room for growth. You need to be surprised. If you’re not surprised by something they do, then.
Alessandra Torre: The reader won’t be surprised.
L.T. Ryan: Right. You know, I guess you can do it with cardboard, but it’s so much better when they fall in love. You want them loving that character.
Alessandra Torre: So can you walk us through that collaboration process? Like you’re writing. You hit a block. What? What do you do? Like you’re picking up the phone or you’re getting a group of people together or what?
L.T. Ryan: No, it can. It can be any of that. You know, for me, me and Brian work work extremely well together. We are able to just. My daughter who edits and is now doing some writing as well. She sat there and watched us come up with Hatch ten in less than ten minutes. You know, so with him, especially with Hatch. And we get through that fast. If I need ideas or something, I have a few different people I can go to that are really good at various parts of the story. Robert Crane is a good friend of mine, and I’ve watched him create a ten book series on a whiteboard in 30 minutes. What?! How do you do this? Where does this come from? And he looks at me, oh, you don’t do this? I’m like, no. I sweat and struggle and rip my guts out trying to make this stuff happen. So yeah, it can not necessarily be the same person. You know, and now you’ve got things out there like, you know, I don’t want to dive into the AI topic, but you can use something like ChatGPT to ask questions and say, give me ideas. What would this you know, if my character does this? What are some possible outcomes for that? So there are ways to get you unstuck. But I think about getting another creative person and just start talking it through. It speeds up the process. Helps you come up with ideas faster. And it really for me, what it did was it just reinvigorated my creative process, how creative I felt and how much I wanted to really get back into producing more. You know, and the pandemic limiting travel helped, too. But, yeah.
Alessandra Torre: Yeah. A Facebook user said, how do you create realistic dialogue with your main character?
L.T. Ryan: Right. So the dialogue, it’s going to depend on the series and the situation. There are times where you need to bring it down, where you can have more natural kind of conversations. I like riffing. I like when the characters riff. I like short back and forth. You know, cut up fluff. Especially, you know, for me, it has to do with the pacing. And yeah, I’m not going to go literary with it. Every piece of dialogue has to do all this major lifting. I mean, your characters are in situations, they’re going to talk, they’re going to figure things out. But it’s eliminating the boring stuff, especially. And, you know, talk it out, too. When I was experimenting with dictating, and I got pretty good with it, and I did find that it made things simpler and more direct. I did have one book using both, and I couldn’t tell whether I wrote or dictated, except by how convoluted the sentence structure would get when I typed. So for natural, think about…yes, we a lot of us have a tendency of, oh, we need more commas. We need to reverse our clauses. We need to make this sound headier. You know, the reader doesn’t care. They’re not poring over unless you’re literary. They’re not poring over every single word you’re putting out. Right. It’s the tone. It is the feel. It’s the pacing and the dialogue. I mean, you know, you keep it snappy. Let it do some lifting, but let it be natural. Like you’re saying, if you’re having trouble with that, speak that conversation. Record it into a voice recorder on your phone and play it back. And aside from that. Just try dictating it and see if it’s different than what you typed out.
Alessandra Torre: I love that. Kit from YouTube said, “biggest mistakes you see writers make in creating characters?”
L.T. Ryan: You know, I would think the biggest mistakes you could make. I think it goes back to, you know, your main character. You should have a good, good bit of knowledge about and loving them and going back to that. This person is the star of their own story. Right. Why? What’s their background? What’s their situation here? So trying to add just a little bit more layer to the supporting characters that matter. You know, as far as the other mistakes that you would make, you know. Just not making them real enough to you that they’re going to be real to the reader and the whole surprise. They need to have ways of surprising you. So it surprises the reader. So, you know, just kind of getting out of that cardboard cut out, making this person real to you so it comes across as real on the page is probably the best way to avoid any particular mistakes. Or I think it’s more about how the reader is interpreting. How the reader feels once they get to that point.
Alessandra Torre: That’s great. Chris said, you mentioned Netflix movies. There’s a lot of exposition in movies all at once. How much exposition is too much at any given time while writing a novel? So first, can you explain your interpretation of what exposition is.
L.T. Ryan: Right just how much more time we are setting up. Yeah. Setting up all the extra elements we’re adding into the background. Genre plays a big part of this, too. You know, if I am writing a zombie book, that world is a character. Yeah. I want to spend more time doing this. If I’m writing a Noble book, which is like an episode of 24, a Jason Bourne movie, we’re flying. You know, my descriptions are going to be tight and lean. Dialogue is going to be tight and lean. Everything is going to be tight and lean. For a lot of things, you know, more mystery based. I always go back to James Patterson and, you know, people can say whatever they want about the man, the writing and everything. The guy was an award-winning literary writer, you know, who was an advertising expert. And so when he came up with Alex Cross, you know, a lot of this, I mean, and this is a great example, go back to those early Alex Cross books and see how he builds his character, how he incorporated pop culture, how he played two people against each other, how he did his antagonist. It is a masterpiece how he did this. But there’s a heartbeat to his stories and there’s always this. It’s rise, rise, rise, fall, take a break. And those stories, it’s usually him with a lover or his family or his partner in a non-crime scene. But it always goes back up. Right? So when you want to add more of that in, if you’re in the thriller space, I think the best time to do that is in these more reflective scenes in the downtime. And let the, you know, the action and the momentum, the pacing. Is more important to me.
Alessandra Torre: I think that’s, I love that, and that makes me want to go back and read thoroughly. I recently read a James Patterson novel, and I was so shocked at how short and frequent the chapters were. Yeah. I mean, it was like the average chapter was like 350 words or something crazy. It was so short. And it just kind of took away my… I was, you know what? I just need to get this story out and get it done.
L.T. Ryan: It catches you? Yeah. Breaking up scenes. Cliffhanger. Every chapter ends on a cliffhanger. If a scene is going to get into 2000 words, break it up. Short chapters are fine. Keep it going. No matter what. End on a cliffhanger. I don’t care what you write. End every chapter on a cliffhanger. The best compliment anyone can ever give me is I was up to 4 a.m. because I couldn’t.
Alessandra Torre: Put it down.
L.T. Ryan: Yeah, yeah. Every time I go back and read Killing Floor, Jack Reacher’s first book. When I was 22 and read it. When I was 32 and read it. 42 and read it. I could not put that book down. The entire day. All I would do is read it. And, you know, it’s another expert one. Right away. I mean, the way he captured you in the beginning, I was arrested at Eno’s diner at noon on a Friday. You know, and you’re like, who is this guy? What is going on? And it’s just you build into this, this character that doesn’t say. It’s a first person book. I think that one is. So it is very punchy, very staccato. It rubs in. Before the movies came out, that book had probably a 3.9 rating on Amazon. Rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, but he he, you know, the people that loved it, people who love Reacher, they fell for it right there. Because who this guy was. And you have a character that does not change. Every Reacher book. Jack Reacher is the same exact person. The world changes around him.
Alessandra Torre: Well, let’s talk about that for a minute, because there are so many rules of writing and things
Alessandra Torre: Hello everyone, and welcome to First Draft Friday. I am joined today by LT Ryan, also known as Lee. And we’re going to be talking all about how to create compelling characters. I am so excited for this show. It is going to be fantastic. Welcome, Lee. Do you want to just introduce yourself to the audience and talk a little bit about what you write?
L.T. Ryan: Yeah. All right. LT Ryan. For the last decade plus, I have been releasing numerous thrillers on Amazon. Came back to writing after quite a big layoff, through my 20s and early 30s and, just, you know, jumped in with my own kind of style and my own way of doing it. And it’s paid off.
Alessandra Torre: Lee is modest. I mean, you didn’t talk about your success, but Lee is a superstar. So if you get a chance to, check out his books. But also, this is someone who definitely knows what they’re talking about and knows how to create characters that readers stick with. And continue. You know, read through. So let’s talk a little bit about characters and why is focusing on your characters important?
L.T. Ryan: Right. So when I came back into writing and I looked at …My mom is always my avatar reader, like, what is she like? What does she watch? What does she read and why? And I thought about, you know, how was I consuming at this time? Pandora was where I got my music. We were catching up on all the shows we missed while raising young children on Netflix. We were bingeing everything, even reading-wise. You know, I grew up with Stephen King and Jack Ryan, you know, reading Tom Clancy. It was really the only thing my stepfather and I agreed on was Jack Ryan. But as I got older and my attention span dwindled, I found that those were tougher to read. And I really gravitate more towards, you know, Reacher Bosch, things like that. My favorite show was 24. I love Jason Bourne, the movies. I grew up reading the books, but the movies appealed to me more so as I started thinking about it. You know, you have this limited time and this is a decade ago. And it’s even worse now. You know, Facebook was just big at that time. Now there’s so much competing for attention. So you could make people laugh or make people cry over the story. But it just requires, I think, more than that now, you have to have a character that they’re going to fall in love with and want to be there with.
You know, so when I had this idea for Jack Noble, and it’s something that started a decade before. My in-laws live in West Virginia near the Green Bank Observatory, and there’s no cell phone signal. And I always used to think what if there was a CIA camp there training people? That kind of stuff? So this character was kind of born through that. And when I started writing him, you know, the first thing that kept coming to my mind, I got this ex-CIA agent guy who’s who’s now — Book Four was the first one I wrote — who is now, like, this kind of criminal. He’s at the bottom of his circle and he’s, I don’t want to say is morally bankrupt. But he was definitely making more withdrawals and deposits at this time. And so he’s got this meeting with a criminal boss who wants him to do a job or complete a job. And there was a little girl, right? So I’m right there thinking, like, what’s going to capture my mom’s interest if I write this story? And so he stops in the middle of all this to help this little girl. When we do Book One, what is now Book One, it’s a different place in his life. He’s still got some idealism left to him. He’s much younger, and he is basically the All-American boy who is going to lose his innocence. The story starts out like 2002. He’s in Iraq when most of the focus is on Afghanistan and he and his partner are kind of just doormen for the CIA. And there’s a family that is basically being abused. And so he steps in to stop this despite the orders he has. So right away, you’ve got this guy who is willing to sacrifice himself to protect those that need protecting. And, you know, from there, I think that just kind of captures that reader right away. It gets us empathy between them. They see the situation; they feel bad. They relate to how he feels and how he dives in. Like the pet the dog or save the cat kind of moment that you have. And a lot of times it’s going to come later in a thriller. And, and for me, with the way these books opened, it just seemed really natural to have him do that.
And so the character himself is not necessarily a Reacher or a Bosch, you know, he’s a he’s an act fird; think second. He’s more likely to run his head through a door than knock on and ask you a question. He’s balanced out by his partner through a lot of the books in Bear. He’s a big, gigantic guy, more willing to use his brain and solve problems. And the two play off each other very, very well. You know, and as we go through this series with Jack, once you get into Book Four, it’s mostly a continuing saga and his growth as a character. We have this start up here and his fall that happens through the first three books. Then he’s at the bottom, morally bankrupt. And so now it’s a redemption cycle. Coming back, he learns he has a daughter. He’s taking care of his friends. He loses people. People die throughout the series. People come and go and the things that drive him tend to be this, this fear of losing what he’s hoping the end goal is. As he has a daughter, it’s being with her, getting to her, getting her to a safe place, escaping this life that he has. And he finally gets there and he’s just pulled right back in, has no choice, has to give her to his brother. And they disappear. And so he’s always constantly going. It’s been a decade we’ve been going and doing this series now and it’s going on Book Fifteen and readers when they pick it up say it’s like it’s home.
Alessandra Torre: Yeah. Or let me, let me ask you a few questions. So you said the first one you wrote was Book Four. And was it always going to be Book Four, or was it a later thought to go through and add books beforehand?
L.T. Ryan: Yeah. So I jumped into this. I just jumped into it. I don’t go too much into my background, but basically the company I left my job for collapsed overnight, and I had time. I got a friend who was doing this and having some success at it, and they knew my background and they were like, do it. So I did it. And, at the time, I think it was, if you remember, like Johnny, Sean and Dave had a podcast. They were released in this episodic format. So I released that book in five, 100 page installments. I didn’t know what I was doing, actually.
Alessandra Torre: Yeah, I remember this is all the rage. And like 2013, 14.
L.T. Ryan: 2012, 13. Yeah. It just connected with me so much. So then I was like, well, people were finding this and I was having a little bit of success early and they wanted to know more. So I did the prequel book, which is now Book One. So it’s going to be two series. It was a mess, and I wrote out of order and I eventually, like, tightened it all up. And for some people, it never mattered because, you know, by the time it really, really broke out, most of it was lined up. So, so yeah, it’s and there wasn’t any, any reason, rhyme or reason as to why I did it. I just kind of did it that way.
Alessandra Torre: And so how much did you know about your main character in the beginning? Like, was he fully formed? Did you know he had a daughter and that was going to come out later? Or how much did you know and how much did you just discover through the process?
L.T. Ryan: This character was probably the most interesting one because he was around for so long in my head. It’s a combination of, of various characters I’ve enjoyed reading, along with my own personal experience, my personal spin, things I wanted to do. And so it builds up over time. The daughter I didn’t know about right away, you know, that was kind of a thing that came through there was like, okay, this would fit well here. There is a gap between Book Three and Four. Just the way it was structured when I did it initially, where she comes into play. So, you know, a lot of things, like, I really figured a lot out just on the move with the series, with this character, you know. And it’s allowed me to evolve other parts of it. His partner, Bear, there’s a four book spin off that takes place between Books Two and Three, but there’s a new spin off. And so the little girl that’s rescued ends up gravitating toward him as her father figure through the.
Alessandra Torre: Bear?
L.T. Ryan: Yeah, through Bear. And he really just kind of latches onto it and takes over doing that. And so I decided to spin this off and make it its own series. I mean, you say it this way. Reacher with a kid, which I told the agent, the film agent who sold the Reacher books in Hollywood that I. He had gotten kicked out of it. But so, you know, we have, this is a fun one to do with character because we have this child who was gone through a lot, a lot of abuse and just a lot of horrible situations like you would do in a thriller. And this other character, they’re kind of spurred off by an event in Book 13 onto their own. It’s a cool evolution because she ages a year every two books is how I’m doing it. And so we see, like the tics and the things that she’s developed over this. We get to see how she has to handle being around kids again when she goes to school. How she deals with pressure from people, and just trying to grow up. I mean, she’s 14, you know, and as a father who’s done 14 twice with daughters and about to do it again, it is a tough time. And you’re balancing this act as a father. So, you know, we have a character that’s been around for a decade, and we’re reinventing it. Here we are. We are showing these parts of his mind and how he deals with raising a child balances that with keeping her safe. He’s not going to raise her like a normal kid. Basically after ten books, she’s going to be off on her own in a series there. Continuing that growth.
Alessandra Torre: That makes perfect sense. And it is hard, I would think, to have 15 books with a single character. So when you’re looking at building your characters and when you talk about how important characters are, you have side characters in addition to those main characters, and you have a lot of characters dying. So, what do you think about when you’re creating the rest of the cast, like when you’re creating with her? Are you are you doing a lot of character development before you start writing, or does most of your character development come out as you write?
L.T. Ryan: It’s there a little bit initially. I don’t like to over develop, because there’s something that they’re going to reveal to me, too. They start to form here. With Jack, you know, I have multiple images of him, more so in the third person point of view stories. When it’s first person, you know, I’m just right there, sitting through it, hearing everything. But as I bring a new character in, I want them to counter him in some way. When I’m working with him just because he is so one sided on his purpose, what he’s doing. And then they kind of grow off that interaction. I’m doing that right now as I’m working through the next book, as he has he’s, at the job that he’s got and how that all plays out with this new character who will become another kind of not-sidekick to him. But a balance, you know, like sidekick. I like the opposite side, Saint and dice, you know, whatever you want to phrase it there.
Alessandra Torre: So it helps to create side characters that will conflict in some way with your main character and help them. That’s.
L.T. Ryan: The same thing with the antagonists, right? It’s their total opposite. But when you. If you do chapters in that antagonist’s head, it really gives you the opportunity to, to draw the reader into that person. Because if you remember that every character in a story is the main character in their own story.
Alessandra Torre: I like that, and.
L.T. Ryan: Then it really gets in there. And I have a tendency to, when I kill a bad guy, to make him human, make you start to like him, make you see him as a real person, and then he’s gone.
Alessandra Torre: And then he’s gone.
L.T. Ryan: Not all the time, but I kind of do that, you know, and so the biggest thing is that hook. With anything, you know, you’ve got to have that hook. Your story has to have that hook. The character has to have that hook. And these. It’s always been easy to get that going because they’re explosive action thrillers. With Hatch it was a little bit different. You know, the Hatch character came from me and Brian and we kind of stole from, an idea he had and an idea I had for the Clarissa character in Noble for her series.
Alessandra Torre: Brian is a co-writer.
L.T. Ryan: Brian Shay is my co-writer on the Hatch series. And we had these two different ideas that we were able to merge together. And we created this story based around, I don’t want to say female Reacher, but it’s a, you know, that kind of. She’s a drifter, former military, a strong, once again, a strong moral code to defend those who can’t defend themselves, won’t let any wrong situation stay wrong. But she’s a much more pensive character. She’s always in her head. She’s always stuck in her head. And so this one opened up. It’s more mystery based. So this one opened up with the scene of the crime, basically. And, this event is what draws her back to the town she grew up in. And she hadn’t been there in 15 years. And it’s her twin sister’s death. And so we open up with that, you know, with the discovery of the body and then a sheriff, and finally we get to her and she’s on a plane. And so there’s very minimal action with her for the first 8000 words. In the beginning, I was like this, you know, this isn’t right. We’ve got to do something. Get the audience hooked on her. You know, show her code. Show that she’s a badass because she is a badass. Keep her human. Make sure that she’s a real female. That’s always the number one thing with my female characters. I want the women reading it. So we added an opening scene, which is just her on her way before she finds out and, you know, takes care of somebody in a bar. You know, a guy who’s being abusive and does what she does best.
L.T. Ryan: And then when we jump in her head now, we see the softer side. Her thinking, you know,.when she gets there and she meets her niece and nephew she’s never met. All these feelings when she sees her ex-boyfriend in town. All the feelings that come in. So. So with her, we’re drawing people in initially with that hook, but then we’re really capturing the audience as they relate to her thought process. And one of the things I love is how many men that email and say, this is my favorite character now. You know, it’s such a good job to be able to do that. And, and I think there’s a lot of lessons learned along the way with growing up with Noble, the shorter Mitch Tanner series and the characters in that. We kind of figured out how we could do this, how we can structure the arc of the character a lot better than I do with Noble, which was a lot was off the cuff in the beginning. Since I started with Book Four like, okay, I got to take him from this All-American boy to someone you definitely don’t want to run into in a dark alley and then bring it back. You know, once I got to that point it was a little easier to create those kinds of arcs. But with Hatch, I mean, we knew the end of Book Nine the day we created that character. That upset a lot of people at the end of Book Nine. So if you read the series like, it’s not my fault it was Rachel.
Alessandra Torre: We have a few questions. So is it cool if we knock out questions? So one question is, “You write a lot. It seems kind of on the fly and figuring out your books and plots as you go. Do you ever hit a block when you’re going through that process?”
L.T. Ryan: Yeah, yeah. And that’s why, you know, the number one thing for me now is collaboration. What collaboration has done. What it has opened up for me is absolutely amazing because. You know, you’re always trying to find that fifth or sixth idea for your plot twist. You know, you’re always trying to put your character in this new kind of danger and new situation. You know, while always maintaining, you know, and hitting that trope, right? And mystery thrillers hitting that structure that’s got to be nailed down. And, I have found that working with others, whether my stuff individually, current stuff or the people that we work with outside, helping them create characters, it goes so much faster and it gets you through. When I write Noble, I still go back to this. I just want a couple chapters and go. But everything else I now do want a little more structure with how we’re developing up front, how we have the character. Doesn’t have to be every little bit detailed, or you need room for growth. You need to be surprised. If you’re not surprised by something they do, then.
Alessandra Torre: The reader won’t be surprised.
L.T. Ryan: Right. You know, I guess you can do it with cardboard, but it’s so much better when they fall in love. You want them loving that character.
Alessandra Torre: So can you walk us through that collaboration process? Like you’re writing. You hit a block. What? What do you do? Like you’re picking up the phone or you’re getting a group of people together or what?
L.T. Ryan: No, it can. It can be any of that. You know, for me, me and Brian work work extremely well together. We are able to just. My daughter who edits and is now doing some writing as well. She sat there and watched us come up with Hatch ten in less than ten minutes. You know, so with him, especially with Hatch. And we get through that fast. If I need ideas or something, I have a few different people I can go to that are really good at various parts of the story. Robert Crane is a good friend of mine, and I’ve watched him create a ten book series on a whiteboard in 30 minutes. What?! How do you do this? Where does this come from? And he looks at me like, oh, you don’t do this? I’m like, no. I sweat and struggle and rip my guts out trying to make this stuff happen. So yeah, it can not necessarily be the same person. You know, and now you’ve got things out there like, you know, I don’t want to dive into the AI topic, but you can use something like ChatGPT to ask questions and say, give me ideas. What would this you know, if my character does this? What are some possible outcomes for that? So there are ways to get you unstuck. But I think about getting another creative person and just start talking it through. It speeds up the process. Helps you come up with ideas faster. And it really for me, what it did was it just reinvigorated my creative process, how creative I felt and how much I wanted to really get back into producing more. You know, and the pandemic limiting travel helped, too. But, yeah.
Alessandra Torre: Yeah. A Facebook user said, how do you create realistic dialogue with your main character?
L.T. Ryan: Right. So the dialogue, it’s going to depend on the series and the situation. There are times where you need to bring it down, where you can have more natural kind of conversations. I like riffing. I like when the characters riff. I like short back and forth. You know, cut up fluff. Especially, you know, for me, it has to do with the pacing. And yeah, I’m not going to go literary with it. Like, every piece of dialogue has to do all this major lifting. I mean, your characters are in situations, they’re going to talk, they’re going to figure things out. But it’s eliminating the boring stuff, especially. And, you know, talk it out, too. When I was experimenting with dictating, and I got pretty good with it, and I did find that it made things simpler and more direct. I did have one book using both, and I couldn’t tell whether I wrote or dictated, except by how convoluted the sentence structure would get when I typed. So for natural, think about…yes, we a lot of us have a tendency of, oh, we need more commas. We need to reverse our clauses. We need to make this sound headier. You know, the reader doesn’t care. They’re not poring over unless you’re literary. They’re not poring over every single word you’re putting out. Right. It’s the tone. It is the feel. It’s the pacing and the dialogue. I mean, you know, you keep it snappy. Let it do some lifting, but let it be natural. Like you’re saying, if you’re having trouble with that, speak that conversation. Record it into a voice recorder on your phone and play it back. And aside from that. Just try dictating it and see if it’s different than what you typed out.
Alessandra Torre: I love that. Kit from YouTube said, “biggest mistakes you see writers make in creating characters?”
L.T. Ryan: You know, I would think the biggest mistakes you could make. I think it goes back to, you know, your main character. You should have a good, good bit of knowledge about and loving them and going back to that. This person is the star of their own story. Right. Why? What’s their background? What’s their situation here? So trying to add just a little bit more layer to the supporting characters that matter. You know, as far as the other mistakes that you would make, you know. Just not making them real enough to you that they’re going to be real to the reader and the whole, you know, like the surprise. They need to have ways of surprising you. So it surprises the reader. So, you know, just kind of getting out of that cardboard cut out, making this person real to you so it comes across as real on the page is probably the best way to avoid any particular mistakes. Or I think it’s more about how the reader is interpreting. How the reader feels once they get to that point.
Alessandra Torre: That’s great. Chris said, you mentioned Netflix movies. There’s a lot of exposition in movies all at once. How much exposition is too much at any given time while writing a novel? So first, can you explain your interpretation of what exposition is.
L.T. Ryan: Right just how much more time we are setting up. Yeah. Setting up all the extra elements we’re adding into the background. Genre plays a big part of this, too. You know, if I am writing a zombie book, that world is a character. Yeah. I want to spend more time doing this. If I’m writing a Noble book, which is like an episode of 24, a Jason Bourne movie, we’re flying. You know, my descriptions are going to be tight and lean. Dialogue is going to be tight and lean. Everything is going to be tight and lean. For a lot of things, you know, more mystery based. I always go back to James Patterson and, you know, people can say whatever they want about the man, the writing and everything. The guy was an award-winning literary writer, you know, who was an advertising expert. And so when he came up with Alex Cross, you know, a lot of this, I mean, and this is a great example, go back to those early Alex Cross books and see how he builds his character, how he incorporated pop culture, how he played two people against each other, how he did his antagonist. It is a masterpiece how he did this. But there’s a heartbeat to his stories and there’s always this. It’s rise, rise, rise, fall, take a break. And those stories, it’s usually him with a lover or his family or his partner in a non-crime scene. But it always goes back up. Right? So when you want to add more of that in, if you’re in the thriller space, I think the best time to do that is in these more reflective scenes in the downtime. And let the, you know, the action and the momentum, the pacing. Is more important to me.
Alessandra Torre: I think that’s, I love that, and that makes me want to go back and read, like, thoroughly. I recently read a James Patterson novel, and I was so shocked at how short and frequent the chapters were. Yeah. I mean, it was like the average chapter was like 350 words or something crazy. It was so short. And it just kind of took away my… I was like, you know what? I just need to get this story out and get it done.
L.T. Ryan: It catches you? Yeah. Breaking up scenes. Cliffhanger. Every chapter ends on a cliffhanger. If a scene is going to get into 2000 words, break it up. Short chapters are fine. Keep it going. No matter what. End on a cliffhanger. I don’t care what you write. End every chapter on a cliffhanger. The best compliment anyone can ever give me is I was up to 4 a.m. because I couldn’t.
Alessandra Torre: Put it down.
L.T. Ryan: Yeah, yeah. Every time I go back and read Killing Floor, Jack Reacher’s first book. When I was 22 and read it. When I was 32 and read it. 42 and read it. I could not put that book down. The entire day. All I would do is read it. And, you know, it’s another expert one. Right away. I mean, the way he captured you in the beginning, I was arrested at Eno’s diner at noon on a Friday. You know, and you’re like, who is this guy? And. Yeah, what is going on? And it’s just you build into this, this character that doesn’t say. It’s a first-person book. I think that one is. So it is very punchy, very staccato. It rubs in. Before the movies came out, that book had probably a 3.9 rating on Amazon. Rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, but he he, you know, the people that loved it, people who love Reacher, they fell for it right there. Because who this guy was. And you have a character that does not change. Every Reacher book. Jack Reacher is the same exact person. The world changes around him.
Alessandra Torre: Well, let’s talk about that for a minute, because there’s this whole like, you know, there’s so many rules of writing and things like that. And one is that your character has to have this dramatic change, you know, from page one to the end. And that, of course, is impossible if you have a continuing series. But what is your emotion on that? Because like you just said, Jack Reacher is Jack Reacher, you know?
L.T. Ryan: With Hatch, all the questions that came in after Book Nine, and it was, you know, it’s kind of this look, this character is sort of like that. She is stuck in who she is. She is emotionally stunted. Developmentally stunted. It takes true pain and loss for her to change. And so it takes nine books to really get a significant change in this person. I’m a big fan of James Scott Bell’s books on writing, especially for thriller writers. I don’t like a lot of craft books because they’re so bloated.
Alessandra Torre: Boring.
L.T. Ryan: Bell keeps on pace and is really cool. And so for a thriller, I use his Super Structure as my basis. And he has a thing called, writing your book from the middle, and it’s all about. And you can go into any movie, book, popular book, movie, whatever, and you’ll see this. You have this moment in middle of the book where your protagonist, your main hero, or if you do like me and have multiple point of view, each of them experiences this moment where they are faced with the time, where they have to continue being who they were, or change for whatever that means, to move through to the next part and complete the story. And so even with a series, you want to have them face this moment and whether it’s something deep, introspective or just, you know, more physically pain based, or a decision they have to make to leave someone behind or move ahead. You know that I look at that more like, yes, they’re going to change a little bit, but it’s not this monumental change. If I were to write, you know, a standalone for Thomas & Mercier or something, it’d be completely different. Like. Yeah, you know, I probably do more like a Harlan Coben style standalone. Where this. Yeah, it’s obvious they’re really twisty, but this person’s life is a complete disarray when you get to the end, even though they figure out what happened, they are changed forever. And an ongoing thriller like this, those events are much more impactful. So I think you do have to kind of stretch it out. Otherwise.
Alessandra Torre: Yeah, you have to choose your moments and build up to them. And they have to have weight. And if that takes nine books to get there, then… We are already out of time. So thank you so much to everybody who joined us. Thank you for your fantastic questions and comments. I’m sorry we didn’t get to all of them. But it was really great. Great seeing you guys. And thank you so much, Lee, for sharing your information. If this great information, if they have not read you and they want to jump right in, where would you suggest they start with one of your.
L.T. Ryan: You know, a Noble, you could see how I’ve done it over time. A Hatch, you could see how the changes in the development of that character compared to someone like Noble, or if you’d like to see it as we do it, the new Maddie Castle series that just came out is a combination of Noble and Hatch, I think, in a way. But here I’m taking a character that’s, former law enforcement in a very dark place in life, is hooked on painkillers and is, you know, kind of tough and gritty, and you’re going to see this evolution of this character as she restores herself. So that’ll be a fun one to kind of follow along and see if, as the book comes out, once you pick it up, do you remember that character from before?
Alessandra Torre: That made sense. What I heard all makes sense. So. So thank you so much, Lee. Thank you for everyone joining us. We’ll be back in one week with another first draft Friday, and then we’ll be back to our every other week schedules. So thank you so much, Lee. Thank you so much to the audience.
that. And one is that your character has to have this dramatic change, you know, from page one to the end. And that, of course, is impossible if you have a continuing series. But what is your emotion on that? Because like you just said, Jack Reacher is Jack Reacher, you know?
L.T. Ryan: With Hatch, all the questions that came in after Book Nine, and it was, you know, it’s kind of this look, this character is sort of like that. She is stuck in who she is. She is emotionally stunted. Developmentally stunted. It takes true pain and loss for her to change. And so it takes nine books to really get a significant change in this person. I’m a big fan of James Scott Bell’s books on writing, especially for thriller writers. I don’t like a lot of craft books because they’re so bloated.
Alessandra Torre: Boring.
L.T. Ryan: So much and boring. He keeps on pace and is really cool. And so for a thriller, I use his Super Structure as my basis. And he has a thing called, writing your book from the middle, and it’s all about. And you can go into any movie, book, popular book, movie, whatever, and you’ll see this. You have this moment in middle of the book where your protagonist, your main hero, or if you do like me and have multiple point of view, each of them experiences this moment where they are faced with the time, where they have to continue being who they were, or change for whatever that means, to move through to the next part and complete the story. And so even with a series, you want to have them face this moment and whether it’s something deep, introspective or just, you know, more physically pain based, or a decision they have to make to leave someone behind or move ahead. You know that I look at that more like, yes, they’re going to change a little bit, but it’s not this monumental change. If I were to write, you know, a standalone for Thomas & Mercier or something, it’d be completely different. You know, I probably do more like a Harlan Coben style standalone. Where this. Yeah, it’s obvious they’re really twisty, but this person’s life is a complete disarray when you get to the end, even though they figure out what happened, they are changed forever. And an ongoing thriller like this, those events are much more impactful. So I think you do have to kind of stretch it out. Otherwise.
Alessandra Torre: Yeah, you have to choose your moments and build up to them. And they have to have weight. And if that takes nine books to get there, then… We are already out of time. So thank you so much to everybody who joined us. Thank you for your fantastic questions and comments. I’m sorry we didn’t get to all of them. But it was really great. Great seeing you guys. And thank you so much, Lee, for sharing your information. If this great information, if they have not read you and they want to jump right in, where would you suggest they start with one of your.
L.T. Ryan: You know, a Noble, you could see how I’ve done it over time. A Hatch, you could see how the changes in the development of that character compared to someone like Noble, or if you’d like to see it as we do it, the new Maddie Castle series that just came out is a combination of Noble and Hatch, I think, in a way. But here I’m taking a character that’s, former law enforcement in a very dark place in life, is hooked on painkillers and is, you know, kind of tough and gritty, and you’re going to see this evolution of this character as she restores herself. So that’ll be a fun one to kind of follow along and see if, as the book comes out, once you pick it up, do you remember that character from before?
Alessandra Torre: That made sense. What I heard all makes sense. So. So thank you so much, Lee. Thank you for everyone joining us. We’ll be back in one week with another first draft Friday, and then we’ll be back to our every other week schedules. So thank you so much, Lee. Thank you so much to the audience.
