The Art of Manliness - Lee Child the Writer, Jack Reacher the Character, and the Enduring Appeal of Lone Wolves

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:10.920 in creating the jack reacher character lee child launched a series of books that now boast 100

00:00:15.720 million copies in print and have been turned into movies in a popular amazon streaming series

00:00:19.780 today on the show i talked to lee about what makes reacher so compelling and much more we first

00:00:25.260 discussed why lee didn't get started with writing until he's almost 40 and what prompted him to

00:00:28.780 change careers we then impact the reacher character discussing the ancient archetypal roots of this

00:00:33.900 vigilante drifter detective what he has in common with the knight errant and the enduring appeal of

00:00:38.560 the lone wolf we also talk about lee's writing process why midlife is the best time to write

00:00:42.900 and why after writing more than two dozen reacher novels he's chosen to hand off the series to his

00:00:47.500 brother and fellow writer andrew after the show is over check out our show notes at aom.is slash

00:00:52.480 reacher all right lee child welcome to the show thank you great to be here so you are an

00:01:09.080 international best-selling author who has created one of the great detective characters in english

00:01:15.260 literature jack reacher i'm sure a lot of our listeners are fans of your work they've read the

00:01:20.780 books they've maybe even watched these series on amazon and i know my dad tom mckay huge fan of

00:01:26.980 your work and i hope that today in this conversation we can maybe get to the bottom of why you think

00:01:31.980 reacher has such a broad appeal but before we do before we get to to the reacher character let's talk

00:01:38.620 about your background i'm sure a lot of people don't realize you didn't start your writing career

00:01:42.840 until midlife in fact a job layoff started your writing career so how did a layoff from a television

00:01:49.040 network lead you to start writing it was really a desperation move in as much as i'd had this

00:01:57.180 intense almost 20 years in tv in a very specialized role in the british commercial network the rival to

00:02:06.560 the bbc it was a 14 station network that coordinated and worked together my job was like an air traffic

00:02:15.500 controller essentially to keep the whole broadcast going there were five of us we rotated through 24 7

00:02:22.640 duties and then it was a complicated job and back in the day we had a good union and we made decent

00:02:31.500 money and then in the 1990s we had that thing where shareholder value was suddenly discovered in cost

00:02:39.560 cutting exporting jobs and getting cheaper people so all of us old expensive veterans were laid off

00:02:46.660 i was 39 very nearly 40 years old and it seemed to me to try and stay in tv would be a very negative

00:02:57.340 experience because it was clearly on a downward spiral the fun was gone the the luxury of doing your

00:03:04.700 job properly was gone and so it was a question of what else and the problem was there was nothing

00:03:11.040 else that i was qualified for i was hyper qualified for the thing i just got thrown out of and really

00:03:18.080 nothing else so i panicked a little bit and i said then i said no wait a minute just take one step back

00:03:25.460 and what is it fundamentally that you've been doing and fundamentally what i'd been doing obviously was

00:03:32.500 entertaining an audience but beyond that knowing what the audience wanted having some kind of sense

00:03:39.620 of how they were going to react so it seemed to me obvious stay in something that has an audience

00:03:45.760 and then quite independently of all of that i had been a reader all my life just a fantastically

00:03:53.300 enthusiastic reader just reading all the time loving it but strangely never really thinking where do these

00:04:00.660 books come from i'd never really inquired about that to me they just existed sitting there to be

00:04:06.760 consumed and i put two and two together i thought well look you love books you've read literally tens of

00:04:14.440 thousands why don't you try writing one that is fundamentally the same proposition i think you know modern

00:04:22.280 tv movies modern entertainment we all swim in the same river a book is not that different from a tv show

00:04:29.240 so i thought i'll try that and i was really wanting to be my own boss after that very negative corporate

00:04:37.040 experience i wanted to be my own boss and writing is is something that is entirely down to you it's

00:04:44.200 difficult in tv if you have a big hit in tv it's not really to your credit because there were a hundred

00:04:50.420 other people working on it if it's a total failure it's not really your fault because there were a hundred

00:04:57.560 other people working on it whereas writing yeah of course there are editors there are publicists there

00:05:03.360 are booksellers and so on but fundamentally this is one-on-one the author to the reader it's a one-on-one

00:05:10.280 communication it is totally down to you if it fails yes it is totally your fault if it succeeds yes you can

00:05:18.000 take the credit for it so i thought let's give it a try see what happens and here we are all these years

00:05:23.680 later you said you read a lot was there a genre that you like to read or did you just read whatever

00:05:28.800 i'd started out and and in principle i read whatever anything at all that uh i mean just

00:05:36.620 looking around my room here i've got a big stack of books to be read i got one on the psychology of

00:05:42.340 music there's one on about fentanyl there's anything and everything i'll read but as a reader

00:05:49.100 yeah you do get in touch with what turns you on personally and i migrated to the crime and thriller

00:05:56.520 genre that was the thing that i most enjoyed reading was there a particular author you enjoyed

00:06:02.680 oh there were a lot you know i'm not one of these pretentious guys who says that when i was seven years

00:06:08.460 old i was reading tolstoy or something you know i was reading all the usual kids stuff and then the all

00:06:15.180 the usual thrillers you know your dad has maybe got them on on the bookshelf and so i would say there

00:06:22.780 was an english kids author called enid blighton i like everybody i started out with that and then i

00:06:28.420 migrated my first real love was a scottish thriller writer called alistair mclean and that cemented my

00:06:38.140 feel yeah i want to write adventure stories i want to write thrillers crime stories things of that nature

00:06:45.060 how did your experience in visual storytelling shape your writing style because one of the

00:06:50.580 things i love about your writing style is that it's it's spartan it's sparse but it's really

00:06:55.320 punchy and it just it flows yeah that's the thing that i felt there is very little that you can take

00:07:04.040 from tv to writing because they are fundamentally very different in as much as tv the viewer just sits

00:07:12.780 there and it comes at them it washes over them with writing it's got to be interrogated by the reader

00:07:21.760 the book is passive the book is doing nothing it's just sitting there with strange black marks on white

00:07:28.260 paper and it is the reader's brain that creates the story inside the reader's head so there's not that

00:07:37.240 much you can transfer directly but what you do transfer is a very specific understanding this is

00:07:45.800 not about you this is about the audience it doesn't matter if you're a cool guy doesn't matter if you

00:07:53.420 smoke french cigarettes and wear a black leather jacket it's not about you it is the audience having

00:07:59.060 a good time that is the only question and that part i transferred lock stock and barrel that is really

00:08:05.680 important well let's talk about jack reacher because he's got a lot of fans and it's a very

00:08:10.980 wide-ranging fan base you've got you know men in their 70s like my dad and then there's also like

00:08:17.260 women who are big fans of jack reacher how did you come up with the jack reacher character

00:08:22.620 well it was a kind of two-stage thing i mean in vaguely in principle what i wanted to do

00:08:30.540 was be a success because i was out of work and i was broke so this was not a kind of hobby this was

00:08:39.120 not a kind of like to do it sort of thing it had to work so part of it was about a real consciousness

00:08:47.920 that this had to be popular but completely contradictory to that was what i'd learned

00:08:54.460 in the entertainment business up to that point which is that you cannot plan anything like that

00:09:00.560 it is not possible to plan a major popular success because if you do you just end up with a limp

00:09:09.060 cardboardy thing that is basically a shopping list of everything that you think you should do

00:09:14.540 so i i knew enough to know that it was gonna be kind of fortuitous or accidental so i knew i had to

00:09:23.600 metaphorically close my eyes and just write and just see what came out and so reacher was something

00:09:32.320 that just came out and i didn't want to think about it very much i didn't want to interrogate it and

00:09:38.640 think okay why is this work and how can i improve it for book two how can i improve it for book three

00:09:44.480 i wanted to not burst the bubble i i didn't want to look at it that closely but then much later when i was

00:09:51.880 felt safe and secure about it i could look back and what makes reacher popular i think is that

00:09:59.800 he represents clearly represents something that has always been with us as humans you were kind

00:10:07.800 enough to say i invented this character well did i i think actually reacher is a character that has

00:10:14.980 always existed going back through the history of storytelling possibly even thousands of years

00:10:21.520 the idea of the mysterious stranger who shows up and solves your problem and then rides off into

00:10:29.100 the sunset that character has been around really forever all the way back through all our recorded

00:10:37.000 narrative there's always been a character like that and so i think reacher is just the modern iteration

00:10:44.480 of that and you've got to ask yourself why has this character been invented over and over again

00:10:50.880 and the only answer to that is because people crave such a person they want such a person you know we've

00:10:58.880 all got problems hopefully they're only trivial some people have a real serious problems wouldn't it be

00:11:05.280 great if one night there's a tap at the door and there's a strong silent guy there who fixes your

00:11:13.380 problem tips his cap and moves on we crave that we fantasize about it and so that's why people love

00:11:21.480 reading about it they either want to know that character or they want to be that character yeah

00:11:26.800 what's interesting is that there's this idea out there that the kind of hero people want is someone

00:11:32.900 who's broken they want a vulnerable hero reacher's the opposite of that but he's still really compelling

00:11:38.480 why do you think that is yeah that is such a great question because people want an interesting

00:11:45.020 character people want a memorable character and there are ways to achieve that and certainly yeah if you go

00:11:53.080 back to let's say raymond chandler writing about philip marlowe there is an alienated man a lonely man

00:12:02.280 somewhat dysfunctional we might say by modern standards and that was a great paradigm and then

00:12:09.180 many many years later let's say there's james lee burke writes dave robishow who is a copper recovering

00:12:17.240 alcoholic absolutely tormented by his demons that was great but that was the first time we'd seen that

00:12:25.360 particular trope and the problem with writing is that authors tend to copy what's already been done

00:12:33.160 and in order to stand out they inflate it they make it worse so instead of just a alcoholic cop fighting

00:12:40.040 his demons we've got a divorced alcoholic cop and then a divorced alcoholic cop whose teenage daughter

00:12:47.340 hates him and then a divorced alcoholic cop whose teenage daughter hates him accidentally shoots at a fleeing

00:12:54.220 shadow in the dark and it turns out to be a 12 year old boy so their life is a tragedy now and they go and

00:13:01.240 live in the woods by themselves with a metaphorical or sometimes literal bullet lodged next to their heart

00:13:08.420 and the relentless inflation makes that character miserable and my view was people don't really want to

00:13:17.800 read about miserable characters they want to read about interesting characters so how do you make

00:13:24.520 somebody interesting without giving them all these problems and i think what happens with reacher is that

00:13:32.060 he is profoundly eccentric in all of his lifestyle choices but the thing is he does not know that

00:13:39.260 he thinks he's perfectly normal he has none of that navel gazing going on he is who he is and it is the

00:13:46.820 reader who makes up their mind about what he's like and that that is super important that

00:13:53.620 an author cannot force the reader to come to a certain conclusion you cannot make anybody like your

00:14:01.960 character all you can do is present them in an authentic way and hope for the best and the more that you

00:14:08.820 try to make a reader like your character the more embarrassing it gets so yeah talking about those things that

00:14:15.560 make reacher interesting first off he's larger than life literally he's six four 250 pounds just a

00:14:21.240 monster and what i love about him too is sometimes there's that idea like oh the the hero is not

00:14:27.660 sure about his strength or whether he can overcome these bad guys no reacher reacher can always take

00:14:32.780 care of the problem and he doesn't have a cell phone and he thinks that's just normal that i have a

00:14:37.020 cell phone and his clothes he just buys cheap clothes at academy and jeans and t-shirts and then

00:14:43.060 doesn't really carry a wardrobe with them yeah all of that stuff i mean part of that was a reaction

00:14:48.760 against what else was being done it fit very neatly for me because like i say i needed this to be

00:14:56.620 a success and so why go head to head with what other people are doing already so well and if you looked at

00:15:04.980 every other series really ever they're fundamentally a soap opera and i say that with the greatest respect

00:15:13.800 i'm not being disparaging about soap opera at all it's an incredibly difficult genre to do it is

00:15:20.680 incredibly powerful in terms of the narrative engine having worked in tv we all depend on soap operas

00:15:27.920 they're fantastic but i didn't want to write one in competition with everybody else who was doing

00:15:35.280 doing it so well everybody else the hero has got superiors has got colleagues juniors neighbors they

00:15:44.180 have a house they have maybe a favorite bar they have a dog or whatever i didn't want to do that

00:15:50.800 i thought let's be different so it was a really happy coincidence for me that the idea of the

00:15:58.080 knight errant the mysterious stranger he doesn't have any of that stuff that's the whole point of

00:16:03.600 that character he's completely mysterious and unexplained so i felt i could do a different lane

00:16:10.060 or a different channel that nobody else is doing and so that explained it to a large extent i just wanted

00:16:17.480 reach her to be distinctive and the rest of it was based on logical thoughts of my own you know if i

00:16:24.740 was living like that what would i do about clothes would i want to carry a backpack around with me all

00:16:30.700 the time or would i just buy some old stuff at goodwill every few days and junk the previous stuff and

00:16:37.400 just move through life that seemed logical to me and you know clearly it is logical that's the way you got

00:16:43.280 to do it so you mentioned reachers kind of like the knight errant did the stories of the knight like

00:16:48.420 the arthurian tales did that like was that in there i mean were you i guess sounds like you weren't

00:16:52.860 consciously pulling on that it was just it was there in your your subconscious because you read these

00:16:57.340 stories as a boy and as a young man and they just came out in reacher you know knights have this idea

00:17:03.020 of nobleness how do you think reacher has a sense of nobleness that's another good question um

00:17:09.420 yeah the idea of the knight errant is that uh he must have been a knight in the first place uh you

00:17:18.380 know the classic arthurian tales he is sir launcelot for instance banished from the court for some

00:17:25.600 indiscretion and sentenced to wander the land doing good deeds and that myth replicates everywhere you

00:17:33.020 know the ronin myth in japan a samurai who's been disowned by his master and sentenced

00:17:39.400 to wander the land it's a perpetual part of human storytelling so that's why it seemed to work

00:17:48.380 well enough that he can be he needs to be completely unattached he happens to other people and you you

00:17:56.800 know you can trace it right back a lot of people in america say this is really a western uh it's like

00:18:03.320 shane or any zane gray story where you know you've typically got a very isolated homestead

00:18:11.060 and all the men are away on a cattle drive and there's something going really bad and at the very

00:18:18.040 last minute a mysterious rider comes in off the range and in exchange for a woman cooked meal he will

00:18:26.360 unsheathe his rifle take care of the problems and then he moves on but that was not invented by zane

00:18:32.500 gray or the westerns that is an import from medieval europe where the black forest was this immense

00:18:40.800 uncharted waste and a band of pilgrims would be in terrible trouble and then a mysterious knight

00:18:48.080 rides out of the trees and solves the problem this is this same story has reoccurred over and over

00:18:55.700 again so it's really about the community in trouble reacher happens to them it's not that the community

00:19:02.740 happens to reacher so reacher is a lone wolf and the idea of the lone wolf often gets criticized we've

00:19:10.780 had plenty of podcast episodes where the guests have criticized it and i understand the criticism

00:19:14.780 you know relationships have been shown to be central to mental and physical health but i still find the

00:19:22.100 idea of the lone wolf viscerally appealing and i imagine a lot of other people do what do you think

00:19:27.820 the appeal is well i think first of all reacher acknowledges that central uh conundrum there yeah we

00:19:36.120 do we do crave relationships we need we need them for the reasons that you just mentioned and reacher does

00:19:42.340 too the thing about reacher is constantly balanced between really liking his solitude and also really

00:19:50.300 being worried that he's lonely so there's an acknowledgement of that but i think the true

00:19:56.280 appeal for reacher is that people can imagine being him and so many people men and women alike are bogged

00:20:05.500 down with responsibilities and chores and duties and their week is just an endless slog of working their job

00:20:14.180 looking after the home paying the bills paying the mortgage all of these things that tie them down and as a

00:20:21.480 fantasy they love to for a day or two while they're reading the book they love to live in reacher's head none of

00:20:28.800 those responsibilities none of those burdens if you're not having a good time you just move on you'll

00:20:35.740 be somewhere else tomorrow and i think that is a huge fantasy appeal for a lot of people and it sounds

00:20:43.080 like too you've been playing out this tension between connection and autonomy like you know you mentioned

00:20:49.400 earlier the reason why you went into writing was you wanted to be your own boss you kind of wanted to be a

00:20:53.820 lone wolf i did and i i put a line in the first book it reaches says it but it's really me saying it

00:21:00.980 he says i tried it their way now i'm going to try it my way yeah so i think i mean i do think there's

00:21:08.240 something that we shouldn't just dismiss the lone wolf completely i think the fact that it holds such an

00:21:14.620 appeal tells us something like we shouldn't literally be lone wolves but we can adopt some of that ethos

00:21:21.520 keep part of ourselves that's comfortable with solitude and self-sufficiency we're going to take

00:21:27.820 a quick break for your word from our sponsors and now back to the show another idea that gets

00:21:36.520 criticized quite a bit is this idea of revenge and it seems like a lot of reacher's missions are ones of

00:21:42.820 revenge you know people say we should rise above the need for revenge and that just poisons you

00:21:47.160 but do you think revenge can be something healthy what do you think reacher can teach us about that

00:21:51.440 it's yeah it's a great issue because revenge is fundamentally negative even though it feels

00:21:59.520 great at the time but the thing about reacher is he's not doing it for himself it's not a question

00:22:05.580 of somebody has hurt him or insulted him and he's going to get revenge on them for that it's always a

00:22:13.160 third-party issue and that takes us back to the knight errant it takes us to a kind of noblesse

00:22:20.540 oblige that if you can do something for somebody you really ought to from he who has to he who needs

00:22:29.160 and i think that takes it out of the revenge track just enough to make it super satisfying and then of

00:22:38.320 course the whole business of fiction is very mysterious in that sense because generally speaking

00:22:45.260 book readers are the more civilized amongst us the more thoughtful the more informed and of course

00:22:53.360 they understand that you can't have a guy who just walks into town and starts murdering people

00:22:59.800 like reacher does you know i i saw a fantastic online comment once it says the jack reacher series

00:23:07.140 the only series where the detective commits more crimes than he solves and people understand that's

00:23:14.780 completely unacceptable that is not how we should live these are not textbooks for how to live but it

00:23:21.160 is some corner in the back of their brain the reader finds it so satisfying just to see a bad guy get a

00:23:29.760 punch in the face as opposed to a legal arrest and a trial with rights and with lawyers and with

00:23:36.660 procedure and all that stuff they know they need that in real life they want that in real life of course

00:23:42.860 they do but it is so satisfying so consoling just to see brutal justice meted out in the moment

00:23:51.360 so people lap it up like i'm sure your dad who enjoys the books loves those scenes but there's no way

00:23:59.320 he thinks that's how society should run it's like an escape valve yeah no my dad was in law enforcement

00:24:06.220 that's his career there he was he was a federal game warden so yeah he knew the procedures he respected

00:24:11.280 the rule of law but uh i think yeah i think he he does it's it's fantasy it is fantasy but then a lot of

00:24:18.840 crime fiction is fantasy because uh you know the reach of universe people might say it's fundamentally

00:24:26.080 unrealistic but then so is all crime fiction to be honest because what happens in a even in a really

00:24:32.280 grounded so-called realistic type of crime fiction book you will have a trace of dna you know there's a

00:24:39.460 droplet of blood so they rush it to the lab and three hours later they get yes this guy that doesn't

00:24:46.260 happen you know it's three or four months possibly even longer if the lab is all backed up you know

00:24:52.680 in real life things take forever and then probably there'll be some kind of miserable unsatisfying

00:24:58.540 outcome to it there's a technicality the guy gets off people are frustrated by that and so that fiction

00:25:05.840 is to give people what they don't get in real life and so that instant visceral type of satisfaction

00:25:14.020 seeing a bad guy get his just desserts is something that we secretly love but we're

00:25:20.500 civilized enough to know that it can't be real how would you describe reacher's moral code because

00:25:26.160 like you said he he has this idea of revenge but it's for a third party like why does he get involved

00:25:31.360 in stuff that doesn't really have to because he gets annoyed there are certain things that annoy him

00:25:37.180 and there's a line in one of the other books where there's a flashback to when he's in the army

00:25:42.020 and one of his friends is asking him why did you choose the military police you know reacher's of

00:25:48.660 west point graduate he could have done pretty much whatever he wanted his friend says why didn't you go

00:25:53.720 to special forces why didn't you go to the armored divisions and reacher says something anodyne like

00:25:59.880 oh you know i want to take care of the little guy and his friend says really you care about the

00:26:05.000 little guy and reacher says with rare with total honesty reacher says no i don't really care about

00:26:11.600 the little guy i just hate the big guy i hate big smug guys who think they can get away with something

00:26:18.900 and so it's not a pure motivation on reacher's part his moral code is firm it's solid he basically has a

00:26:27.660 part of gold but he's not just a do-gooder he is annoyed at certain injustices and he will stop at

00:26:35.980 nothing not to put him right because he knows he can't put everything right but just to punish one

00:26:43.420 big smug guy who thinks he's getting away with something that's what reacher lives for i'm sure

00:26:50.100 that's another reason why people find the character appealing because i'm sure we all of us have big

00:26:54.300 smug guys in our lives that we'd love to bring down a notch i'm sure we've all got like uh 10 you

00:27:00.400 know that's what i say at a book event i say i look out at the crowd who are all book people and i say

00:27:06.440 you're lovely civilized people but i guarantee every one of you has got a list of 10 people you would

00:27:13.760 cheerfully shoot in the head and every everybody agrees they can't deny that you're british but you've

00:27:21.380 made reacher an american and set most of his books in the united states is there something about america

00:27:26.560 and the american character that allows you to do different things with reacher that you couldn't do

00:27:31.360 if he was british oh absolutely i mean it's not so much character although that is distinctive but it's

00:27:38.120 it's the geography you know the idea of a nation that inhabits a giant continent some of which is very

00:27:46.500 densely populated and some of which is virtually uninhabited and so it is plausible to have secret

00:27:55.260 things going on in a remote town where you know what it's like out west where it could be 50 miles

00:28:02.960 or 100 miles before the nearest police department it is absolutely plausible that you can have secret

00:28:09.760 locations whereas in britain the dynamic is totally different it's crime fiction there tends to be

00:28:16.800 very internal very psychological because there is not the physical space or the physical separation

00:28:23.880 between people the landscape is not the same you know like my second book reacher is intervenes in a

00:28:32.140 kidnap and gets thrown in a van with the kidnap victim and they're driven 2 000 miles to a remote

00:28:38.440 rocky mountain hideout which is obviously possible in the u.s but if i had been kidnapped where i lived

00:28:46.900 in england and driven 2 000 miles i'd be in the sahara desert by that point so it's about the scope the big

00:28:55.260 skies the big landscapes the possibility that a wandering man can come across an isolated situation

00:29:04.340 where something bad is happening that is plausible in america it's really not plausible anywhere else

00:29:09.920 you said earlier that an author can't force people to like a character like they have to

00:29:16.440 see what he's like and then make up their own minds do you like reacher as a person as a character

00:29:24.300 you know that's a great question too because i think the way fiction works with a character-based

00:29:31.740 series is the author needs to like the character less than the reader is going to like him the author

00:29:39.780 has got to maintain that critical stance that slight detachment so that the character will always appear

00:29:46.740 authentic what's in all the bad parts as well as the good parts an honest portrayal and if you start to

00:29:54.020 like your character too much then that falls apart and it becomes you protect the character you only show

00:30:01.740 the good parts it all becomes very idealized and very sugary and so i worked very hard to like reacher

00:30:10.920 less than you're gonna like him and that's what keeps him vivid i think so you've written like you're about

00:30:18.040 to come out the latest reacher novel there's like 28 you're coming up on uh yeah is it 28 or is it 29

00:30:25.880 i've lost it somewhere up there you've written a lot i'm curious what's your writing process like

00:30:31.180 it is literally chaotic other than i i always start on the same day which is the first of september

00:30:39.700 and that was a practical decision because if you're going to publish a book a year you've got to write a

00:30:46.120 book a year and so you've got to have some shape and structure to your year so i would always start

00:30:52.880 on this anniversary of when i started the first book it seemed not only logical but also somewhat

00:30:59.020 sentimental so i would always start on the same day but with really no firm idea i would often have a

00:31:07.400 feeling about the temperature or the landscape is it a cold hard book is it a hot sweaty book

00:31:16.120 i would have that kind of basic idea but other than that nothing at all and so it was a question

00:31:23.200 of just you sit down on the first of september you write the opening paragraph you sit back and you

00:31:30.020 think okay that's that's pretty good now what about the second paragraph and then it carries on like

00:31:35.180 that through the whole book just inventing it as i go along which made it it feels slow day to day

00:31:42.500 my word production per day is often less than other writers but i only do it once you know they've

00:31:50.860 planned this beforehand they've written an outline they've at least jotted notes on index cards so they

00:31:56.820 can shuffle around i don't do any of that i just make it up on the spot so all the thought and all the

00:32:03.260 research is distributed daily rather than being done in a chunk in advance so overall i think it's as

00:32:11.400 efficient as any other system and for me it brings total spontaneity what i want is always based on

00:32:19.520 how i feel as a reader and what i want is the reader to have that unique sensation that i think we've all

00:32:26.820 had from time to time where you're into a really great book and you're loving it and then for some

00:32:33.900 reason dinner is ready or a visitor comes you've got to stop and you've got to put the book down

00:32:39.980 and that gives you a kind of flavor of annoyance that you get nowhere else and so i wanted to feel

00:32:48.720 that as a writer and the only way you can do that is by not having a plan i would sit down just

00:32:55.340 desperate to know what was going to happen same as if i was reading it and i think that really helps

00:33:01.360 certainly helps my process i think it helps the quality of the book and the first time i knew this

00:33:07.260 was going to work for me was in the first book i'd written some of it and i was looking forward to

00:33:13.580 writing the scene that i had in mind next i was going to do that in the morning but my wife said no we've

00:33:20.860 got to go to the store and do this and that and i remember feeling really annoyed that i couldn't

00:33:27.520 sit and write that scene in exactly the same way as i would have felt annoyed if i couldn't sit and

00:33:33.320 read that scene i thought yeah this could work yeah we had a beau lamore on the podcast a while

00:33:39.640 back ago he's the son of louis lamore famous western writer and he said his dad had a similar writing

00:33:45.280 process it was all just from his subconscious he just started writing and he just wanted to see where

00:33:52.060 the story went and sounds like you have a similar process yeah very similar and and that kind of

00:33:57.300 relates back to something you said at the very beginning about me starting in midlife you know

00:34:03.460 i was 39 almost 40 when i first started that book and a lot of writers do that writing a successful

00:34:11.320 writing career is almost always a second phase career because it is good to wait till you're older

00:34:19.360 writing is wonderful from that point of view it's not only something that you can do when you get

00:34:25.460 older it's something that you should do when you get older because by the time you're 40 you've got

00:34:32.400 almost 40 years of reading you've got almost 40 years of experience of meeting people your first career

00:34:39.540 whatever it was has had all kinds of ins and outs and problems and highs and lows that teaches you

00:34:46.460 something so that by the time you are in the middle of your life you're ready you've got gas in the tank

00:34:52.760 you've got ideas stored up you're still young enough to have the energy and stamina to deal with it but

00:34:59.380 you've got something in your head i think it's really difficult to write when you're young you know i get

00:35:04.960 asked to go talk to school students or college students and it's a miserable experience what can you say

00:35:12.160 to them you know all you can really say honestly is don't do it now read for the next 20 years and

00:35:19.000 then do it you said you do some research you know but it's like on the spot like you don't research and

00:35:24.600 then write when you do research what's your research process like well it's it's for small details that

00:35:30.620 need to be right you know like the number of bullets in a gun or you know the barrel length of a gun or

00:35:36.780 this or that or what car you could use or the name of a helicopter and my process is so is so linear

00:35:45.460 i remember one book where the first sentence was the man was named calvin franz and the helicopter was

00:35:54.140 a and i i had to stop there after just a few words of the book i couldn't just leave it and go back to

00:36:00.340 it later i have to know in a linear fashion so i had to actually go out to the store and buy a book

00:36:05.620 about helicopters and select one and put the correct model number in that sentence so yeah

00:36:12.100 research for me is small things like that but the larger issues i don't think you can research not

00:36:18.480 when you're on a book a year schedule because if you think okay i'm going to do this research for this

00:36:25.040 year's book that research is going to be too fresh not digested it needs to percolate you need to know

00:36:33.040 which parts of it are important and which parts are not and so for the larger issues i always depend

00:36:39.100 on what i already know what i read years ago sometimes what i experienced two years ago the

00:36:47.360 big things are always already settled and it's only the minor details that need checking and that is

00:36:54.200 i mean i'm the perfect example of somebody who has bridged the analog and the digital era i would do it

00:37:00.840 with gun catalogs or as i say a helicopter book or something of that nature now of course and i was

00:37:08.200 a pretty late adopter but now it's mostly internet based do you do any revisions on your work

00:37:15.400 sort of yeah i mean i do i write all day and then the beginning of the next day i check what i wrote

00:37:23.540 the previous day and i will smooth it out if necessary you know i'll add a comma i'll change a word

00:37:29.740 and then i'll plow on forward and repeat the same process the following morning so it's a constant

00:37:36.400 kind of churning aspect so that every single bit of it has been re-read and smoothed and corrected

00:37:43.600 at least once in a forward moving momentum but then when i reach the end that is the end it is a

00:37:51.820 strange thing in my head i mean i'm completely normal i'm completely rational person but while i'm

00:37:56.880 writing the book it's as if this is really happening for real and i never change anything

00:38:04.320 because that would seem to me dishonest the editor will say to me wouldn't it be better if this

00:38:10.640 happened after that and i'll say probably but it didn't it's real at the time i'm writing it and so

00:38:18.000 to massage it later seems to be cheating to me yeah so it sounds like you're doing like some

00:38:24.720 grammatical stuff but you're not making major edits once you're done with the book you're done with it

00:38:29.480 that is not like f scott fitzgerald who was massaging the great gatsby even after it got

00:38:35.680 published he was still editing the thing sure and you look at writers and you you figure out why are

00:38:42.740 they doing that and really the real reason for endless editing and worrying about it is a kind of

00:38:49.600 fear of letting it out into the world fear of people's reactions to it and so you find ways to

00:38:57.620 procrastinate and delay that you think you're polishing it but what you're actually doing

00:39:01.980 is you're showing that you are afraid of the reaction to it and i can understand that completely it is a

00:39:08.600 huge thing a book is so personal it is your mind just spilled out onto that paper it is very much who

00:39:17.500 you are that specific year that you wrote it it's like a brutal psychological x-ray and you're going

00:39:24.560 to show that to the world it is a little intimidating but you just gotta soon as i'm done i kind of sense

00:39:32.140 when the book is finished i remember one book sitting there thinking this is nearly done another chapter

00:39:38.120 i'll do it and then i suddenly realized no the book is done right now right where you are is the end of

00:39:43.380 the book and so i i sent it off without giving it another thought because you can end up paralyzing

00:39:49.840 yourself if you go over and over it yeah you got to be like reacher no navel gazing just move on exactly

00:39:55.560 yeah just do it once and do it right that is reacher's motto so you are transitioning jack reacher

00:40:02.440 to your brother andrew the transition of a beloved character to a new author is rare in literature why did

00:40:10.020 you think the time was right to hand off reacher well because going back to my life as a reader

00:40:17.960 i would get into those series starting as a kid continuing as a young person and i i just loved

00:40:27.400 that feeling of you thoroughly enjoyed a book and you knew there were 10 more or 20 more that was such

00:40:35.540 a gift it was such a valuable feeling and i would rush to the library and i would start devouring the

00:40:41.380 series one after the other and too many series kind of got sag sagged after a while you could sense

00:40:49.320 the author getting lazy or running out of energy or running out of gas and beginning to phone it in

00:40:57.480 it happened time after time and as a young naive reader i felt so betrayed by that something that

00:41:05.500 i had loved before was now no good and i promised myself i would never do that if i ever felt i was

00:41:13.620 running out of gas or running out of energy i would stop before i phoned it in because i love my readers

00:41:21.660 and i don't want to give them a substandard product now i was probably a little hyper vigilant about it

00:41:29.560 but it meant a lot to me also what meant a lot to me was as a young person you know as a teenager

00:41:36.380 as a young adult i hated the way that old geezers just hung on forever they would not get off the stage

00:41:45.420 they would not leave room for anybody else and i thought on abound to stick to those two feelings

00:41:53.460 never phone it in and get off the stage and let somebody new take over and so i felt obliged in a

00:42:01.700 way morally obliged to stick to those promises i'd made to myself so i i did feel myself running out of

00:42:09.180 energy running out of gas i'd been doing it for a quarter century and i felt it was time to bow out

00:42:17.680 and the idea of my brother taking it over did not occur to me at first i i thought i've just got to

00:42:25.320 stop you know think of a satisfying final plot and just stop it right there but i felt people would

00:42:34.040 be so upset to to miss reacher you know they'd grown to love him they'd been so nice about him

00:42:40.300 i felt it would be gratuitously cruel just to take it away and so i started developing these fantasies

00:42:48.440 about you know wouldn't it be great go down to the crossroads at midnight and sell my soul to the devil

00:42:54.440 in exchange for a potion that would make me 15 years younger full of the old energy the old stamina

00:43:01.320 that i used to have and of course that's the fantasy there are no magic potions like that but

00:43:07.980 then i suddenly realized wait a minute you idiot you know yourself 15 years younger with all the

00:43:14.780 energy and the stamina which is my younger brother who was who is a lot younger than me you know almost

00:43:21.460 15 years younger and he was a writer so i said would you like to continue it and to be honest i thought

00:43:28.860 he'd say no because he's a proud stubborn boy who had his own thing going i thought he'd want to

00:43:35.420 continue with his own thing but he's been involved with reacher from the beginning he was the first

00:43:40.240 person that ever read reacher because he was the only person i knew who could give me a an informed

00:43:46.040 opinion he's a thriller reader very much in the same genre as me so i showed him the very first manuscript

00:43:53.380 in pencil and basically asked him is this any good should i should i continue and he happily said yeah

00:44:01.840 so he's he's known the series since day zero so that there was no learning curve for him he just stepped

00:44:09.120 right in what do you think is in store for reacher in the future now that your brother andrew is taking

00:44:15.060 the baton well i've encouraged i mean andrew's slightly more of a planner than i am but i've

00:44:20.740 encouraged him just to busk it just see what happens just start each book see what happens and so

00:44:26.960 neither he nor i have any idea what's going to happen to reacher i'm sure every year he will get

00:44:32.840 into some scrape and he'll sort it out and hopefully it'll last for a good long time and so this next book

00:44:39.940 that's coming out in too deep did you both collaborate on it no this is the first one that

00:44:45.240 is entirely his we collaborated on the last four as a sort of transition period and now he's striking

00:44:53.360 out on his own within too deep and so i was funnily enough it was like that feeling quarter century ago

00:45:00.380 when he read my manuscript i read his manuscript with the same kind of trepidatious feeling you know

00:45:09.140 what was i going to think of it and it's actually a great book it's a great reacher book he's really

00:45:14.840 nailed it he's got exactly the right start to it he's the development is just improvised and random

00:45:22.020 just like i would have done it and it reads really well so i'm not only proud of him but also very

00:45:28.820 happy that the series is in good hands what was that like reading a book that's based on a character

00:45:35.900 that you created but you're going into it like the readers that have been reading your book for the

00:45:40.440 past quarter of a century yeah i'm going into it like the consumer you know it's like me watching

00:45:45.680 the movie or me watching the tv series this is something somebody else has done with my character but

00:45:50.760 fundamentally it's it's a very satisfying feeling because people find it as if it's difficult you

00:45:58.120 know they say how is it giving your character away and my answer to that is that's the whole point

00:46:04.820 of writing fiction you're desperate to give your character away first and foremost to the reader

00:46:11.540 the reader owns the character soon as a reader reads the book and enjoys it they own the story

00:46:17.580 they own the character the whole point of writing is to let the ownership of the character migrate

00:46:23.600 outward to belong to other people so it wasn't difficult to give it to the movies or give it to tv

00:46:30.120 or to give it to andrew it kind of feels perfect this is what it's all about well lee child this

00:46:36.660 has been a great conversation thanks for time it's been a pleasure really my pleasure brett it's great

00:46:42.220 to be with you my guest here is lee child he's the author of the jack reacher series you can find

00:46:47.120 more information about this series at jackreacher.com also check out our show notes at

00:46:50.960 aom.is slash reacher where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic

00:46:54.960 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at

00:47:06.460 artofmanly.com where you can find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles that

00:47:10.180 have been written over the years about pretty much anything you think of and if you haven't

00:47:13.220 done so already i'd appreciate you take one minute to give you a podcast or spotify it helps

00:47:16.660 out a lot and if you've done that already thank you please consider sharing the show with a

00:47:20.200 friend or family member who you think was something out of it as always thank you for

00:47:23.400 the continued support until next time's brett mckay remind you to listen to the aom podcast

00:47:26.960 but put what you've heard into action

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

Lee Child the Writer, Jack Reacher the Character, and the Enduring Appeal of Lone Wolves

Episode Stats

Misogynist Sentences

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript