The Joys of Binge Reading

Christian White is an Australian author, screenwriter, and producer whose award-winning first novel, the nail-biting suspense story, The Nowhere Child, has already attracted a major screen deal.

Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler, and today Christian White talks about his latest psychological thriller, Wild Place, which raises the question as old as time itself – why do good people do bad things? He also talks about his screen writing, including co-writing the hit Netflix show Clickbait, which went to No 1 in 41 countries.

Links to this episode:

Clickbait Netflix trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwVLObz0MGs

Wild Place: https://www.christian-white.com/wild-place

Director P.T. (Paul Thomas) Anderson: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000759/

Pentecostal snake handling: https://www.ranker.com/list/history-of-pentecostal-snake-handling/quinn-armstrong

West Memphis 3: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/west-memphis-three-3039/

The Nowhere Child: https://www.christian-white.com/the-nowhere-child

The Wife And The Widow: https://www.christian-white.com/the-wife-and-the-widow

Relic the movie: https://www.christian-white.com/relic-1

J.P.Pomare: https://www.jppomare.com/

Anna Downes: https://anna-downes.com/

Stephen King; https://stephenking.com/

Gillian Flynn: https://www.gillian-flynn.com/

Harlan Coben: https://www.harlancoben.com/

Alex Garland: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/5684.Alex_Garland

The Beach by Alex Garland https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/607639.The_Beach

Haruki Murakami: https://www.harukimurakami.com/

Don Winslow: https://www.donwinslow.com/

Where to find Christian White:

Website: https://www.christian-white.com/

Email Direct: on his website form

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/6872386.Christian_White

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Christian-White/e/B07FZZNLPZ

What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.

Don’t forget you can get exclusive bonus content–like hearing Christian’s answers to the Getting-to-Know-You Five Quickfire Questions–by becoming a Binge Reading on Patreon supporter for the cost of less than a cup of coffee a month. Details at www.patreon.com/thejoysofbingereading.com .

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What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to the show notes in The Joys of Binge Reading.com for important mentions.

But now, here’s Christian.

Introducing thriller author and screen writer Christian White

Jenny Wheeler: Hello there Christian, and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us.

Christian White: Hello. Thanks for having me. It’s exciting.

Christian White – thriller author and screen writer

Jenny Wheeler: You’re in Melbourne, aren’t you? We will just establish that for our listeners.

Christian White: Yes, I’m in Melbourne. It is extraordinarily hot today, so it’s good that this doesn’t have video because you’d see sweat stains and a sweaty forehead and I’ve got the air con blasting, but yes, I’m in Melbourne.

Jenny Wheeler: Your first novel, The Nowhere Child, is a nail-biter and you had already attracted a major screen deal for that one. Now you’ve got to your third book, Wild Place, which is the one we’re going to be talking about today. That is just as hard to put down as the first one. You are also the co-creator of a Netflix series called Clickbait which went straight to number one in 40 countries.

You have obviously got a highly developed love of suspense. How did that develop, and where did you get it from, do you think?

Christian White: It took me a long time to figure out that’s what I wanted to write, strangely. I was trying to get paid as a writer for about 15 years before I could actually do it for a living. When I first started out, which was a million years ago, I wanted to write comedy. I fancied myself as a comedy writer, and I tried it and realized, I’m really bad at writing comedy.

With the move to thrillers author Christian White found his niche

I like horror, so I dabbled with horror and tried different genres and weirdly it took me a long time to get around to that thriller/ mystery/crime genre, mostly because I didn’t think I was clever enough, strangely. I have always loved reading them, so looking back it’s a bit of a no brainer. But I thought, no, I don’t think I can do it, I’m not clever enough.

As soon as I started dabbling, I realized, actually, I’m kind of good at this. I was terrible at all these other things I tried, but I’m good at this. I leaned further and further in and then realized it was my space.

Jenny Wheeler: How interesting that it took you quite a while to find that. When you say you didn’t feel clever enough, are you referring to having to do lots of plot twists and that kind of thing?

Christian White: Yes. I always thought a good mystery needs a great twist, but the twist can’t come out of nowhere. It’s got to be built in, and it needs to keep audiences guessing and there need to be twists and turns. I thought, I don’t think my brain can do that. What I realized was, my first drafts are always terrible, but so much of what I do is going back and making it seem like I had all the answers from the beginning. I think I thought that you had to write it from beginning to end. As soon as I discarded that notion, it all fell into place.

Write ‘as if you are ironing the sleeve of your shirt’

Sorry if I’m wrong about this, but I think it was P T Anderson, the director, who talks about writing as if you’re ironing the sleeve of a shirt. This is going to be hard without the visual, but you don’t start from the shoulder, go right down to the wrist, and be done with it. You start at the shoulder, go a little bit down and then go back to the shoulder and go a little bit further.

In writing, that’s so spot on and that describes my process so well. So much of it is building and building and building and making it seem like you are cleverer than you really are.

Jenny Wheeler: Writers do sometimes, when they’re two thirds or so into a book, get that panicky feeling of, this isn’t good enough, I don’t know what’s supposed to be happening. They almost pound themselves or punish themselves about that feeling of uncertainty, but it sounds like you’ve learned to ride it.

Christian White: Yes. My process – and now I’m onto my third book so it’s really a process – is that I will sit down before I start writing at all, and I will come up with what I think is this ironclad plot. You know, it’s really great. It’s got these cool twists and turns. Then, every single time, and there’s no way to say this isn’t really pretentious, but your characters do take on a mind of their own and a life of their own, and I realize around halfway through that I have got to know them in a way, and now I know they won’t do the things I want them to do in the second half.

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[data-style="minimal"]{padding:20px;width:100%;position:relative;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-header{margin:0 0 27px 0;text-align:center;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-subheader{margin:18px 0;text-align:center;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-guarantee{font-size:13px;margin:10px 0 15px 0;text-align:center;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-guarantee > p{margin:0;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-powered-by-convertkit-container{margin-bottom:0;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-fields{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-wrap:wrap;-ms-flex-wrap:wrap;flex-wrap:wrap;margin:25px auto 0 auto;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-field{min-width:220px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-field,.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-submit{margin:0 0 15px 0;-webkit-flex:1 0 100%;-ms-flex:1 0 100%;flex:1 0 100%;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] [data-style="minimal"]{padding:40px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"]{margin-left:-5px;margin-right:-5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field,.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{margin:0 5px 15px 5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field{-webkit-flex:100 1 auto;-ms-flex:100 1 auto;flex:100 1 auto;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{-webkit-flex:1 1 auto;-ms-flex:1 1 auto;flex:1 1 auto;} Another piece of writing craft advice: Follow Your Character

At that time, I generally do two things. Firstly, I always follow the character. That always speaks plot for me. I might have this amazing scene I’m building to, but I think characters are allowed to do stupid things because we all do stupid things. When I’m reading a book or watching a show and a character does something so plot-serving that you can see the writer’s movements behind it, I become completely emotionally disengaged. I’m about just following the character and generally they lead you to very interesting and unexpected places.

The other secret weapon I have is my wife, Summer. I’ll do a first draft and then I’ll give it to her first, even before my publishers, and I’ll say, hey, the ending is terrible. Can you come up with all the twists and give me credit for it? That’s what happened in my second book in particular. I obviously won’t do spoilers, but it was a very ambitious twist. I spent a long time trying to make that twist work. I reached a point where I was about to give up and that would mean missing deadlines. It would mean everything falling apart.

Finally, after weeks I talked to Summer about it and said, here’s what I want to do, and here’s the problem. She was quiet for probably 12 seconds, and then she came up with all the answers. She is definitely my secret weapon. If we ever get divorced, my career will go down the tube.

Clickbait – Netflix TV show which went No 1 in 412 countries

Jenny Wheeler: You seem also to have a fascination with the question of how well we know one another. Even in intimate relationships, people hold deep secrets from those closest to them. I wondered if that was something you’d grown up with – somehow being aware that there was a lot of stuff going on underneath that they weren’t coming clean about.

Christian White: I think on a subconscious level, I must have always feared this idea that those closest to us will be carrying some secret or do something so huge that it will unpick your relationship. I didn’t realize that about myself until I wrote three books about that very thing. The TV show Clickbait is about that. I co-wrote a film called Relic and even that goes into that territory.

When I’m writing, I am aware of the themes and I do start with certain questions, but only on a surface level. Generally, all the true themes emerge naturally. I didn’t think about it until the first book came out and people started to talk about those questions and, oh, you must be interested in that. I thought, yes, I guess I am.

Looking back now, there are all these recurring themes. In each of my three books, by design very different, there are similar themes tying them all together. That was completely subconscious, but clearly it’s a deep fear I have. I can’t think of anything worse. If a serial killer came in and killed me, yes, that would be horrible, of course. But what if you found out your wife had killed someone or your child? It’s this deep, deep fear.

A fascination with the darker themes

I think we set up these necessary truths in life. You have an idea of your parents. They have to be your idea of it. It’s a necessary truth. When you find out that’s not the case, life can unravel very quickly. That’s very scary. Although having said that, it’s not like that happened to me. I don’t know what I’m working through, but clearly there’s something going on.

Jenny Wheeler: Talking about themes, there is also a fascination with the darker side. The Nowhere Child deals with cult religions, and there’s quite a sinister thing going on there. Then with Wild Place you start with a quote about Satan and a TV clip about some people involved in devil worship. I got a feeling you might have been quite fascinated by those kinds of themes as well.

Christian White: Yes, definitely, in both of those cases. In The Nowhere Child it was Pentecostal snake handling. Weird real-life religion. The church was fictional in the book, but it was cobbled together from real churches. Actually, I made it less extreme than real life because it seemed so ridiculous, but there are these people who worship God by handling snakes and scorpions and drinking poison.

Those little cults and little sects and little groups of people who believe something so extreme have always fascinated me, so very early on, I knew. I read a lot and I listen to a lot and I watch a lot, and these sorts of things stick to my brain. Pentecostal snake handling was one. I always knew that eventually I would write about it, but I didn’t know where.

Satanic Panic a life long interest for author Christian White

Satanic panic is something I’ve been interested in for a very long time, which is what Wild Place explores. Your listeners might be aware of this, but there was the West Memphis Three, these three teenagers who got charged and sentenced with murder and spent years and years in jail. It was all based on the sort of music they listened to, and the kind of clothes they wore.

In the late 80’s and early 90’s, Satanic panic was a real thing. People were genuinely concerned that there were roaming bands of these cults out there that are going to kidnap children, and if you play heavy metal records backwards, it has a secret message. There is not a single shred of evidence for any of this, but it was this mass hysteria.

It’s funny with Satanic panic. I’ve had that in my mind for a very long time, but whenever I tried to do anything, it felt sort of silly. I couldn’t find a way in, it was so silly. It wasn’t until the pandemic hit that I began to understand it because anti-vaxxers today and QAnon and things like this, it’s this natural progression of Satanic panic. There are these compelling conspiracy theories with next to no evidence.

Usually, the way they work is they’ll take three or four facts and then they will string a narrative around those facts. It was in our face. A lot of us had people who were close to us sharing these things on social media and, suddenly I found myself in this weird position. First, I got into online fights with people about it. I didn’t listen to them; they didn’t listen to me.

Satanic panic and pandemic panic – there are similarities

But then I forced myself to try to empathize with them. Why are you thinking this? What is this based on? I think when we’re scared and we’re outraged and we’re angry, our standards of evidence drop. We think we’ve got something to fear. It’s easy to fear things that aren’t necessarily there.

Suddenly I understood Satanic panic a bit better. Wild Places is set in 1989 and it’s about Satanic panic, but in a way I got to explore that side of COVID and that side of the pandemic as well. God knows if I answered your question. I feel like I’ve been talking for a long time. In there somewhere, hopefully there’s an answer.

Jenny Wheeler: There was quite a lot of detailed, tactile stuff about the snakes and even the way they bred them in sheds and things like that. Did you get a chance to go to any of those places?

Christian White: No. A huge chunk of the book is set in Kentucky and I’ve been to Kentucky and spent some time there and travelled there, so a lot of that I could use, but I never went to a church service. They might have let me in. I’m sure if I really tried, I could do it. But I’m pretty squeamish and I’m also an animal lover and I feel like it would not be good for me.

I did a lot of research online. You can watch these services. It’s strange because they are not like you’d expect either. You picture dimly lit, people in cloaks and things like that, but it’s these really brightly lit community centers and they are just stomping and dancing around. There’s some pretty extreme stuff.

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Christian White – Psychological Thrillers