All language subtitles for Masterclass - David Baldacci Teaches Mystery and Thriller Writing - 03.Research Methods and Sources. Part 1

Research for me is critical. The worlds

I write about are pretty complicated,

but they're also a definite thing. If I

write about the military, I really can't

make stuff up. If I write about Secret

Service agents who pull wands out and

can fly, I mean, nobody's going to read

the book. So, I had to learn about those

things. As a writer, you have to take

off the novelist hat and you put on the

journalist cap. Uh my my older sister

was a journalist and I used to go when I

was in college I would go with her on

her beat and see how she interviewed

people and gain their confidence and

trust and all that. So I go in and you

know I figure out how to get to people

that I need to know things about and um

I interview them become a journalist and

have conversations and learn a lot. I go

to the places that I write about because

I want to see it firsthand, have a

visceral connection to it. I don't like

getting things third-hand from people

because that puts their opinions and

their biases into what I'm trying to

find out. So, if you take the time to go

out and learn about this stuff

firsthand, you will bring a depth and a

breath of u both plotting and writing to

your pros that will lift you out of the

slush piles and actually enhance your

chances of getting picked up by a

publisher or an agent. Every book that

I've written, I've done a ton of

research for all of them. And I think

the books are far better because of it,

and I think yours will be, too.

I will say that research also can help

you be a better writer in that it can

give you a a really emotional connection

to what you're writing about. I'll give

you an example. I'm not a gun

aficionado. Um I don't own guns. I have

fired pretty much every gun ever

manufactured just for the for purposes

of researching my knowledge. Everything

from a six shooter up to 50 cal machine

gun. And um when you write about firing

an MP5 uh which can fire 40 rounds in

about a second and a half. So you could

kill 40 people in one and a half seconds

with this weapon. To feel it against

your chest as it thuds as it vibrates as

you're firing and see this awesome field

of just total annihilation in front of

you.

Two emotions for me. One was like

exhilaration cuz you know, oh that's

kind of cool and utter. So when I have a

character who fires a weapon like that,

having felt that myself, I can draw upon

my own personal experiences and better

describing it. If I had Wikipedi it,

they would have told me it had shot 40

rounds in a second and a half. Okay? You

know, but to see it actually the

devastation it could do uh to someone,

it's just a different level. And that's

the difference between writing a a book

that's sort of mediocre and that's

between uh as opposed to one that is

really dynamic and authentic and just

feels at a different emotional level.

And that's what research can provide.

It's not just about finding out facts

about stuff. It's about experiencing

something.

When I'm sort of firming up the idea

that I'm going to write a particular

novel, let's say that I've got the

location, the venue sort of set. I'll

give you an example of a book I wrote

called No Man's Land. It was a John

Puller thriller and a lot of it was

going to be set at a place called Fort

Monroe in Virginia. It's in the Virginia

Beach, Newport News area of Virginia.

Okay, if I'm going to write about this

place, then I need to go there. And I

drew up my battle plan. Um, I made a lot

of calls. I talked to people, uh, wrote

letters, emails, and stuff. And so I

went and took a visit at Fort Monroe and

I took my recorder, I took my pad, my

steno pad and a lot of questions in my

head. So I met with people and I spent

the whole day. We walked all over the

place. And Fort Monroe is no longer an

active military installation. It was

decommissioned a while back. It almost

looks like a Hollywood backlot. They

have these neighborhoods where people

live and the kids were raised and then

you have the installation and all the

buildings the military and the army

would use. So, as I'm going around it,

I'm thinking to myself, okay, I need to

learn about what's here so I can write

about it. How can I use that alley? How

can I use that house? How can I use that

building? There was a big building

there, and I needed a building where

these scientific experiments are going

to be taking place to create the super

soldier way back. And there was a

building there that I ended up calling

building Q for various reasons. And it

was based on the building that I saw

when I was taking my tours. So, that's

your battle plan. And I call it a battle

plan because it is. you have certain

goals that you want to accomplish when

you go and make visits. And it may be

that I go to this place and I think I'm

going to get everything done in a day

and I realize it's not happening. All of

a sudden, I'm get intrigued and I go

down another pathway because something

of interest occurred that I didn't know

or expect was going to happen. So allow

yourself flexibility and latitude to

sort of adapt organically to what's on

the ground. You just have to. So I might

come back to the place again, meet with

more people, walk through some other

places, get a more in-depth analysis and

views and glimpses of where I want to

be. I like to measure things out. I like

to pace things off. When I did a book

called Hell's Corner, a bomb was going

to go off in Lafayette Park right across

from the White House. I went down there

with a flip phone camera and I'm pacing

off. I'm choreographing how this thing

is going to take place, measuring out

where everything is, where all the four

statues are located, who's in the park

usually, what are the pathways, where's

the Andrew Jackson statue, the White

House, Secret Service, and all that.

It's almost like you're you're building

your plan for how this is going to work

because look, once you write it and you

call it Lafayette Park, it's in the book

forever and if people go down there and

they're going to look at this place and

they're going to see if you got it right

or not. That's just the way it works. So

for me, it allows me to be right in the

facts, but it also allows me to think of

things for the plot that I use later in

the story.

Locations are critical to a novel um

because they can become a character in

the novel, particularly if it's an

extraordinary sort of place. And I don't

mean it has to be some exotic place. It

can be extraordinary in the fact that

it's a center of despair and

hopelessness. Um, when I was writing The

Fallen, I very carefully picked the

location where I wanted it to be because

I knew that this rust belt town in

western Pennsylvania where people are,

you know, dropping from opioid

addictions and there was really very

little hope in the place that permeated

throughout the plot and also the

characters because the characters

outlooks were bleak and some people in

the town this also car the locations can

drive motivations.

because the characters in the town were

some of them were doing certain things

or were horrible and the motivation was

they have no hope. They living in a

place that's dead. So this is how they

get by. And that's how you can take a

geographic location and turn it into

something, you know, above just a place

you walk through or where their

buildings are. it. Geographic locations

can imprint themselves upon people's

souls and psyches and emotions and make

them less caring, make them feel like

they would do things that they otherwise

would never contemplate doing. Um, so I

like putting my characters in places

like that because it just makes it I

think it makes it more monumental. You

know, the stakes seem to be higher. Uh,

the idea that anything could happen

because of where I set this. Um, you

know, I Zero Day, the first John Puller

book was set in um rural West Virginia.

Um, and this place, and we'll we'll

learn about this in a little bit. I

picked that place for a very particular

reason. It was was of paramount

importance to the plot, but I also

picked it because it was a big coal

mining town. And I know coal mining very

well. Two of my uncles were coal miners.

Both died in the mines. And I know how

hard, arduous, dangerous that life is.

But the fact that, you know, this was a

coal mining town was also critical to

the plot. And so when you're picking

geographical locations, don't just don't

pick it because ah I'll just throw a you

know a dart at a at a map. Uh pick it

because you could realize the potential

of that geographic location also rising

to the level of a character in the book.

I never served in the military. My dad

was in the Navy. All my uncles served in

the various armed forces. So when I

decided to write this book about a

military protagonist, I needed to

immerse myself in that world. Um, one

because I thought it would be really

interesting. I didn't know a lot about

the army. And two, it was a way of

showing respect. If I'm going to write

about somebody who serves in the

military, I need to know about this

world. So I did a lot of research. I

went down to Fort Banning in Georgia. I

spent three days down there getting my

butt kicked from one end of the base to

the other. I interviewed dozens of

people, everybody from privates all the

way up to the two star who commanded

Fort Benning. Um, did lots of

interviews, did as much as I could,

sniping and parachute jumping and Hum

rollover tests and the army physical

fitness training that almost killed me

and firing all these weapons

just so I could write a better book, a

more authentic book. So, this is Zero

Day. This is about 400 or so pages. And

these are just the military research

binders that I did to read through,

marked up, and sort of digested so that

I could write a better book. And this is

just just the military component. Forget

about all the other stuff that was in

there. Now, there is a section here that

I'm going to read to you that deals with

nuclear weaponry. And this binder

is my nuke binder. So, this is all the

stuff that I had to read through to

understand nuclear weapons. And it's

complicated stuff. And the section I'm

going to read to you is about two and a

half pages long in this book. Two and a

half pages versus this. So I had to

distill all of this down to those pages.

And it took a lot of time and a lot of

effort, but was well worth it because

the last thing I wanted to do was near

the end of the book lose a reader in a

technical morass of stuff that they had

no interest in.

I'm going to set the scene up for you.

Now, this is near the end of the book.

John Puller um is in a concrete bunker

that the United States Army left in the

middle of this small town in West

Virginia um where they had a research

facility into nuclear weaponry uh back

in the 60s and instead of taking all the

bad stuff with them, the army just

concrete bunkered over it and left it

there. So John Puller is inside this

bunker uh with a local sheriff Samantha

Cole and there is a plutonium based uh

nuclear tactical weapon inside this

bunker that has a timer uh that is going

to go off. My dilemma here was how do I

present all this technical information

and you will probably face this many

times in your writing career without

totally losing the audience. And here's

how I decided to do it. John Puller's

brother, where I'd set this up in the

very beginning of the book. He's in

prison in Levvenworth. And I also set

this up early. He is a nuclear weapons

expert. So this is his whole life. Bobby

Puller, Robert Puller, his brother, is

going to walk his brother, the layman,

through this. What I'm actually doing is

I'm having the expert, walk the reader,

who's also the layman, through all this

really technical material. And I'm

trying to put in examples and analogies

and language in there that makes it not

dumb down but simplify because look,

we're not nuclear war experts. We're

just not. Most readers are not that way.

So this is how I had to approach it. But

that's how I set the scene up. So I got

the expert and I got the layman because

really it's just you the reader, you the

writer that I'm talking to. So here's

the scene.

How do I turn this thing off, Bobby?

John, you can't actually turn it off.

Then what the hell am I doing here?

Polar barked so loudly. The Cole jumped

and almost dropped her light. There's

really only one way to do it, Robert

said in a calm tone. We have to screw up

the detonation. The lenses are seamless

now, but if we throw off the timing of

the detonation, we can cause a fizzle.

So, how do I do that? We throw off the

detonation sequence by adding one of her

own. Puller looked up at Cole in dismay.

So, you're telling me that in order to

beat this thing, we have to detonate it?

Is that what the hell you're telling me?

Pretty much. Yeah. said Robert. [ __ ]

muttered Polar. That's really the only

way. If there's another way, I'd tell

you. How about if I just start whacking

stuff? Odds are real good you're dead,

and a mushroom cloud probably goes up

over West Virginia. I should have let

the calvary come in here, chopper this

thing out, and drop it in the ocean.

They couldn't have done that in an hour.

In hindsight, it's 2020. Maybe they

Maybe they could have gotten in here

before it engaged, stopped the timer

from commencing, or dropped it in some

deep hole. Again, hindsight.

If this thing goes off, it's my fault,

Bobby. Two points, John. If that thing

goes off, you won't be around to care.

Second point, the person or persons who

built that thing are the responsible

parties, not you. Now, how much time

left? 57 and a half till doomsday.

Puller looked up at Cole and pointed to

the way they'd come in. He mouthed two

words. Go. Now. She shook her head and

gave him a stubborn expression when he

pointed to the way out again. When he

did it a third time, she flipped him

off. John, you there? What's going on?

asked his brother. Nothing. Just a

tactical issue that's been resolved.

Now, when you say fizzle, what exactly

are we talking about? Maybe half a

kiloton yield, but that's just an

educated guess on my part. The concrete

dome should help contain most of the

blast. Half a kiloton, said Polar.

That's equal to 500 tons of TNT. You

call that a fizzle? Hiroshima got hit

with a 13 kiloton yield and they only

used 60 kg of uranium. And of that, only

600 mg actually reacted. That's about

the weight of a dime. I have no idea how

much plutonium they've gotten this

sucker, but we have to plan for the

worst case scenario. There's no way it's

as small a yield as with Hiroshima.

We're talking gun versus implosion

method, uranium versus plutonium. To be

safe, let's assume it's millions of tons

of TNT equivalent. That'll send that

concrete dome into orbit and spread

radiation over six states or more, and

you could pretty much kiss West Virginia

goodbye.

Fresh sweat sprouted on Puller's face.

Okay, half a kiloton doesn't sound so

bad now. So tell me how to make a

fizzle.

And that's how I distilled all this

information in a binder into those two

pages of stuff. It would have been so

easy for me to like cram more crap in

there. I could have talked about gun

versus implosion for 40 pages. I found

it fascinating. Uh but the reader

doesn't need to know that. And you as a

writer, you you if if you do anything

else, if you do nothing else with what

I'm telling you in research, do this.

Leave almost all of it out. You will

thank me later.