Top Setting Writing Advice from Author Vera Kurian

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EPISODE INFO:
You know when people say that the setting became like it’s own character?

And you sit there thinking…how do I make readers feel like that?

Well Vera Kurian is going to give us some advice on how she absolutely crushed the setting of her new novel A STEP PAST DARKNESS out now.

I read an advanced reader copy for this one and, seriously, this is going to be one of those books people talk about for years to come..

Go grab a copy. You won’t be disappointed.

But before you go buy her book, she’s going to teach us how to write a setting as epic and all-encompassing as hers.

BIO:
Vera Kurian is a writer and scientist based in Washington DC. Her debut novel, NEVER SAW ME COMING (Park Row Books, 2021) was an Edgar Award nominee, was named one of the New York Times’ Best Thrillers of 2021, and has sold in 15 countries. A STEP PAST DARKNESS, is out now. She has a PhD in Social Psychology, where she studied intergroup relations, ideology, and quantitative methods. You can find her on Substack or Instagram

Tweet me @DavidRGwyn

Transcript

Vera Kurian: [00:00:00] There are certain themes I keep returning to. One is friendship, which is clearly, this is the book all about friendship. But I'm always a character driven novelist. So character forward and there's usually some kind of like big ish premise, like, you know, high concept sort of thing. But there is a sort of sensibility of me across all of them, even if they're slightly different genres.

David Gwyn: You know, when people say that the setting became like its own character and whatever book they were reading. And you sit there thinking. How do I make my readers feel like that? Vera Kurian to give us some advice on how she absolutely crushed the setting of her new novel, a step past darkness, which is out now, I got the opportunity to read an advanced reader copy for this one. And seriously, this is going to be one of those books that people talk about for a long time. Go grab a copy. You won't be disappointed, but before you go buy her book, she's going to teach us how to write a setting as epic and all [00:01:00] encompassing as hers. 

I'm David Gwyn, agented writer navigating the world of traditional publishing during the first season of the thriller one-on-one podcast. We are going to focus on building the skills necessary to write the kinds of thrillers that land you an agent and readers. During this season, I'm talking to agents authors and other book publishing professionals about the best way to write a novel. If you want the expert secrets, this is where you're going to find them. Last week on the podcast. 

I talked to Jason Powell about his book. NO MAN'S GHOST

Jason Powell: The, the opening chapter doesn't need to be the introduction to the character, in my opinion, the opening chapter. I think it's, it's easier to, to capture the reader's attention if it's something. We would like to see somebody go through or like to see somebody experience, and then we can worry about making the person that we see go with likable.

David Gwyn: If you haven't yet listened to that episode, definitely go check it out. 

I write a weekly newsletter through thriller 1 0 1 with exclusive information, advice, and updates that you can only get in the newsletter. 

I talk about goal [00:02:00] setting systems productivity, and I shared the best resources and advice for thriller writers from all around the internet. 

If you want to level up your writing skills, be sure to subscribe. There's a link in the description where you can do that. Today's guest is Vera Kurian. She's a writer and scientists' based in Washington, DC. 

Her debut novel NEVER SAW ME COMING was an Edgar award nominee was named one of the New York times best thrillers of 2021 and has sold in 15 countries. A STEP PAST DARKNESS is out now. She has a PhD in social psychology where she studied intergroup relations, ideology and quantitative methods. You can find her on sub stack or on Instagram. 

Let's get to the interview. 

Vera, thanks so much for being here. 

Thank you for having me. 

So your newest novel, A Step Past Darkness is, is out right now because this, this episode is airing on February 20th. So how does it feel to have your novel out? 

I

Vera Kurian: feel like it's been a long wait 'cause my last book came out in 2021 and it's been a few years and this [00:03:00] book took a long time to write and revise just 'cause it's.

It's long and complicated and has a lot of POVs in it. 

David Gwyn: I read some articles when your, your first book came out, which was Never Saw Me coming, which I do wanna talk a little bit about. Because obviously, you know it got it, it, and rightfully so, got a ton of praise and, and people really enjoyed it.

And I'm curious because I was reading those articles and, and you were talking about how you were writing this thing that felt unwieldy and kind of large and kind of you were, you were fighting through it and, and was that this novel? Was that a step past 

Vera Kurian: darkness? Yeah, so I got the idea. I think I kind of always wanted to do an homage to Stephen King's it, 'cause that's my favorite Stephen King novel.

And I really like the structure. So, but I knew to do something that large, the plot would be quite complicated and it would have two mysteries in the plot line. So it took a while to just also write, 'cause I also wanted to do justice to have six main characters. I love ensemble cast, but I [00:04:00] hate when they're really thinly drawn and they're not really six whole people.

So it ended up taking like, you know. Much longer than never saw me coming 

David Gwyn: dead. So, can you tell us what step past Darkness is about? 

Vera Kurian: Yeah, it is a dual timeline mystery about a group of kids or high school kids in 1995.

Who are sort of stuck together to work on a school project and they go to the town's abandoned coal mine for a party where they see something horrible and spend the rest of the summer trying to figure out what had happened. I. Then split apart and then they have to come back to their hometown 20 years later because one of the six has been murdered.

So there's two interwoven mysteries. One in 19 ninety-five and one in 2015. And it flips back in time between the two. 

David Gwyn: Can you tell us a little bit about what drew you to this project? I know you wanted to work on something that was, that was big like this, but is there something that you kind of are [00:05:00] finding that like every project you take on, you're like, it's gotta have this thing for you to get really excited about it?

Vera Kurian: There are certain themes I keep returning to. One is friendship, which is clearly, this is the book all about friendship. But I'm always a character driven novelist. So character forward and there's usually some kind of like big ish premise, like, you know, high concept sort of thing. But there is a sort of sensibility of me across all of them, even if they're slightly different genres.

David Gwyn: And can you tell us what you're working on now? 

Vera Kurian: I am working on a crime novel. I'm not quite sure if it's a mystery or not, about a young musician who's in a heavy metal band who's extremely talented but very strange and sort of came out of nowhere and was self-taught.

And he needs a bone marrow transplant. But his band members find out that he's estranged from his family, and that's the only place he can get it. So something happens where he comes together to meet with them and it [00:06:00] results in three people being murdered. So the book is sort of about untangling what happened with this estranged family and then what happened that night of the murders.

David Gwyn: So you have a PhD in social psychology, and I, I'm always interested to hear, this might be an obvious one, but what do you think are like the one to two ways that you use that background in, in the stories that you're writing?

Vera Kurian: I mean, it was more clear for never saw me coming 'cause that book was about psychopathy. So I was able to, to research and kind of understand that research just 'cause I'm scientifically literate. Just in general, I think, I think I'm a writer and I think I'm a psychologist because I'm just interested in human behavior and like what's going on on the insides of people's minds.

And I ended up in two separate professions that, that look at that in slightly different ways. So I didn't really apply any of my research background to this book, but I have a very analytical way of doing things. My, my agent always tells me that I do things more analytically than most writers do.

Like I have [00:07:00] spreadsheets and analysis and all this kind of stuff. So that's kind of my approach to being really efficient when I'm writing. 

David Gwyn: Yeah. Oh, that's so cool. And so I, it's funny, I, I like to hear, I, I interview weirdly, a lot of lawyers I feel like end up writing, writing books. I don't know if I've ever had somebody with a kind of like that really hard science background, which I think is really interesting.

I mean, it makes a lot of sense that that analytical mindset can be useful, especially I imagine when you're working through something. That's a, as large as the step past darkness was, do you find that you were able to manage it a little bit better because of the, the way you had it 

organized?

Vera Kurian: Yeah, I think so because, because this is such a big complicated plot and there's like year timelines between two years, but also the day of the murder and things like that. And when I got my first round of edits from my editor, they were pretty big edits and I spent. I think something like if you add together all the hours that I worked on, just [00:08:00] fixing the plot, so not writing, it was something like twenty-four hours spread over the course of a couple weeks where I was just trying to fit a puzzle together of how do I make this plot work?

And I am the sort of person where I don't want plot holes. So I think through everything and like I would keep like lists and stuff of like tracking the clues to see like, does this make sense? 

David Gwyn: Yeah, I imagine that was a, a process to go through. I'm, I'm curious now that you're on your third novel what is your writing process like?

Has it changed at all since, since your first novel came 

Vera Kurian: out? I think the, the first one was a little, like, a little more random. Like I do tend to plot before I write and I have some sense of the character. But when I was writing the second one, I actually spent. A month just working on characters before I wrote any text.

And then I wrote a really long outline. And then I started writing. And [00:09:00] then working on this third one, I worked out the characters first and then plotted things out. And now I'm doing kind of a more detailed. Plot line as I'm starting to write it. 

David Gwyn: Yeah. And I, I would think so. It's interesting to hear that you're a plotter.

I guess I'm not surprised to hear that because of kind of the, the pieces that you had to fit together. But for your, even for your first novel, was that like you had some type of outline, do you find you do a more a more in-depth outline now than you, than you even did on that first 

Vera Kurian: novel? Yeah, because.

Because when you write your first novel, you can write it in one year or 20 years. If you write your second novel, you're probably writing it under contract. And in order to meet that deadline, I was terrified of not meeting the deadline. So I wanted to make sure, and it was a really big ambitious book, so I wanted to get it right.

And I'm a firm believer in like plotting. I don't, I think that there's a variety of reasons why Pantsing is bad for writers. Come at me about it. But it's, if you're on schedule and it's someone [00:10:00] else's money, like you gotta get stuff done. 

David Gwyn: Oh, I'm a, I'm a huge plotter. I don't understand how panzers work.

It doesn't work for me. I like, can't, I like, just can't sit down and just see where I go. I'll end up, who knows where I'll end up, but it won't be good. 

Okay, let's pause there for a second. I hope you really heard what she said about the kind of work necessary to pull off a quality novel thriller suspense and mystery authors are in the unique position of often having really complex plot lines. And we have to, we have the smartest readers on the planet. 

It's hard to trick them. So don't be afraid to do what Vera date and go through your story piece by piece. I spend hours. If you need to ensuring you have a kind of plot readers are going to obsess over 

and the next part of the interview, Vera is going to share her tips and tricks for writing the kind of setting that makes you feel like you live there. If you're trying to engulf readers in your setting, be sure to pay close attention. Let's go. To this next section of the interview. 

So people who listen to this podcast are people [00:11:00] who want to be traditionally published, basically want to be where you are and have, have this great career.

And so the one thing I wanna talk about, and obviously we could talk about a million things that you did well in, in in this novel, but the one thing I really want to, to draw out and I'm really curious about is the setting, because I feel like it felt very real to me. I'm, I'm from Northeastern, Pennsylvania, where it's like coal mining.

Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. So it felt. It felt very real to me. And I don't know if it's like, I think part of it is 'cause I'm, I'm from up that way. But I loved this setting and it felt very, very intentional to me. And so I'm really curious about how you came up with the setting. Was it kind of organic? Was this something that you really had to flesh 

Vera Kurian: out?

Yeah, I, I do wanna ask if I got anything wrong. About Pennsylvania? 

David Gwyn: It felt very much to me like the towns where I grew up and like the area I grew up in. And that's, maybe that's why I'm, I'm selfishly asking this question because I'm really curious about just, just what that process was [00:12:00] like. 

Vera Kurian: I wasn't necessarily thinking of Pennsylvania, but I knew it needed to be in a coal mining state.

So I picked Pennsylvania actually because of Centralia. There's an underground minefire in this town of Centralia, which essentially destroyed the town. And there's one, an underground minefire in the book. The setting in this book is like another character.

It's like a seventh character. And I wanted, for me, setting is really important if. I sort of think like when the writer is just sort of vaguely like, oh, this is in Manhattan. Like you can't see and feel it. So I wanted you to be able to feel like this whole small town, like I, I started out with like a map of like what the place looked like.

Where did all the kids live, like where is the main street, where are the stores? And the general, like, it's kind of like the hometown that I'm from, there was no coal or a megachurch, but it's small town where everyone knows each other. There's a lot of social stratification and a lot of like clickiness and you know, [00:13:00] back then some, some of what we call like bullying, like wasn't called bullying back then.

It was, that was just sort of how it was. And we had this like the good kids and then we had burnouts and that was sort of how things were organized. But I wanted, I wanted the place to seem very real. And that it wasn't just a location where this was happening, the history. It goes back to the 18 hundreds.

Like I go back in the history of the town to the founding of the town. So I wanted it to have that like feeling of authenticity even though it's not real. And I did, I looked at map of like where the coal mines were, like where, which airport they would be flying into, because I, and you know, I had to research like.

Where were the settlers living back then and where were the the Native Americans as well? So, yeah. 

David Gwyn: Yeah, I think that's so cool. And I, I, it's funny listening to you talk about it makes me think about like, the amount of research that needs to be done if you're gonna nail a setting. And, and I think sometimes and I think to your point, like [00:14:00] sometimes I.

Authors are just like, it's at this place, which you can already imagine because people have been there, you've seen movies from there. And, and that's just where we are and we're, we're hitting the ground running. And, and I really feel like the, the setting and the story just became this new, like you said, it was, it was an, it was another character.

It be, it became this place that was more than a place. And, and I really enjoyed, it was funny. I, I, as soon as I opened the book and I read kinda the first couple of lines, I was like. This is, this is my hometown. Like this is where, you know what I mean? Like, it felt very, felt very much like a place that I was familiar with.

And I thought that was super cool. So people who are listening definitely 110% pick up this novel. You'll, you'll absolutely fall into it. And I, you know what's, I've, I read Stephen King's and I'm kicking myself. 'cause for some reason I didn't, it didn't connect with me that this is very, like, you at least like, yeah.

And as soon as you said it, I was like. Oh, 

Vera Kurian: what, like, yeah, because it's not, I don't really think it's a horror novel, but it has the structure of like, kids [00:15:00] Yep. In over their heads. They have to come back and there's even that reunion scene. But I was definitely going for that and it's starting to come out in reviews if people were like, this reminds me of IT.

Or like, Goonies 

David Gwyn: or The breakfast. Yes. Yeah. That's super cool. And so my, my last question for you and I'm gonna put you on the spot a little bit here, but I think you're ready for this. my wife and I love horror movies, and I know you're a horror movie. Yeah. Buff. Huge. What, what, maybe one or two, maybe more, if you've got 'em, like recommendations for horror movies that, that you're really just loving right now.

Vera Kurian: I, I'm gonna assume you've seen Barbarian. Yes. I love that movie. I do too. So much. I have a strange recommendation. You might have seen this as well. I really like the movie The. Pope's Exorcist. Oh, no, I haven't seen it. It's very stupid. I actually, I'm, I watch a lot of horror movies, so I'm, I'm kind of a snob about it.

And the Pope's Exorcist is just like, patently stupid. And you're like, why is Academy Award winner Russell Crowe in this movie? And he's, [00:16:00] he's driving around on a Vespa while wearing his Cardinal outfit. He has a bad Italian accent. And at one point, like someone, you know, the premise is he's the exorcist for the Pope.

Someone like confronts him about something and he's like, well, you'll have to take it up with my boss. And he's like, who's your boss? The Pope so dumb. And then it goes off into this very DA Vinci code kind of plotline towards the end. And I. I'm enjoying 

David Gwyn: this. Hey, that's the best you can hope for, I guess.

All right, 

Vera Kurian: people having fun. I feel like you can tell when someone's having fun and then you have fun. 

David Gwyn: I'm gonna check that out. That's, that's a great recommendation. It's one that I've seen and I was like, that looks like maybe not my thing, but like, yeah. Yeah. I love that recommendation my last question for you actually is where can people find you? Where can people look you up?

Vera Kurian: I'm on Instagram at VeraKurianAuthor. You can find my sub stack. Pretty easily by just Googling my name or, or going to the Instagram.

And actually, if you're a writer, I do write on the sub stack a lot of [00:17:00] craft articles and then book recommendations. So you can check that out. 

David Gwyn: Yeah, I just ran across that. It's called Craft, right?

Vera Kurian: Yeah, it's, I usually do one article a week on craft or something related to publishing and then one book recommendation list. But I actually, I really like thinking and talking about craft. 'cause I think I do approach it from like a very analytical standpoint. So I have like a very detailed. Essay on there about how to create three-dimensional characters.

There's actually two parts to it, or like how to do I'm gonna do one on setting while I'll talk about like drawing maps and stuff. Or like, I have a series of, I think two so far, articles about how to. If you can change from being a pantser into a plotter, which I think you can and one of a few of the articles are about that.

So it's, it's, it's slowly growing. But I post every Tuesday,

David Gwyn: if you're listening to this, I will link to that so you have quick access to that. I'm planning on becoming a subscriber because I, I have that same, like, the way I think about it is analytical when I think about [00:18:00] story. And so I'm really excited to read that and I'm really glad that you are turning people to the plotter side.

'cause I feel like people try to always pull the pantsers, right? That's right. Great. If you're listening pick up this, this novel. Vera, this was so much fun. I really appreciate it. I had an absolute blast 

Vera Kurian: talking to you. 

Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

David Gwyn: Okay. So that's it. Vera has been such a fun guest to talk to she's so analytical and knowledgeable that I really think her mindset of writing on a deadline is great for anyone writing a novel. Whether you're under contract or not make a deadline, make a plan, get it done. Next time on the podcast. I'll be talking to literary agents, Sandy Lou, about a thriller 1 0 1 submission. Yes, that's right. Someone got a full request. If you want to submit your opening for a literary agent to check out, click the link in the description for more information, and I'll see you next week.