Thriller 101
A podcast for readers and writers of thriller, mystery, suspense, and crime fiction.
Thriller 101
146 How to turn 'wasted' drafts and subverted tropes into your writing superpower with Charlene Wang
What if the tropes you love are actually holding your thriller back?
In this episode, Charlene Wang reveals how she transformed the beloved campus novel into a feminist revenge thriller by strategically subverting genre expectations.
And the results landed her a major book deal.
You'll discover the counterintuitive truth about "wasted" drafts (spoiler: nothing is ever wasted), learn how to weaponize social media as a character psychology tool rather than just a plot device, and understand why the most compelling morally gray characters make us root for their goals while questioning their methods.
If you're struggling to make your thriller feel fresh or your contemporary setting feel authentic, this conversation will fundamentally change how you approach revision and might just save you years of trial and error.
Bio:
Charlene Wang was born in Beijing and, after immigrating to the US when she was three, has lived in seven different cities from Los Angeles to Rockville to Biloxi. Graduating with a B.A. in English from Dartmouth College and a J.D. from University of Virginia School of Law, she worked as a litigator for six years before quitting to pursue her childhood dream of becoming an author. She now lives in Brooklyn, NY, with her fiancé and their dog Winky.
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today we are joined by Charlene Wang to talk about, I'll follow you a revenge story set against the backdrop of an elite college. We're gonna talk about how she reinvented some novel tropes for a thriller audience, what makes complicated characters and friendships so interesting on the page, and how contemporary themes can be used as tools of suspense. Charlene, thanks so much for hanging out with me on the Thriller 1 0 1 Podcast.
Charlene Wang:Hello. Excited to be here.
David Gwyn:Yeah, I'm really excited to to chat with you. So let's kind of dive right into it. Can you give us a, a little overview here for all of what all follow you is about?
Charlene Wang:Yeah, I'll follow you, is about two best friends who collaborate on an Instagram account that turns them into viral sensations, but when one is accepted into an elite college and the other follows her there, they're battle to control the narrative. Spirals into obsession, abetting their friendship and their lives. It's a campus novel, but it's also a feminist revenge thriller. And how it gets there is half the fun.
David Gwyn:Yeah. It's, it's a great read. Really, really fun to read. Highly recommend people pick it up. Tell me a little bit about the, the setting in the story. Why set it on on this campus?
Charlene Wang:So I've always loved campus novels. The secret history you know, a separate piece. Those were always like my favorite books growing up. I also went to Dartmouth, which is a very small insular college up north. And I think for thrillers it's the perfect setting because it's closed, it's insular. You have a bunch of young people from all different backgrounds thrown in together. And you know, there's usually with campus novels and outsider who is try like striving really hard to fit in with this elite inside crew. And that always leads to volatile results. So it's just super fun to read and it was really fun to write.
David Gwyn:Yeah. I think that's, that's really interesting that you bring that up. I, I often, as I, I, I do a lot of these podcasts. I, I read a lot of thrillers and I love to hear authors talk about where their story is set and'cause it always matters a lot in thrillers and I feel like people. Don't think enough about that that they kind of breeze over it. They're like, oh, I'll make them camping because it's remote. It's like, but maybe not. Right. And I think that this is such a great example of how you used a setting and it wasn't just like a random thriller, pick it off the shelf type
Charlene Wang:Right.
David Gwyn:And I think that, I think that was really cool. And so did you always know, like, was this always part of, of how you're going to set this novel or did this come about as you were kind of writing through it?
Charlene Wang:No, you know, truth, truth be told, when I was 22 and I just graduated Dartmouth, I told myself if I ever write a novel, it will be a campus novel. And you know, lo and behold, many, many, many years later.
David Gwyn:You did it. That's awesome. So tell, tell me a little bit about, about getting into this setting here. Like what did you have to do to really, because I feel like you nailed the setting, so like what did you have to do to really get yourself back into that? That kind of, that kind of vibe.
Charlene Wang:That's a good question. One way was, this is a sub genre that is, has a huge tradition behind it. So I love the Secret History and I've read that book so many times. And one of the core assumptions that I realized about the secret history was that, you know, it's really about this blank slate protagonist who arrives on campus and it just. Seems magically he, the past recedes in the rear view mirror and he's able to kind of, you know, infiltrate this new group of friends that he's, you know, really, you know, he finds really dazzling. And I kind of wanted to subvert that with this book because, you know, when I was, when I went to college, I found that the past was not so easy to let go of. And, you know, I wanted to show my protagonist faith. She has this really messy friendship that really shaped her. And when she gets to campus, you know, she, she's still in the shadow of that. And it really affects the way she, you know thinks about the world, the way she patterns her interactions with other people that she meets on campus. And so I really wanted to show that, you know, this isn't a blank slate protagonist. This is someone who quite literally the past. Comes knocking on her door in the form of her best friend Kayla, who shows up at her dorm one night, mid-semester. And so it, that was really the, the, the engine that, that I, you know, really capture my imagination with this book. And yeah. And that's, that's one of the many, many fun, fun tropes of this genre. I mean, I could talk forever about it.
David Gwyn:good. Well,
Charlene Wang:Yeah.
David Gwyn:you another question about it. So, so I'm glad,'cause I, I think this was really interesting too. I, I think when, and I'm gonna talk a little bit more about this. When we talk about themes, I feel like thrillers I feel like thrillers sometimes overlook the deeper aspects of storytelling that they, you know, as, as writers we're focused more on pacing and on character and on, like, are we, are we hooking the reader? Yes, all those things, but also like, is there something deeper? And I think, you know, mentioning the secret history, I, you know, I, as you kind of were talking about that, I could see that in your writing. And that's, that's a novel that has like a lot of deeper undertones to it as well. So, so my question as I kind of roundabout get to it. Is one of the many things I, I thought you did a great job of here was infusing those kind of new elements while keeping the tropes that readers love. And you mentioned that kinda like the subverting and, and maintaining some, some parts of, of these types of stories. So my question is just like, how did you decide what to retain, what to subvert, what to add to this, to this sub genre that already exists?
Charlene Wang:Yeah. So, you know, I think part of it is it's always anchored in my own personal experience. And, you know. For example, one of the, the tropes is the compelling professor figure that the, the protagonist meets and is, you know, just really there's a seductive pull and, you know, the pursuit of knowledge is like a common theme in these dark academia novels. So, you know, I want, I knew I wanted a professor but I felt like, you know, with a contemporary campus novel. It's difficult to put aside the power imbalances with that relationship. And so, and I knew that this. This novel would be set post Me Too. And so that kind of, that kind of made me, that opened the book for me. In that, you know, I think that without giving away too much, this relationship that she has with her art conservation professor is not all in the Ivy League tower talking about art and conservation. It, it also has a lot of problematic power dynamics. And I think that was really fitting with, you know, the world we live in today.
David Gwyn:Yeah. I, I think that makes a lot of sense and, and kind of leaned right, right into the next part here where I wanted to talk a little bit about themes. As I mentioned, that's one place where I think the thriller genre maybe would, maybe it just gets a bad rep. But I feel like a lot of thriller writers, a lot of popular thriller writers, like pumping out novels that are, like I mentioned, the pacing's great,
Charlene Wang:Hmm.
David Gwyn:is great, but maybe they're not doing the, the kind of deeper thematic work. And so I'm, I'm wondering about your work weaving in modern culture like this kind of traditional suspense framework. So where did that come from and did you find it difficult at times to do that?
Charlene Wang:Very. So you know, this is a book about influencers, social media, and I think that social media in particular is really tricky to get on the page. When you use internet language, it has the risk of sounding dated,
David Gwyn:Mm-hmm.
Charlene Wang:and. I think that for a long time I struggled with that. Many, many drafts had to be thrown into the trash before I got the balance right. But I think the trick for me was when I took a step back and I realized that, you know, social media is essentially a mirror to a character, psyche. It can also be a mask and it can be a really great engine to use to, you know, see like how do they disguise themselves. How do they, you know, affect other people's lives? How do they like try to affect their own lives through this parallel social media identity? And it's, I think it's. Difficult to get right in the same way that, you know, they sometimes say music is hard to get right on the page. Like you can never quite capture the magic of music. And I think social media too, like that, feeling that claustrophobia is really hard. But I try to focus on, you know, like at any given point, if it's being used as a, as a plot, like what is the emotional reaction to that? And and I think that helped me really crystallize it.
David Gwyn:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think it is a challenge that, that a lot of writers. Have I've been seeing more and more people u utilizing social media, I think, because it's, it's, you know, the reality of the world we live in. If you wanna set a contemporary story, it's hard to avoid, you know, the internet
Charlene Wang:Right.
David Gwyn:all the other things. And, and so I, I think that's really interesting and I, I love the way you're thinking about it as like not just a plot device that exists, but also how that reflects a character. And so I, I am curious about your characters. I mean, obviously these are like. Messy morally gray characters here. Why do you think friendships like that and, and characters like that? Just really add to a story like this.
Charlene Wang:I think that, you know. With any morally gray character, I think that what really makes'em tick and why readers are drawn to them is that we understand the goal they're trying to achieve. Whether that's love, security you know, like, you know, financial security all of those things I think we can understand and it's like, okay, I get that's a goal, but what we disagree with is the way they get it, the means with which they try to achieve that goal. And so I think with my two best friends, faith is a protagonist, her best friend Kayla. You know, by the end of the novel, it's very difficult to say who is a villain, who is the hero, and I think be because they both want the same things, which is love and security, but they have very different ways of getting them. Faith is mousey. She's brainy. She, you know, she gets validation from getting good grades and getting into a good school. And Kayla is, you know, she, she. You know, really relies on her charm and charisma. And in the same way, that's the very reason they clash in their friendship, because they disagree about how to get these really fundamental things. That's what makes I think a good morally great protagonist is that, you know, we, we are rooting for them, but also when we watch them make the decisions they make, it's like we, we are like, why are you doing that? It feels like a train wreck and that's what makes it, the pages like fly by.
David Gwyn:Yeah, I, I love that. So, so did these characters, did they come out kind of fully fleshed out as you. Started this process or did it take a few drafts for you to nail them down?
Charlene Wang:Many drafts. So you know what's funny was when I started writing this novel it was two perspectives. So two POVs, faith and Kayla. And then when I was querying, most of the agents I spoke with told me, you know, I really think that you need to focus on one. Because there was a certain imbalance in the POV chapters and I was super bummed when I, when I heard this, I was like, oh, I had, I just have to gut this whole book or this whole half book. What a waste of time. But then when I decided that it was really faith. Story that she was a protagonist. I realized that all those pages I spent delving into her counterpart, Kayla, like were really just wonderful exercises in character. And, and they really showed. Quite precisely what her limitations in POV are. And so, you know, it's kind of just proof that no labor is lost in writing. Even when you think that you have to junk half your novel, it ends, you end up, it helps you in some way.
David Gwyn:Yeah. I, I love that. I think a lot of people can relate to that, the, especially the pitching agents and, and hearing tough feedback. But, but like you mentioned, you know, you're. Nothing's ever wasted and, and the book is better for it. And I think I, I relate to that a lot. Like it takes me a while to find a character and so I'm glad to hear that, that it, it's never wasted
Charlene Wang:Oh yeah. Yeah.
David Gwyn:that,
Charlene Wang:Yeah. Yeah, no, I, every time I talk to a writer, I feel like the story behind a novel has just as many twists and turns. It's always like the, the minor character I thought was a minor character, like in the end was like the major character. You know, I love hearing stories about that.
David Gwyn:yeah. I, I work with a, a group of writers in a, in a community. And the one thing I always tell'em, I was like, because they, you know, everyone, everyone who's writing is looking for a shortcut or looking for like the
Charlene Wang:Right.
David Gwyn:it. And I, I tell'em all the time, like, there is no right way. Like you just. As long as you get to the end and the book is better every time you edit. Like that's it. That's,
Charlene Wang:Yeah.
David Gwyn:thing. The process doesn't matter how you got there doesn't matter. Irrelevant. You just gotta get to the end.
Charlene Wang:Yeah.
David Gwyn:and so I think this is a great, another example for like writers who are listening to hear you talk and be like, okay, I might, they might be in that same position where they're thinking like, I gotta junk a whole chapter
Charlene Wang:Mm-hmm.
David Gwyn:or a point of view. And like, you're a great example of like, do it, like if you think you have to do it, you probably have to do it
Charlene Wang:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
David Gwyn:it and move on.
Charlene Wang:If it feels painful and you're resistant, you probably have to do it.
David Gwyn:Yeah, exactly. Cool. So my last question for you is just where, where can people find you? Where can people look you up?
Charlene Wang:I am on Instagram at Charlene in October, November. I'll have some cool, fun events in New York and la and I'll be posting about that on Instagram. And finally, you can find me on my website, charlene wang author.com.
David Gwyn:Perfect. So Charlene, this was so much fun. I really enjoyed our conversation. Thanks for taking the time to chat.
Charlene Wang:Thank you so much.
