Gillian McAllister: ‘I think most good twists work on clean assumptions the readers make’
BY Katie Smart
16th Oct 2023
Gillian McAllister is a former lawyer and Sunday Times Top 10 bestselling author of Everything But The Truth, Anything You Do Say, No Further Questions, The Evidence Against You, How to Disappear and That Night. She has been longlisted for a National Book award, selected for the Richard & Judy Book Club, and reached number one on the Kindle store.
We caught up with Gillian to discuss how her experience working as a lawyer impacts her crime fiction, what makes a fresh and exciting twist in a thriller and her sponsorship of two scholarship places on our Writing Your Novel courses.
Your debut novel Everything but the Truth garnered massive success, since then you’ve gone on to write eight novels – all of them bestsellers. You worked as a lawyer before becoming a full-time author, does your legal experience help inform your crime fiction?
Sometimes, yes! I loved learning each case at law school – most of them are a vignette in themselves, often with a twist, and I also liked working in a law firm where cases and news articles and all sorts would be regularly discussed around the water cooler by sharp, smart, zingy people. The work – less so!
You’ve spoken before about how the Netflix series Russian Doll helped inspire your time travel thriller Wrong Place, Wrong Time. Do you often turn to TV and film for inspiration?
Definitely, yes. And, usually, it’s just a small corner of a TV show – in that case, the notion of a time loop. I watched something, years ago, which had a ‘not proven’ Scottish verdict as a very small sub plot, and I wrote about that in my debut.
In your latest thriller Just Another Missing Person, the detective is caught in a difficult situation – her family’s safety depends on her NOT solving the case. This concept really flips the expectations of a typical detective story on its head. When writing within a genre so known for ‘the twist’ how do you keep things fresh and unexpected?
With great difficulty, and that’s part of the job! I hope never to write a ‘by rote’ thriller, nor something that’s been done before. I really spend a lot of time thinking of hooks, dismissing them, thinking of more, pondering how they would be a full story, and so on. It’s a huge part of the job, but a hard one in some ways, because it’s being ruled by a perfectionist! For every idea I have, I dismiss easily fifty.
What do you think makes a good twist – and do you have any advice for budding thriller writers on how to pull one off?
I think most good twists work on clean assumptions the readers make. I don’t often rely on trickery, more just a natural assumption you can then flip on its head. I think when I come up with a hook I sometimes make a list of all of the assumptions I would make given this set up as a reader, and then challenge them. Most of the time, though, the twists simply come to me out of frustrating nowhere!
What does a typical day of writing look like for you? Do you have any rituals?
Sort of. I like to write 2,000 words a day when I’m drafting. When I’m editing, I pick a date I’d like to deliver which works with my schedule and the next book, and then divide the work by the number of days. I’m pretty organised about it all, because without that I’m just a terrible procrastinator.
What books have you enjoyed reading lately?
I Loved Nightwatching by Tracy Sierra – coming next year!
Thank you for providing two scholarship places to enable under-represented writers to join our Writing Your Novel courses (one to study with us in London this year and one online next year). What made you decide to do this, and why do you feel it’s important to support emerging talent?
Curtis Brown have changed my life beyond measure, and I’m so, so happy to give back to them. I have been both (temporarily) unwell, and I have been poor, and luckily I am now neither, and I want to help people who are of limited means or disabled.
Finally, what advice would you give yourself if you could go back in time to when you had just started writing your first novel?
I suppose that it would happen for me. I thought that it would, but I was also full of self-doubt, for both the time I was expending on writing that was going nowhere and that was earning no money. And knowing it did happen, and in the way that I wanted, would’ve made all the difference.
Gillian's latest novel Just Another Missing Person is out now.
The books linked in this blog can be found on our Bookshop.org shop front. Curtis Brown Creative receive 10% whenever someone buys from our bookshop.org page.