Lauren Oliver Talks Replica, Reading Lists, and Avoiding Writerly Superstitions

Why did you choose this two-book format as opposed to alternating chapters?
I didn’t alternate chapters because in alternating chapters, you’re not telling two complete stories. You’re telling the two different perspectives, which ultimately add up to one complete narrative. What I was trying to do was complete two different narratives that nonetheless interact and inform one another in interesting ways. I wanted to figure out if I could write a story that way that would make sense. The idea was that you would be able to, if you really wanted to, if you were so inclined, just read a single one of the two stories and then leave it. Hopefully fewer people will because the two stories together really do create a third independent narrative which is bigger than either one of them individually. That was kind of the goal.
Which character came into focus for you first—which side of the story?
Well, I knew who my main characters were as I started writing, but I think I started writing Lyra first. I’d done some novels that I hadn’t been able to make work—one of them was set around the time of World War I, one of them was set around the time of World War II. I was interested in some of the bodily and psychiatric experimentation they were doing on people at that time. So Lyra was kind of an outgrowth of an early draft for projects that never materialized.
Their two narratives combine and then you end up writing the same scene from both perspectives. How difficult was that?
I had a fight with my publisher about that. The difficult thing was I felt that it was important to show—I mean, in truth, when two people experience the same thing, they experience it radically differently and they report it radically differently even as it’s happening. So I actually wanted there to be disparities in how the two scenes looked from each girl’s perspective. But ultimately she felt like that would just look like laziness if we hadn’t made them match up. So I think that we did preserve a few choice discrepancies, but I made a note in the beginning of the book that it was deliberate to have done that.
What were the challenges—the actual technical challenges—of moving two characters through time, parallel?
That was hard. The biggest challenge was that I hadn’t realized as I was drafting it that I had to move them forward in time the same way. So when I went to start doing my first revision, I realized that so much of the action had to be moved and changed because since I’d written them separately, separate books at the time—I was writing six chapters at once in one, then six in the other—I hadn’t been thinking about how they paralleled each other. I’d been thinking about broad points of the action and how they paralleled each other, but I hadn’t been thinking that way. In my second book, because there is a sequel, I knew that and it became part of the planning. And I made really detailed notes about where they were every day, making sure that the action and the time lined up.
I found Lyra really interesting—I loved the way she understood the world, what she sensed, what she saw, what she surmised from interacting with nurses. What was it like trying to imagine an inner life for someone whose actual experiences of the world are so tiny?
It was really fun. I mean, ultimately I feel I probably could have pushed it even further. But that’s something you always feel after finishing books, there’s always something that you could have done better. It was really interesting—that’s all I can say. I read a lot about an eastern European orphan crisis under a dictator at the time who was mandating that a radical increase in population, so all women were mandated to have a certain amount of babies. But they were also in abject poverty, so they couldn’t take care of them. But the women, they’d get fined if they didn’t have five or six babies. Basically what resulted was hundreds of thousands of kids raised in state orphanages with very few people to interact with or take care of them. I did a lot of reading about that. It was profoundly disturbing. The kids mostly did not end up okay. Many of them didn’t evolve cognitively past the level of a three- or four-year-old. Many of them acted like animals. They ate on the floor. We get to see kind of that element more in the second book. And then I was trying to figure out this girl who has maintained her sanity partially from personifying the objects around her. From imputing moral characteristics to—really, the objects she interacts with as much as people. It was really fascinating.

Why did you pick The Little Prince (which Lyra receives from a nurse) as her sort of skeleton key for understanding humanity?
I don’t know. I don’t actually remember, but it was one of my top five favorite books.
What other books were that formative to you when you were a kid?
There are a lot of books I have that I would list. It would be hard to list the top 25. But if people asked me if I thought there was one book in the world I think they should read, I would say The Little Prince. It is a work of philosophy to me, essentially, and it’s so beautiful. But in terms of when I was a kid? I was a huge reader. So, The Wind in the Willows, the Redwall series, Matilda—I love Roald Dahl. You know, Beverly Clearly. I just devoured all books when I was a kid. Anything that was even vaguely appropriate to me, I read.
So if it was in your house, you read it?
Yeah. My parents were literature professors, so I grew up with a heavy emphasis on books and books everywhere. I read. I’m a very fast reader, and so is my sister. That’s all I did. I remember my dad coming in and asking why we never watched TV like normal kids, because we just read.
And they never policed you? They never took books out of your hands?
No. Yeah.
Mine neither. That’s the best thing ever, right?
Definitely.
You’ve said writing is kind of compulsive for you. Do you feel like you have a writing routine, or is it so baked into your life that you just tuck it in everywhere?
I tuck it in everywhere. Although I do do a certain amount every day—I do between 1,000 and 1,500 words every day. I mean, I love to write in the early morning before people start emailing me. But it’s very rare that I’m home and get to do that. So I write on my phone a lot. I write in the back of airplanes, in airports, wherever.
So you have no writerly superstitions?
No, I never understood that. I mean, a lot of people can only write in one place, but not me. I would never write.

You cofounded fiction development house Paper Lantern Lit. How do you know when an idea you have is something you want to pursue or something you want to present for brainstorming as a team?
I mean, it’s like how do you know if a guy you meet is someone you want to date yourself or somebody for a friend—you just know. Honestly, it’s very clear to me. Ideas I write myself, there’s a voice that attaches itself, so the voice will start narrating the story to me. Whereas I never get access to that voice when it’s a book I’m not going to write.
Interesting. So it’s just instinctual?
Yeah.
Asking “where do your ideas come from” is super hackneyed, but since Paper Lantern runs on ideas, I’m curious—is that ability to tap into them just always there? Do you have anything you do to inspire you when you’re in need?
I go through periods of time when it seems to be really working and there’re a lot of ideas coming at once. I have an ongoing list of areas that interest us that we haven’t been able to figure out. I keep notebooks full of news articles I’ve read, which is a big source of inspiration for me. We play word association games. We do all that stuff.

So as a creator and someone who’s interested in craft, do you have any fiction books—not books on craft—that you turn to that always light your fire creatively?
No, not specific ones, but that is the benefit and goal of reading so much. Because I also feel weirdly—E.L. Doctorow said this to me in graduate school and I think it’s true—that the world will drive you toward certain books when you need them. So I was just about to start revisions on this book and I kept being driven to Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife and The Windup Girl. It’s difficult because they have similar kinds of worlds to what I’m doing. And he’s so phenomenally good on a sentence level and on a structural level and on a narrative level. But that’s the perfect thing for me to be reading and taking notes on. I take notes on all my books. I feel like I’m so immersed in the book world I feel like I have enough. It’s not like I’m ever coming from the outside being like, “I wonder what’s coming out that would be useful for me to read.” I feel like I already know. And again, the universe kind of directs you toward the books that you need. And it’s amazing. It’s so fun. That’s part of why I love my job. I love reading and seeing how other people have solved these problems with narrative and craft and language. It’s so inspiring and amazing.

So, writing a follow-up to a book. I assume you’re working on that now? Does it ever feel constricting that the rules of the world are set, or does it feel freeing?
It could be, but I learned from the Delirium series. I knew it was going to be a trilogy. I was still early enough in my career that I hadn’t really thought ahead to the fact that all of the decisions I made in book one—because it was basically out when I was writing book two—I would be constricted by the decisions I made. Once I realized that, and by the time I got to my third, there were things I would have chosen to do that I couldn’t do. I decided I would never write another series again unless I was in a place, timing-wise, where I could make them line up perfectly. So I actually have a draft finished of (Replica sequel) Simulation and it was because I wanted to make sure that everything I needed in book one was there. I could look at the end of the draft and be like, “Okay, I need to put this in. I need to change this in book one.” And that actually feels—I mean, it is constricting in some ways—but since in fiction writing, you can literally write anything and make up anything, you’re actually looking increasingly for ways to box yourself in and drive yourself toward one narrative. Otherwise, it would be chaotic. It ends up a patchwork book. What you’re looking for is a great sense of inevitability, that the story could only have gone one way, the way you wrote it.

What are some recent books you love that everyone should be reading?
Again, The Water Knife and The Windup Girl, I love. And this debut that just came out, about a girl with a missing father…
The Mystery of Hollow Places?
Yes! I love that book! I also do love Victoria Schwab, so basically anything she writes. And also David Mitchell. I’m on a David Mitchell kick. And April Genevieve Tucholke’s Wink Poppy Midnight. There are just so many.
Lauren Oliver’s Replica hits shelves October 4.