The Thrilling Craft: David Baldacci, 'First Family'

| Print Post This | Like (0) | Comments (0)

DAVID BALDACCI THINKS there are two ways a best-selling author can write books.

"When you've written as many novels as I've written, you can say to yourself, 'Gee, how did I do it last time that sold lots of books?' Or you can say, 'I don't want to do it like I did it last time. How can I challenge myself and make myself stretch as a writer?' That's the tack I like to take."

Since publishing his first book, 1996's "Absolute Power," Baldacci has become a master at the Washington-based thriller. Murder, espionage, government cover-ups, extramarital affairs and kidnapping have become Baldacci's modus operandi. His latest book, "First Family," is filled the same sort of white-knuckle intrigue, but the setting's been tweaked.

"Usually I've written about Washington, D.C, and stayed in that domain," Baldacci said. "In this one, I veered away. You get a healthy dose of political Washington, D.C., and also a healthy dose of rural America, particularly the rural Deep South. I took characters that usually don't combine in a novel like this: the president of the United States, the first family and its accoutrement — the FBI and the Secret Service — and this guy who lives on an old plantation in the Deep South who obviously has an agenda."

But seamlessly combining a cast of characters that also includes a woman in a coma, a precocious young girl and a pair of private detectives proved an ambitious exercise, even for an old hand like Baldacci. "I threw these two worlds together in a way that, for me at least, seemed very original and sort of took me out of my comfort zone. It was a challenge for me as writer to make these two different elements plausible in the same story."

The more Baldacci speaks of his writing process, the more he sounds less like an artist and more like an experienced craftsman: Just as a cabinetmaker might speak matter-of-factly about choosing wood, cutting, molding and designing, Baldacci speaks about editing, researching and writing. Editing, he said, "is difficult, but also pleasing. ... To go through the manuscript and see it from beginning to end, suddenly, it becomes very clear that I've got a section that's completely unnecessary. In fact, having it in there detracts from the story and actually weakens it."

The talent Baldacci has honed over the years seeps into every aspect of the writing process, leaving a book fine-tuned to bring the most pleasure and excitement to the reader.

"You could call it instinct, maybe, but I kind of know in a book when to end a chapter so a reader will be bursting and bursting to turn the page to find out what happens next," he said. "I'm also pretty good about laying my twists and turns along the way — the timing of that is really critical. It's not about the flam and the bang and how many people you kill and how many things get blown up. If you've got too much of the stuff, it dilutes the whole thing down and nobody really cares. Once you've killed 30 people, who cares about the 31st?"

» Borders, 1801 K St. NW; Tue., April 21, 6 p.m.; 202-466-4999. (Farragut North/Farragut West)

Written by Express contributor Katherine Silkaitis

» Related: "Clandestine D.C.: David Baldacci" [Express, March 2007]

Photo by Mark Jenkinson