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258 Grady Hendrix | Horror Author, Screenwriter and Non-Fiction Author
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NYT bestselling horror author, screenwriter and non-fiction author, Grady Hendrix is here! We chat about the research rabbit hole, how he started traditional publishing without an agent and the challenges of being a career author.
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Transcript
Introduction and Writing Challenges
00:00:00
Speaker
Oh, a spicy question. I love it. Because the writing sort of everything, right? you can fix plot holes, but if the writer... So some readers love that and some readers are like, but I wanted more of this. So it's kind of, it's kind of a gamble.
Meet Grady Hendrix
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast. On today's episode, I am joined by New York Times bestselling horror author, screenwriter and nonfiction writer, Grady Hendrix. Hello. Hey, thanks for having me, man.
00:00:28
Speaker
Thanks so much for coming on. Let's start with, as always, the latest publication, which will be out as of this airing. That is the paperback version of um your Sunday Times bestselling, Witchcraft for Wayward Girls.
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls
00:00:43
Speaker
Tell us a little bit about the book. Yeah, well, this is just ah and my my horror novel set in 1970 in a Florida maternity home, which is where people used to send unwed mothers, usually teenage girls when they got pregnant. um And there's about four girls who were sent there. And, you know, these were these were really awful for these for these women because...
00:01:10
Speaker
not just the conditions, which varied from home to home, but the fact that you had no idea what was going on. You had no idea what was going to happen when you had your baby. No one would tell you. You had no idea what was going to happen to your baby after that. Usually they were taken from you and put up for adoption. You had no idea what was going to happen when you got back home and had to pretend none of this ever happened and you were just visiting an aunt for the summer. um And so these girls, you know, they didn't use their real names. They didn't get to tell each other their hometowns.
00:01:39
Speaker
This was, you know, completely secret. You were completely isolated and had zero power. And for the girls in this home, they discover a paperback book about witchcraft that happens to actually teach them real witchcraft. And suddenly they have all the information and power they ever wanted and complications ensue.
00:01:59
Speaker
Okay. So this is based on not obviously the witchcraft part. Well, maybe, but the, the, the sort of location, the geography, this is based on things that really did happen historically accurate things. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's, um, how,
00:02:15
Speaker
Gosh, I can't remember the author's name, but um she wrote that novella a couple of years ago, Small Things Like These, about the Magdalene laundries in Ireland. And I think most people associate maternity homes and homes for unwed mothers with the Magdalene laundries in Ireland. But They were everywhere. i mean, yeah they were in Japan, they were in China, they were in France, they were across the UK, and especially they were in the States. I mean, between 1945 and when abortion became illegal in the States,
00:02:45
Speaker
There were about 190 of these homes across the US. And um I think it's real hard to get numbers for them because a lot of them you know burned their records or you know destroyed them afterwards when they shut down. But people estimate about 2 million kids were adopted from these homes. I mean, they touched a lot of lives and we like to try to forget about them. And that's what horror does,
Research and Historical Context
00:03:10
Speaker
right? It's the return of the things you thought you'd buried.
00:03:13
Speaker
Yeah. Was it Claire Keegan? o That's it. Yes, absolutely. They got made into a movie with a silly, uh, Chilean, Chilean Murphy. muffy Yeah. Yeah. yeah Yeah. I know the one. Um, so in terms when it comes to like, you're doing something which is based on a historical thing, was there a research component to, to the creation of this book?
00:03:34
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Enormous. I mean, my books usually take about a year to write. And this one took me to um getting the homes. I mean, there's really only one standard history of the homes and Fessler's The Girls Who Went Away. There's an academic book or two and articles, but it's a lot of deep diving. I mean, these have really been purged from ah American history in particular. um And but it wasn't just the homes. It was also 1970 itself. I mean, you know, we have a lot of cliched ideas about the 70s, but what it was really like was was was difficult to try to replicate. And the fact that I am a childless middle aged man writing a book in which every character is a pregnant teenage girl. I mean, I've worked with a lot of moms, a lot of obstetricians, i took online classes like it was it was a lot of research.
00:04:28
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. Do you tend to do a lot of research for all of your novels or was this one sort of more than you usually do? This one was more than normal in this just because um it was such a specific setting and it was 1970, which is an era, you know, I was born in 72.
Writing Process and Challenges
00:04:46
Speaker
But in general, yeah, I do a ton of research. I feel like you got to get it right. You know, I'm working on a book right now. I've got the first draft turned in um and got notes back from my editor. So I'm doing that first big rewrite. And, you know, I'm looking at my I've got a.
00:05:03
Speaker
tons of research stuff, but i often post the most relevant stuff um on the wall over where I write. And so I've got everything from movie listings for the weekend the book takes place over and the weekend before and the weekend after to the weather report for the four days the book takes place during um sketches, ah you know, concept art. I work with a lot of artists to do stuff like that. um And, you know, just,
00:05:32
Speaker
yeah You know, the book takes place in 1986. And it's like, I've just got all this reference from 86 and maps. Oh, yeah, there's my map. I've got maps of all the locations. Some are hand drawn. Some are like Google Maps that I hand annotate. It's I just feel like there's no, you know, with a reader, the reader really wants to believe in the writer that you have the authority and the knowledge to tell this story that you were telling them something that happened.
00:06:00
Speaker
And I just think there's no excuse to get it wrong. And of course you get it wrong, right? Like, no matter how careful you are, people are like, well, actually, but dude, you got to bend over backwards to get it this best again. At least that's how I feel, you know? Yeah.
00:06:15
Speaker
The problem with that is I'm now, it's really hard for me to read books by writers who that's just not their thing. And there's plenty of books that aren't right. There's lots of books where they're,
00:06:26
Speaker
the writer just they don't care about that they they're focused on something else which is totally to them it's a legit choice many of these writers sell more books than i do but um for me it really drops me out of the story like i just read a book that's like a new york times bestseller and it's set in a town that i know pretty well and i'm just like no no no no no no this is not right at all uh yeah so yeah so i've i've ruined my ability to enjoy myself and But yeah, it sounds like you go incredibly deep on your research. And ah is everything you write, does it tend to be historical, like of a certain time? So you you do have the kind of the hindsight resource to look at everything that happened around and within that period.
00:07:09
Speaker
Yeah, it's a little bit boring of me. um I write I mean, I've got books like Final Girl Support Group or Horror Store or How to Sell a Haunted House that are contemporary. Right. And then I've got books like Witchcraft for Wayward Girls or um My Best Friend's Exorcism or the one I'm working on now.
00:07:27
Speaker
that I set in the past. And the reason I do that is, i mean, with Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, it has to be set before Roe versus Wade, right? It has to be set before 73 when abortion became legal.
00:07:40
Speaker
But like with the book I'm working on now, or with my best friend's exorcism, It's set in sort of a high school and I don't know high school now. You know what I mean? yeah it's It's vaping, it's cell phones, it's active shooter drills. I don't know that stuff. yeah And, um you know, ah so I have to set it in a period where I can sort of, where I can, you know, smell it, where I can like really like...
00:08:05
Speaker
be right about an authentic experience. And so I kind of hate that, but at the same time, it's like yeah yeah the the research rabbit hole is endless. You know what I mean? If if you allow it to be.
00:08:19
Speaker
Yeah, I and understand. So with, once you've built up all of this research and you've got everything down, like, you know what the weather's going to be like, you know, exactly what happens, you know, various different places around the local area.
00:08:29
Speaker
Are you the kind of writer that then plans out all of the prose, you know, all of the chapters, what's going to happen each time, or do you just jump straight into the writing and are you pantsing all the way? Yeah, well, this is interesting, right? I was just at this festival this past weekend. And God helped me, I had to moderate a panel about plotting with these other writers. And um I and really didn't want to do that. um Because there's always that question, right? Are you a pantser or a plotter? you know And I got to say,
00:09:00
Speaker
There's a bit of disingenuousness to that question or a bit ah a bit in which it's a little out of touch with how writing works because in general, if you write professionally, you've got to give your editor something in advance, whether it's a one page outline or you know one of the people on the panel, she does a chapter outline chapter by chapter before she starts writing. um And even the ones who just like to jump right in, you've got to give your editor something. And
Feedback and Revisions
00:09:29
Speaker
so, you know, so there's an element where we're all plotters on um on the one hand. um
00:09:35
Speaker
And so for me, there's sort of two answers. One is, i generally will have a pretty good idea of what's going to happen. And I will start writing and about two thirds of the way through that first draft, I will run out the book just runs out of juice, it just runs out of gas.
00:09:54
Speaker
And generally, and and so then I'll go back and I'll do a lot of like background work and all that character bios, like all this stuff. And generally what happens over the next,
00:10:07
Speaker
disgusting number of drafts is, um, I start stripping out plot and adding in more character work because ultimately that's what readers care about is the character, right? Like, um, they, they want to know you always, what always happens to me is I wind up jettisoning. Oh, that was such a cool scene that I really want to write. And it's like, Nope.
00:10:30
Speaker
I, what people really want is a chapter with that character figuring out what just happened to them and reacting to it. um And, you know, and then the other part of that answer is, I was a film, I was a theater guy for a long time, and then a film guy for a long time before I started writing books. And I really, really, really believe in the way movies are made, in the sense that,
00:10:59
Speaker
You go over and over and over and over it, right? you You pitch a concept, you boil it down to one sentence of a logline, then you like come up with an outline, then you write a draft and another draft. and another draft and tons of people look at this draft and give feedback and until you finally come up with the draft and that's the first step because then they're going to shoot it and oftentimes they're going to figure out stuff on the day that works better than what's on paper right the script is just a blueprint and then
00:11:34
Speaker
they're going to get into the editing room and rearrange all of that into the best version possible. And then if they need to, they go back and do reshoots. I mean, it's amazing how seat of its pants, movies that are famous now, you know, lines that are iconic, scenes that are iconic, that that stuff came up on the day or was fixed in the editing room or was part of a reshoot. And the only, and so I think for writers and especially for me, what I take away from that is you've got to have the most rock solid amount of preparation possible because that allows you to throw away that preparation when you're working and yeah come up with the better. eye You've come up with the best idea after going through five ideas. And then as you're sitting there writing that chapter, you come up with the six best idea, but you needed those other five to get there.
00:12:27
Speaker
And then I really believe in going back and rewriting. I mean, witchcraft, ah I think it's 14 drafts and those are significantly different drafts. Like the first two drafts didn't even have witches in it. Oh, wow.
00:12:41
Speaker
Yeah, I'm working on ah the book I'm working on right now. I've known the ending of this book for years and I just realized it's the wrong ending and it's out. you know, and it's an ending that I'm really married to. And it's like, it's gone. You just have to keep going back and reworking and reworking and reworking. um For me, this is how I work. It's a terribly inefficient way to work. I'm getting slower instead of faster, but there you go.
00:13:05
Speaker
Okay. But there's, I think there's definitely a learned skill through just practicing the craft where it's the ability to know that something isn't right for something, no matter how it could be the best thing you've ever written, but to know that it's not right for this story, I think is yeah it's something, yeah it's a difficult thing to learn.
00:13:22
Speaker
Yeah, and it's like, you know, i did this book, my second book, My Best Friend's Exorcism. There's a better book that I just wasn't good enough to pull off. But there was ah there was a much more sophisticated, much smarter, much more structurally tricky book that I really was committed to that I wrote drafts of that had a sort of dual timeline structure and it jumped between a couple of two different points of view. And it followed the characters into adulthood and came back. i mean, it was really ah a really interesting book, but it wasn't the right book. I didn't have the skill to pull it off and it wasn't what readers were interested in You know, I really give my books. I really listen to feedback. I've got a couple of people who read my books early and as painful as it is, man, if they tell me there's a problem, there's a problem.
00:14:12
Speaker
Okay. Are these, are these people who you've met through being an author and writing or are these like family friends, like people you've known your whole life? Well, okay, so one is my wife. She reads everything of first, and and and she's the first person to pull the emergency brake. Okay.
00:14:30
Speaker
And then my editor and my agent. My agent's good. He sort of gives higher-level notes, um which I appreciate. And usually if he smells something wrong, he's not wrong. But my editor... Whoever it is, is someone I really go back and forth with. And, you know, at my previous publisher, there was a point where I was like, I had a new editor. And I was like, after doing four books with the same guy, the same editor, and I was just like, this editor isn't working for me, I need a new editor. And it caused, I mean, they were really...
00:14:59
Speaker
pissed off to to put it mildly. i mean, it was just like, this is the head of this imprint. And I'm like, yeah, they're not the right editor for me. They they don't have the time. They don't have the energy.
00:15:10
Speaker
They're not reading the drafts fast enough. They're not giving me actionable feedback. I write a lot of drafts. I mean, my current editor at one point when we were doing our second book together, she's like, this is um a lot of drafts coming through. And I'm like, she's like, I haven't really worked with a writer who does this. And I'm like, sorry, man, it's it's a lot of drafts. I apologize. um But yeah, so then the editor, and I really go back and forth and editor, but then there's other people who...
00:15:39
Speaker
at some point in there, I often pull in. uh, some of them are writers. I know few of them. There's only one person to actually who I will, who I've known for a long time as friends, who I will give a book to read because I, both of them work professionally in publishing and like, I really trust both of them. But, um,
00:15:59
Speaker
Mostly it's people I work with because I just generate a huge number of drafts. Like I'd rather, I'd rather rewrite a book top to bottom than go through and fidget with a few bits and pieces here and there.
Nonfiction vs. Fiction Writing
00:16:11
Speaker
Right.
00:16:11
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And in terms of of process, you've written also nonfiction books. Yes. um Most recently, these fists break bricks.
00:16:23
Speaker
um Is that a very different process for you than when you're doing the fiction stuff? It is and it isn't. I mean, the research is killer on that stuff. And it's the reason I write much less nonfiction. The problem, you know, writing fiction is like, well, she got in a car and she drove down the road she had a waffle and you can just make that crap up. But like nonfiction, it's like every sentence has to be true.
00:16:48
Speaker
um And thank God with these Fist Break Bricks, which is about like sort of martial arts movies coming to America. I worked with this guy, Chris Pajali, who is an insanely good researcher. He's a professional librarian and he really knows film. He writes a lot about film. he's sort of a film historian of of like cult movies and horror movies and action movies. And um and Chris...
00:17:12
Speaker
I mean, I was sort of gobsmacked by the stuff he brought back. I mean, at one point he managed through and i am a random IMDB comment that he sort of started to pick at wound up with us sitting in the living room of the children and the wife of a spy in the 1960s who had been stationed in Japan running a complete um false front operation as a film producer while trying to expose communists in the Japanese film industry. Like Chris is that detailed. It was wild. um
00:17:52
Speaker
But and the thing with that book with these fist break bricks is also nonfiction tends to be a little shorter than fiction, right? And especially with like paperbacks from Hello, these fists, which have a lot of art in them. They're usually in the 70 to 80,000 word range rather than the 80 to 100,000 word range. And so for those man, I would just rewrite those manuscripts start to finish with every pass, you know, just like, bo let's, let's go right back to the beginning, you know,
00:18:19
Speaker
Um, ah wow so it's similar, but the structure usually doesn't change with those books. Um, but the amount of rewriting stays the same as a fiction. Yeah.
Film Adaptations
00:18:31
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. yeah Writing is rewriting.
00:18:33
Speaker
Um, you mentioned film that you mentioned film previously and how you're fascinated by the process of film. One of your novels, uh, my best friend's exorcism was adapted into a film. Very cool.
00:18:44
Speaker
Um, how involved were you with the adaptation? Yeah, almost not at all. um I mean, no, I made a huge mistake because I sort of did that thing that a lot of people figure I think a lot of writers do, which is, well, and the books, the book, the movies, the movie, you know, yeah which is a very mature way of looking at it. And.
00:19:05
Speaker
and They sent me a script early on and I was, and and and then we had a phone meeting to talk about, you know, oh, you got any notes on the script. And what I've learned since then is the job of the writer is to say at those meetings, oh, this is great. I really love it.
00:19:23
Speaker
Okay. And for me, for some reason, they had inserted a lot of sex into this script and a lot of sexual abuse and a lot of rape. And I was just...
00:19:36
Speaker
kind of like, guys, you're missing the point here. And also, these are underage characters who are teenagers. And so this is all statutory rape you've gotten here. Like, is that really the movie you want to be making? I think this is pretty appalling. And the response to that was dead silence.
00:19:55
Speaker
ah The call ended. And three years later, I got a call that the movie was going to be premiering. Did I want to come? uh wow okay and i was yeah and i was um you know really terrified to go see the movie because i was like this is gonna be bad and um thank god they had brought in a new for producer they had done numerous they had taken out all the sexual stuff thank i was like sitting there sweating in that theater um and uh
00:20:28
Speaker
And you know, and I think the actors did a great job. I think there were some structural problems. They never took the time to solve, which I still regret. um You know, I think the ending would have been tricky to adapt into a movie no matter what.
00:20:41
Speaker
But I think when something's tricky, you sit down and you do it over and over and over again. And you don't stop with the ending that everyone agrees on you keep going till you get to the right ending. And I think they stopped on the ending everyone could agree on I get it. That's movie production. um everyone's worried everyone's second guessing everyone would rather be safe than good but like i i think they never quite licked that problem and i think it kept it from being as good as it could have been okay yeah that's a shame yeah but the actors were great you know the and that was really that was something that was really nice to see is the how how much the actors did with it i thought was was i was that's one of those things it's always nice to be surprised
00:21:21
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I I've seen that a lot of your other works are options, some things in pre-production even. Are you planning to be more involved with like future adaptations or are you again, just going to be hands off? Oh no more. I am a hundred percent more involved. I mean, with stuff like how to sell a haunted house was just option for a film. I wrote the first four or five drafts same with horror store. I'm one of the three writers on Southern book club. If it gets made into a TV show. um You know, there's some point where you just start spreading yourself too thin. But I read the drafts. I'm involved. I'm I'm doing the best I can because.
00:22:01
Speaker
i feel like a lot of times it's very easy with a movie to lose track of the story you're telling. And I feel like most stories, there's a log line, there's a sentence that's kind of the engine of that story. This is what it's about this sentence with my best friend's exorcism. It's about two teenage girls whose friendship is strong enough to beat Satan.
00:22:24
Speaker
That's it. That's the story. Set it on Mars, make them talking reindeer, it doesn't matter. As long as you keep that sentence, as long as you keep that engine, you've got your you've got it. And i feel like it's easy to lose track of that. So my job, I think on a lot of these is to just keep reminding people, this is what it's about. But, you know, even then you get, you know, things go in directions you don't anticipate. I mean, if you are a writer on a project, inevitably you're going to be fired off of it. That's just the way it works. You know, it's rare than a movie gets to the screen without a couple of writers on it, even if only one is
Storytelling in Books vs. Films
00:23:02
Speaker
credited. Um,
00:23:03
Speaker
And, you know, with how to sell a haunted house, I think, here's a horror novel, it did really well, it was on the New York Times bestseller list, like, you know, people really liked it. um they They optioned it.
00:23:17
Speaker
And then they were like, oh crap, no one dies in this book, spoiler alert. Uh, but they're like, you know, no one dies. And so, and I was like, well, yeah, but it still works. You don't have to have a bunch of, but horror movies mean dead bodies, you know? And so, you know, when I, when I came off the project, they brought in a writer who there's going to be a kill every 10 to 15 minutes. That's, that's how it works. Um, and so, uh,
00:23:44
Speaker
and And, you know, more power to him. I mean, I've read those drafts of the script, and I actually think they work pretty well. And there's one or two things in there that I'm like, God, I should have thought of that for the book. That's pretty, that's a pretty good idea. But it really was this case of they option something and then realize this doesn't work for movies because there's not enough dead bodies. We need dead bodies.
00:24:04
Speaker
Okay. That's interesting. Yeah. I mean, you also have to, yeah, it's a different medium and like translating between mediums is, is a skill unto itself. So yeah I guess at some point, unless you're very familiar with both mediums, it's like, you do just sort of have to be like, well, I'll, I'll let people who have more experience doing this sort of take the reins and and just hope for the best.
00:24:27
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, with Hanna, you know, and I get it, like, if you're making a horror movie where your mind is going is the audience experience is you want a packed theater on a friday night or a saturday night with a bunch of people between the ages of 18 and 31 uh who are having fun with their friends and screaming at the screen and laughing um and you want it to be very visual With a book, the ideal audience is one person on their own on the couch or wherever reading it to themselves and being in their yeah heads. And so the audiences are very different. And, you know, there's stuff I mean, they came up with a really good for haunted house, a really great visual idea that I had never thought of that's that's terrific, ah because they're thinking visually because it's a movie. Uh, you know, whereas if you're writing a book, what you're coming up with are emotional ideas and character ideas because books are relentlessly interior, whether, whereas movies are relentlessly exterior.
Favorite Book Selection
00:25:30
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Um, the, the difference between the mediums and finding the balance, um, that brings us to the point in the episode where i drop you off at a cozy woodland cabin and leave you to be snowed in, in the middle of nowhere.
00:25:47
Speaker
What book do you hope to have with you? ah Okay, so I think the book I would bring with me is, we' going to cheat a little, it's actually six books, but Michael McDowell's Blackwater Saga, which are, it's it's one novel, but it's told in six short novels that he published one a month in 1983, I believe.
00:26:11
Speaker
And it's a story of a Southern family in Alabama ranging from about 19... twenty I believe 1917 to early And they happened to marry into a family of underwater river monsters. And okay it is...
00:26:32
Speaker
It is the 100 years of solitude of paper horror paperbacks. Michael McDowell is a writer that I can't read if I'm writing a book because he's so good. he just puts me to shame. He's most famous for having written the screenplays for Beetlejuice and Nightmare Before Christmas. He died in, I think, 91, 90 of AIDS. But he is a really phenomenal writer and puts me to shame. Blackwater is one of those sear those books that I could just get lost in. um And, ah you know, and it's it's interesting. It was actually Blackie Books, which is a Spanish publisher, reissued Blackwater um last year in 2024. And it became a huge hit. i mean, between France and Germany, and Italy and Spain, it sold close to 3 million copies last year. Wow. um Yeah, I think they just released a UK edition.
00:27:25
Speaker
um and And it's great to see. But, you know, there's a writer who's been dead for 30 something years, you know. So it would be Blackwater. Okay, very cool. And that's cool to hear that it's having this like wild resurgence across Europe.
00:27:39
Speaker
It's very validating. Yeah,
Conclusion and Farewell
00:27:41
Speaker
yeah, yeah. um Next up, we are going to go back a bit, chat about um when Grady first started writing, his initial break into the industry, self-publishing, finding an agent, all that fun stuff. That will be available at patreon.com forward slash right and wrong.
00:27:59
Speaker
You know, their writing. But that's really helpful for me when I get feedback from people. Oh, I lost my interest here, or I got confused here, or I got a little bored here. That's enormously helpful for a writer.
00:28:12
Speaker
Yes. I think that's great advice because that really helps a writer identify where the pacing issues are within the story and maybe great issues off the back of that. Awesome. um Well, that's where we're going to, we're going to leave it on that. Thank you so much, Grady, for coming on the podcast and chatting with me and telling me all about everything that you've been up to with your writing and your kind of experiences and and your journey through publishing. It's been really interesting chatting with you.
00:28:35
Speaker
Oh, dude, thanks for having me. And for anyone listening, if you want to keep up with what Grady is doing, you can follow him on twitter on Instagram at Grady Hendrix, or you can find him on his website, GradyHendrix.com. The paperback of ah Witchcraft for Wayward Girls is out January 1st, so it will be out by the time this airs. um To support this podcast, like, follow, and subscribe. Join the Patreon for ad-free extended episodes and check out my other podcasts, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes.
00:29:04
Speaker
Thanks again to Grady and thanks to everyone listening. we will catch you on the next episode. Shout out time. One of my amazing patrons, Lee Foxton, is querying their debut novel. It's a family drama, commercial fiction along the lines of Jojo Moyes and David Nichols. Fingers crossed. I am rooting for you. Good luck.