A very good editor is almost a collaborator.
Ken Follett

An awful lot of thriller writers write women rather badly. So just doing it OK gets a lot of credit.
Ken Follett

Be a perfectionist.
Ken Follett

Culture clash is terrific drama.
Ken Follett

For success, the author must make the reader care about the destiny of the principals, and sustain this anxiety, or suspense, for about 100,000 words.
Ken Follett

I don't think there's any great mystery to writing female characters, so long as you talk to them. If you lived in a monastery and never met any women, maybe it would be difficult.
Ken Follett

I enjoy learning technical details.
Ken Follett

I like to create imaginary characters and events around a real historical situation. I want readers to feel: OK, this probably didn't happen, but it might have.
Ken Follett

I use a professional researcher in New York who does all the legwork, all that stuff which would take me days and weeks of calling, waiting for people to call back.
Ken Follett

In my books, women often solve the problem. Even if the woman is not the hero, she's a strong character. She does change the plot. She'll often rescue the male character from some situation.
Ken Follett


It was the most romantic plane ever made.
Ken Follett

James Bond is quite serious about his drinks and clothing and cigarettes and food and all that sort of thing. There is nothing wry or amused about James Bond.
Ken Follett

Most of my stories have some basis in fact.
Ken Follett

Movies have influenced all writers, not just thriller writers.
Ken Follett

My favorite period is World War II, and I'm in the middle of writing my fourth novel set in that era.
Ken Follett

The CIA's research program is described in a book called The Search for the Manchurian Candidate.
Ken Follett

The research is the easiest. The outline is the most fun. The first draft is the hardest, because every word of the outline has to be fleshed out. The rewrite is very satisfying.
Ken Follett

The thriller is the most popular literary genre of the 20th century.
Ken Follett

There was a very serious communist strain among American intellectuals before the war. America was a more tolerant place in those days, and Communists were not treated as pariahs. That ended with the McCarthy era.
Ken Follett

Thrillers have been traditionally very masculine books; the women characters often rather decorative.
Ken Follett