Daphne Benedis-Grab has thrilled audiences with her Secrets and Lies series, and she’s back with a fourth installment: I KNOW YOU STARTED IT. With a crackling mystery and captivating characters, the book is a firestorm of suspense and intrigue. Daphne was kind enough to join the blog to talk about her writing process, her inspirations, and the power of words.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
From the very first chapter, I felt like I was in such good hands when it came to the central mystery of the book. How important is that opening line or that chapter to you when you’re writing?
That is a really good question. I put a lot of thought into where we’re starting – what’s going to be that inciting incident that kicks things off. So we start at a place where there’s room to get to know the characters. But we’re in it. We are not wasting a second. We are not leading up to it. It’s there. It’s starting.
The reader is right there from that beginning point – you are part of it. I think particularly in a mystery or a thriller, you’re getting on a ride and it’s going fast.
How important is it for you as the writer to know the ending of the book as you’re starting that opening?
For me (and I know everybody writes differently) it’s essential.
I need to know where I’m going. I always write from an outline, and hammering out an outline is one of the hardest parts of writing for me – because I can come up with a lot of really fun inciting incidents and ideas, but does it have legs to sustain interest?
Is there going to be room for a twist or two in there? And is it going to stick the landing? Is it going to be something that I can see an ending all the way through that is going to be extremely satisfying for readers?
And if I can’t, if I don’t know what the ending is – I don’t know where I’m going with it.
So, everything needs to lead to that twist – and then to the final reveal.
This book is told through multiple perspectives, and you did an incredible job getting into the psyche of each of those characters. Did you always plan to tell this story that way?
Yes, so all of the Secrets and Lies books have three to four narrators, and I am inspired by the books that I have read with multiple characters. I used to do just one character narrating – either 1st or 3rd person. But when I read a couple of really well-narrated books with a number of different narrators, I understood this keeps the reader guessing – because none of us know what the full story is, right?
In any given situation, everyone is going to have a different perspective, and that’s going to be based on who we are and how we perceive things and how our brains work and our experiences in the world.
And so, to tell a story in a book really well, I feel like you need those multiple characters who are going to give this different perspective and this different take on the bigger situation.
The reader then has a fuller picture than they otherwise might if it’s just that one person.
Do you have an exercise or anything you do to get into that mindset more fully when you’re moving from character to character?
That’s a really fun question. So one thing is that when I make the outline, I’m very conscious of who’s narrating what. And sometimes I’ll come to something and I’ll be like – wait a minute – another person discovered this, and then I have to restructure things. But by the time I’m sitting down and writing, it’s organic who I’m going to be going to next.
And if it doesn’t feel right, then that’s not the problem. That’s telling me that this probably isn’t the character to narrate this.
Another thing is that when I write – because I have the outline – I’m never sitting down to write a book. I’m sitting down to write a scene. And when I know what that scene is and who that narrator is, it makes it a lot easier to dive in.
That said, if I’m sitting and I’ve come to a chapter break and I’m moving into the next one, I definitely need a break. I need to do a little reset, where I dive into the next character so it’s their voice.
I love how you break the book into the five stages of the fire, from kindling through incineration. Is that how you structure the outline too? Or does that come along later in the process?
100%, yes. And I love devices like that. I love a book written in letters or written with texts or there’s a little something at the top of the chapter that gives you some insights to something else. That’s one of my favorite things. And all of these books, I’ve tried to have something like that.
I looked up the stages of a fire, and I was like – oh, this is perfect. Many moons ago, I read Robert McKee’s books, and now each act has to get built in intensity – and that’s perfect for a fire, right?
Absolutely! Through all of the twists and the turns of the book (which there are many, and they’re wonderful and surprising!), there are important ideas that come through as well. Seeing people as they truly are, standing up for one another and oneself, and being aware of online bullying.
Did those themes start from the beginning, or did they find you as you’re writing the story?
That’s a really interesting question. They tend to find me as I’m writing.
But I’m very aware of the things that are important to me to lift up when I write. Part of that comes from parenting children and from being a school librarian. And the things that I see – [that] my students grapple with, and in the fears that they have and how scary it is to speak up – and how lonely you feel when you’re bullied and how that’s part of it.
A theme that I come to again and again in my writing, but also my life is that – evil grows in darkness, right? It’s hidden when it’s secret, when we hold it, and there isn’t the light of many people seeing it.
That’s when it grows.
How do we shine that light? How do we bring it into those same corners and lift things up?
Another thing that’s always really important to me is understanding that everybody has a story and that we might present in a certain way. And you don’t understand where someone’s coming from you.
You don’t know them. You can think that you do. You can judge on a few features.
But everybody has a story and everyone has a perspective. And we’re missing out in life if we’re not getting a little bit more of that.
There’s a line at the end of the book where Liam says, “Words can be dangerous.” How do you feel about that line as an author and a librarian and someone who’s concerned about young people?
Of course, the first place my brain goes to is social media, right? Where words live forever. Where you always have a digital footprint. Where the things that you can say without thought can cause such incredible damage to another person – to a situation where you can get pushed to do something that you just would never do if you stop to think.
I think words have power in that way, but words also have the most important and the most beautiful power because they can express us and they can express our stories.
And when you have language to name your feelings and name what you’re thinking and name who you are – that’s how you exist and own space in the world.
That’s so beautiful and important. Thank you!
Daphne Benedis-Grab is the award winning author of the Secrets and Lies Novels, companion middle grade books that include I Know Your Secret, I Know You’re Lying and I Will Find You, as well as the young adult book The Girl in the Wall. Her middle grade book The Angel Tree was made into a Hallmark Original movie. She earned her MFA from The New School and is the librarian at Warder Elementary School in Arvada, Colorado. She lives in Boulder, Colorado with her husband, two college student kiddos and cats Mishka and Blue.
More at daphnebg.com
nderer. The narrative is divided between two first-person storytellers, Sophie and Cody. On first meeting Sophie, the reader finds her to be a vivacious, lighthearted dreamer, immediately likable in her innocence and intent to sail the Atlantic with family members. But when Cody picks up the story and shares his thoughts about Sophie’s behavior, the reader realizes that Sophie is a much more complex character than first assumed—that, in fact, she’s a girl not ready to face a past tragedy. Because Sophie cannot let her internal conflict rise to the surface of her own mind for most of the book, a second point of view character is used to give the reader the clues and information they need to see all true sides of Sophie, even before she’s ready to see them herself.
Holly Goldberg Sloan’s Counting by 7s. This book is a great study in tense as well as point of view. The book opens in main character Willow’s first person point of view, in present tense; consequently, we are already close to this very likable character on the afternoon she learns her parents have been killed. The author then uses past tense first-person to relay Willow’s backstory in the following chapters, but returns to present tense at the moment in the narrative that has led back to the accident, signified by a chapter appropriately titled “Back in the Now.” The really interesting thing, though, is that each of the other point-of-view characters who “chime” in to help tell parts of the story do so in third-person, and consistently in past tense. So even though each additional voice is clearly characterized and has a need to insert his or her part of the narrative at the given time, the reader remains closest to Willow and her first person immediacy. Each of those secondary voices confesses at various points the extent to which they care about Willow, in a slow build of compounded concern that ultimately parallels our own.
Rebecca Stead’s First Light. In this example of multiple viewpoints, two characters alternate the telling of two seemingly distinct stories – they are in separate physical locations and don’t know each other. Peter and Thea each have their own concerns and conflicts, each trying to solve a set of mysterious circumstances. When finally the two meet—and their narratives align—about 2/3 of the way through the book, it’s a fulfilling thrill for the reader. The story ratchets up in intensity as the two begin a changed journey together.
R.J. Palacio’s Wonder. I think a lot of the genius of Wonder stands on its use of point of view. If we as readers had heard from no one but Auggie throughout the entire story, it would have been a beautiful and well-crafted book. But with the inclusion of other viewpoints – his sister Via and her new friend Justin, Auggie’s schoolmates Summer and Jack, Via’s friend Miranda—the story is helped along by those around Auggie, some of whom have known him his whole life, others who meet him only once he takes the brave leap to attend school at Beecher Prep. The first time I read Wonder, I was so taken with Auggie’s voice that when it switched to Via in Part 2 I had a moment of “What? Wait! Go back to Auggie!” But as R.J. Palacio indicates on her website, we need to see inside those other viewpoints to truly understand the extent to which Auggie has left an impact on each of those characters.