Speaker A
Bill Browder's written two books, Freezing Order and also a book called Red Notice, which was everywhere when it came out in 2015, and it is a page turner. So, I had to ask him, how did you think about building character? How
Bill Browder shares how he crafts gripping stories in his books Red Notice and Freezing Order, focusing on character, pacing, and storytelling.
Key Takeaways
- Engage readers from the very first page and keep them interested on every page.
- Storytelling and finding the core emotional or dramatic thread is more important than technical writing.
- End chapters with uncertainty or tension to encourage continued reading.
- Relatability through universal themes like betrayal and fear enhances reader connection.
- Writing is a challenging but meaningful process focused on reader experience.
Summary
- Bill Browder discusses writing techniques used in his bestselling books Red Notice and Freezing Order.
- He emphasizes the importance of engaging readers from the first page and maintaining their interest throughout.
- Browder focuses on storytelling over technical writing, highlighting drama, tension, and uncertainty.
- He explains how even seemingly boring subjects can be made exciting by finding the core narrative thread.
- The pacing of chapters is designed to end with unresolved questions to keep readers turning pages.
- Browder shares personal background about his investing career in Russia and the events leading to his books.
- He stresses writing for the reader’s engagement rather than writing just to write.
- The interview includes insights into character building and making complex real-life events relatable.
- Browder also touches on the emotional and psychological challenges of writing.
- The conversation offers practical advice for writers on how to create compelling nonfiction narratives.
Chapters
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
did you think about bringing people into the story, keeping people engaged? But also, before we get into the interview, I want to give you a sense of the background. Like, what is this story all about? And it begins in the mid-90s where
Speaker A
Bill, he's an investor. He's working at Solomon Brothers and he says, "I'm going to go invest in Russia." So he ends up leaving Solomon Brothers. He raises his own fund, a $25 million fund. And all of a sudden, it just explodes. Next thing you
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know, he's made 800% on his money, and now it's 2005. He's making his 261st trip from London to Moscow. And he lands in Moscow, and now he's detained at the airport. He spends the night there, has no idea what's going to happen to him. He's
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terrified, and the next day he ends up being thrown on a plane back to London and he says, "Well, what the heck was that? Why did that happen?" So he launches an investigation. He finds an auditor, a lawyer named Sergey Majinsky,
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and he says, "Hey, can you look into this? Help me figure out what happened?" Next thing you know, Sergey, he himself is captured by the Russians, but his fate ends up much worse and he ends up being killed. And so Bill, he leaves the
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investing world and he devotes his life to getting justice for Sergei. And that is what this story is about. That's the context that you need to know for the conversation we're about to have.
Speaker A
All right, let's get into it. You wouldn't believe it, but how I write costs a fortune to run. And it's thanks to Mercury that I can even do it.
Speaker A
They're the sponsor of this episode and a banking platform that I've been using for the past four years to run my own business. When I started Howite, I expected finances to be an absolute nightmare. I got team members in four
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different countries. I had things to think about like currency exchange and taxes and expenses, and I was just dreading it. But honestly, banking has maybe been the easiest part. I can't remember running into a single problem.
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And it's because I've been using Mercury. I switched over from other more traditional banks because Mercury is so well-designed. It's easy to get started.
Speaker A
It's easy to use while also feeling totally legit and secure. And Mercury gives me all the tools to run a global company like virtual cards, unlimited users, and the ability to customize each user's access level to exactly what they
Speaker A
should see. And you know what? If anything goes wrong, if I have any sort of challenge, I can always talk to their support team, which is super responsive and actually helpful, which is pretty rare these days. And all that is why I
Speaker A
can't imagine banking any other way. Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC insured bank. Banking services are provided by Choice Financial Group and Colom NA, members FDIC.
Speaker A
All right, back to the episode. Well, talk to me about beginnings. You know, after you wrote Red Notice, you said, "I wanted to write the kind of thing that if you read the first 10 pages, you just wouldn't be able to put
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the book down." So, how did you go about doing that? Well, first thing I would say is that I'm not the best reader in the world.
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Um, and I, um, and so I, I get people give me books. I buy books. I have a big stack of books next to my bed.
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Yeah. And there's a huge stack of unread books because I've read the first 10 pages, got bored, and put it down. And I, I said to myself, if I'm going to spend, you know, two or three years writing this
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book, um, I absolutely don't want to spend all that time and have somebody read the first 10 pages and stick my book into their pile. And, um, and so I, uh, it was just absolutely crucial to me that, um, that when you started reading
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the book and you never wanted to put it down. And so at every, and my psychology has been, and it's not just the first 10 pages, it's every page. I always said to myself, um, why should anyone give a
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um, about what I'm saying in the next sentence? Why should anyone care? Why, why, why should they want to read that sentence? And if, and I'm not so, I, I, I suspect just based on, on all the books
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that I put down that there's a lot of writers out there that write to write.
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And so I was writing for the reader because I didn't want the reader to, like, lose interest, to be bored, to not care, um, and, and to put the book down. And so, um, the process, and it's not the
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first 10 pages, it's the first every page of the book is just to say, why does anyone want to read to the next page? What, why, you know, what, what, what's going to make them want to turn the page and carry on? And, and it was an
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obsession of mine, and it continues to be an obsession of mine all my writing.
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I just don't want people to put my book down. Yeah. Well, like at the beginning of Red Notice, it's really a function of two things. First of all is obviously the quality of the writing itself, but then also just the story of being detained in
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an airport. Well, in fact, it's always the story. I mean, the writing is just sort of a technical thing, right?
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There, there's the, um, this the story. It's always the story of, I mean being detained in an airport is, you know, you know, getting arrested in a Russian airport is a pretty dramatic thing and of course that's going to be dramatic.
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Um, in, in my second book Freezing Order there's a whole chapter about a deposition at a law firm in New York which is a really boring thing. Um, and, and I spent like a month reading through all the transcripts of the deposition,
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all the other things going on to try to, try to piece together a narrative of why that should be exciting. And I think most people who read it thought that was a pretty exciting chapter. And so, anything can be exciting. And again,
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it's not about the writing. It's about the storytelling. It's about, you know, where's the drama? Where's the tension?
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What's, what's the uncertainty, um, of whatever it is you're talking about. So, how'd you make it exciting? Well, I, I made it exciting because in that particular story, there was a lawyer, um, who used to be my lawyer, um, uh, and then
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switched sides to work for the Russian government, the Russian mafia, and then he was trying to use the deposition to get personal information about me that the Russian mafia could use to kill me.
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So, that becomes exciting. But a deposition by itself or a discovery request could be the most boring thing in the world. Um, but I was able to look at the whole thing and, and remember and, and find and, and weed out,
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you know, the things that would make a reader interested. Well, it seems like what you're implicitly saying there is you need to find the core thread, the core thing, right? Like you look at a deposition, you're like, "Oh my goodness, there's so
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many transcripts, so many things I could talk about." No, this is about a lawyer on this side who goes to that side, there's the core thing, and then I would say maybe everything orbits around that or something like that. Well, it's, it's
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it's about, um, the, um, what a person a reader can relate with. They can relate with betrayal. A lawyer betrayed me.
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They can relate with the Russian mafia. They can relate with feeling scared. And so, it's finding, finding things that, that you know, where, where there's the empathy and the engagement of the reader that, that makes it, um, which I think
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makes my writing readable. How do you think about the pacing of stories? Well, that's another thing. It has to, f, first of all the end of every chapter has to leave you with some uncertainties. You want to know what
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happens after that. You know it's kind of like watching a miniseries. Same, same type of thing. And so at, at the end of every chapter there's some, some, uh, challenge or there's some, some uncertainty that you then want to pick
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up through the next chapter and see, see how it resolves itself. And during the cha
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um you know why should anyone care? Why should anyone h have any interest in whatever I'm writing about? Everyone's interested in their own lives not in somebody else's life. So what can you say about your own life your own story
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that will make them interested? Yeah. Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, when I think about reading Red Notice, I can see I would guess that you write chapter by chapter because the chapters are these sort of contained units.
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Absolutely. So, I mean the way I write a book is um I write a minibook first which is just you know what are the individual stories and it's not just like you know a 10 bullet point outline.
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I write a mini chapter for each chapter. Um, and so let's say if if the book is 140,000 words, the pre-book is 50,000 words. So it's like a third of the book and it lays it all out. So So I already
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know the drama. Um, I already know the, you know, the the challenges and the resolutions all the way through. Um, and then I have to fill it in and bring the color and the life and the and the
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characters into each of those stories. Okay. So let's go specific. So, let's talk about that chapter in Red Notice, Tuesdays with my right, where you meet your wife and you're like, I don't know, does she like me? Does she not? She's
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sort of there as you're giving the speech and then Tuesdays with my was uh just actually three words from that chapter. Obviously, you give her the book, but it was just one very small part. So, is that something that
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develops and is like an emergent property or is that nope, this going to be the Tuesdays with my chapter? Like, talk to me about that. Well, this was going to be the the chapter about how I wooed uh my beautiful, intelligent, um
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amazing um who's now my wife to be with me who um had a million other options and didn't necessarily I wasn't distinguishing myself and I needed to find a way to distinguish myself. That's what the chapter was about. Um uh and
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and um and it just so happened that I was able to distinguish myself through a series of challenges challenging situations in the courtship by giving her a copy of Tuesdays with my that's what um warmed her heart after uh you
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know a few false starts and and various other other uh you know sort of ch problems along the way in this courtship.
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Right. So then that's hindsight. So now you're writing your third book. So talk to me about where you're at now and give me a sense sort of looking forward. This is what I have. This is what I don't
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have. This is the road map for where I think I'm going to go. So my third book um is going to be about um a friend of mine um who helped me in all the uh uh amazing stories in the
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first and second book. a guy named Vladimir Karamorza who helped me get something called the Magnitki Act passed which is the named after my murdered Russian lawyer Sergey Magnitzky which is the justice that we got for Sergey. So
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he helped me get this Magnitzky act passed. Putin hated him for doing that. tried to kill him twice. But the main the main focus of the third book is about um him being arrested in Russia um put in jail and sentenced to 25 years in
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in a a penal colony in Siberia. And it's about the challenge of how did I get him out of jail because he eventually gets released. And so we know that this the drama is all about all the different
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things to try to get him out of jail. But but that and it's a great story and anybody who reads it will be fascinated and thrilled and scared and all that other stuff. But the challenge I have is
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that I've already written two books before. And so um if you just jump right into this story about this friend of mine, you're not going to be invested in him.
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You're not going to be invested in me. And so h how do you get invested in everybody to understand the stakes without repeating two books the stories of two books before? And so I've got to tell other stories in order to feed into
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this unbelievable difficult situation that we then end up resolving the stakes. The stakes. The stakes. So how do you go about building the stakes?
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Thinking through the stakes. Well, everybody has to get to know you and they have to get to know you and care about you. This is you as the writer.
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Well, me as the character and Vladimir and various other people involved. And so as they as their lives weave together and weave apart and and so on, you have to then, you know, get to know each of them, become invested in them. So when
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the things that that are really unfortunate happened, you've got to be rooting for the people who have had the unfortunate things happen.
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What are the advantages and disadvantages of writing in the first person? Um, well, I don't think there's any disadvantage. I mean, the advantage is that, um, I I know I mean, I don't have to do as much research. I mean, there's
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a lot of research I've got to do, but, you know, it's all in here. I mean, uh, the disadvantage is that, um, I'm now a 61-year-old man. I don't remember every single thing that happened. A lot of lot
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of stuff has happened in my life. And so I often have to go to the other characters who I was interacting with and spend time with them to try to reconstruct all the events and scenes and situations and conversations because
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um sometimes they're and all the time they'll remember something differently than I will or I mean not just differently but things that I didn't remember and we have to put it all together and then try to to create a
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narrative. I'll say you remember that day when we were in the parliament in in in the HEG and um you know we were trying to do this and and like what were you what were you trying to do and why
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did that you know and then I weave it all you know I you know pull pull on the threads and and take you know rigorous notes and and then you know kind of pluck out the interesting things that
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would be interesting to somebody outside and and also how does how does it all tie together with with um the rest of the story. Um, and so that that's and and that's always very it's actually very satisfying to do that. The only
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people I can't do that with are the bad guys because they're always, you know, there there are the good guys and the bad guys in the story.
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And so, like, as I was talking about before, there is this this traitorous lawyer who switched sides. And I couldn't um go and talk to him because he's uh switched sides. He's he became an enemy. Um, and and if I said anything
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that was um wrong, he would sue me because he's a lawyer. And so I had to rely entirely on the transcripts, the court transcripts. But the court's transcripts told everything. There was like, you know, there was so much stuff
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from depositions and court transcripts. I could, you know, I could get all of his um quotes and and speeches and and and and then, you know, distill the things that were interesting from from all those documents.
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So you've mentioned court transcripts a few times, which then implies you spend a decent amount of time doing research as you're writing these books, huh?
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Yeah, there's no question. I mean everything is researched. I mean the outline is in the head but all the details are in the research and the recollection and the recreation and all that kind of stuff. But um and it's
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gotten easier with AI um because some of the stuff that I would have to um really go deep into um internet research and stuff like that gets is a lot faster now. But um but I have do a lot of research and and and I
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have to do a lot of original research in the sense that you know no one's ever written about some of this stuff before because I'm first person writing about it.
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And then you talked about research and I've talked to about recollection because a lot of this stuff is intense stuff. Do you feel like Yeah, talk to me about recollection.
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Well, recollection is interesting because um again I'm 61 years old. I've had a lot of experiences in my life. a lot of intense experiences. And so I remember stuff and then and then sometimes it comes back to me, you know,
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when I'm going over stuff and and and it's often the things that come back to me which which really make the story come alive. And so I have to, you know, go over over situations a bunch of times
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to, you know, for for it to all come back. And when you read the books, it's just, you know, it's really very um visual and and and um intense, but that doesn't come like from just, you know, I
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it's it's a it's a torturous process to to write these books. I mean, it's it's something that um you know, people say, "Wow, isn't it satisfying? Isn't there a catharsis?" No, it's just pure torture.
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Every every every day that I'm writing is pure torture. Is that like a it sucks torture or is it like a it's meaningful let's go for it torture?
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Well, there's a process. It sucks at the beginning because when you're when you're staring at a blank sheet of page sheet of paper and you've got nothing, it sucks. And then eventually when it starts to form its its its own body,
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then it starts getting pretty cool. And then then when you have something that you like, then it's really satisfying.
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It's satisfying when there's something where and I could go back and read it and it's like entertaining and I know it's good and and um then I feel then then then it's great.
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And then in that process of recollection, do the ideas come to you like you're just sort of you're just sort of sitting there. You're like pecking at the keyboard. It's like I'm going to write a lot and then I'm going
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to kind of distill and distill or is it a little bit more of like a I don't know. I went for a walk and wow, I just remembered that thing.
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It's everything. I mean, it's I mean, the best the best places I've ever come up with ideas are in the shower by far.
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I would say like, you know, 40% of the inspiration of every every every book is comes from, you know, standing under a a stream of hot water.
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Yeah. So, we can increase the writer output with more showers. Well, hot a good hot shower when you're stuck with something and then all of a sudden it comes to when you're not trying to think about it and like all of
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a sudden there it is. Yeah. And of course, I I have my phone with me. um just generally and like you know uh taking notes whenever something comes to my mind and it always happens and you know not when you're trying to
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make it happen just happens throughout life which is which is one of the benefits of taking three years to write a book because stuff comes at different times um that that you know builds up a story and makes it good.
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And now do you write the books in a pretty linear fashion? Yeah. So I, you know, I start out with what I think is the just the outline, the outline of the story. Then I do these mini books where I like fill it in
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and then I do these full-on books after the minibook filling in the each chapter. So it's a very very organized linear outlined process.
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Okay. So we're talking about how do you get your writing done? And if you're thinking about work and how you can be more productive there, well, I recommend a tool called Base Camp. Basecamp is a project management tool and it's
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different from the other ones which are loud and noisy and cluttered. They have feature bloat. Basec camp says, "No, no, no, no. We're going to keep things simple so that you can focus on what actually matters which is just getting
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the work done." You know, now for us, Base Camp is a place where we can track what we're doing with how I write, when episodes are being recorded, where we're recording them, the publishing day, all those sorts of things in one place for
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our entire team to look at. And I had the founder of Base Camp, Jason Freed.
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He came on the show and I noticed that he really cares about writing. He cares about manifestos. He cares about great copy. He cares about telling a great story. And him and his co-founder, they've written five books. And I can
Speaker A
tell you that they bring the same care and attention to detail to their books as they do their software. So if you're thinking about work and you're asking, "Hey, how can I be more productive? How can I make my team more cohesive?" Well,
Speaker A
then I recommend Base Camp. All right, back to the episode. What are you trying to achieve with writing your books? Obviously, there's a sense of justice. There's a real sense of mission, but why books? And how does that fit into the
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ensemble project of what it is that you're trying to do? So, I'm not an author. Um, I wasn't I didn't go to the Iowa writers thing or whatever Vermont, you know, I I I was a hedge fund manager.
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Yeah. And I had some really terrible stuff happen to me. um what happened to people around me happened to me happened my lawyer Sergey Magnitzky was murdered tortured and murdered because he was my lawyer and I I I felt so compelled to
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get to do something about that that I gave up my life as a businessman and I started becoming a full-time justice campaigner and what I what I discovered is that I would go as a justice campaigner I would go and meet with with
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um politicians and government officials and law enforcement people and I would tell them the story of what had happened and then try to get them to support me in parliaments or wherever and it became really um tedious to to and and and say
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it over and and more than it get and being tedious it also I I you know maximum I could get half an hour with somebody I mean nobody has that much time and um I mean it's really interesting so
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I thought you know I really should get a mo I should do a movie about this right and um And I um I went to Hollywood to like meet people and uh they said, "You know, this will be a hundred times
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easier to get a movie made if you have a book." And I said, "Okay, I'm gonna write a book so I can get a movie made." And and so I started working on this book. And my expectation was that it
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would just be like the intellectual property for a movie. And um uh and that nobody would read the book and that, you know, 10 million people would watch the movie. And that's how I achieved this like general knowledge of my situation.
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and then I wouldn't have to go brief everybody in the world and I would have create a ground swell of support. Um well, as it turned out, um I wrote my first book, Red Notice. Um and it turned
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into a major international bestseller. I mean, you know, I can walk down the street in different places, people recognize me. It was everywhere. And and um and what's interesting is that to this day, I I mean, the Red Notice was
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published in 2015, so we're now in 2026 or 11 years later. And um Hollywood is show is like absolutely petrified. They don't want to go anywhere near the story.
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Is that because of the content? Yeah. They they don't want to touch, you know, going after, you know, they don't want to. No, nobody wants to be on Putin's list, right?
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Um but it doesn't matter from the with my objective because everybody's read the book. So, you know, I I um uh one of the objectives of getting everyone to read or hear know the story was to get the Magnitzky Act passed, which is a law
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which freezes the assets and bans the travel of human rights violators and the people who killed Sergey. And um I got the Magnitzky Act passed in in 2012 and that's one of the main sort of culminations of of Red Notice is the
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justice that we get from that. What's interesting is that when I I wrote the book and I wrote about getting the Magnitki Act passed and it's all very dramatic and great and everyone feels good about it and I had I had a um a
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senator from Australia um read Red Notice and was so inspired by reading Red Notice that um during COVID um she got in touch with me cold and said I want to do a Magnitzky act in Australia and um and as a result of her
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inspiration from Red Notice um through co I never even visited Australia I did a bunch of Zooms with different members of their parliament and different officials and so on and so forth. We got a Magnitzky act passed um because she read the book and so it
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actually very strongly um supported what I was trying to do. And then what what do you get from the articles that you don't get from the books? And what do you get from the books that you don't get from the
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articles? and you write an article um for the Financial Times and um uh I don't I don't know what their circulation is but I don't know let's say million people um what's the probability that that somebody actually read the article you know low and and if
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they read it what's the probability they read it all the way through low and what's the probability that they remember it afterwards because they read a lot of articles even lower with a book if you write a good book a book that
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people will care about what happens in the next page and read it to the end you've got 12 hours with that person and and and you got 12 hours to like, you know, flesh out human emotion. You know, you feel something when you read
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my book. Um and and you remember it afterwards and many people remember all sorts of stories and come up to me and talk to me about the stories that they read. And so it's a completely different thing. I mean, it's and it's kind of
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risky because like, so let's say that you're you're listening to this podcast and you're a campaigner that's had something terrible happen to you and you say, "I listen to Bill Browder. I'm going to go I'm going to go and write a
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book." You know, the chances are um uh as as a chances were with mine that like you write a book and like nobody reads it. I mean that so most books no no nobody ever reads and so it's a really
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risky proposition to to spend three years you know whatever four hours a day for five days a week for for three years and then um not doing other stuff and then and then and then finding out that like a thousand people read your book or
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500 people read your book and doesn't make any difference at all. So what happens to most writers?
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Yeah. And so, and if you're a campaigner, if you have something terrible, you know, that that's probably too risky a proposition to, you know, when you could be doing other stuff.
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How do you balance the desire for truth with the desire for safety for the people that you love?
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Well, um, this is an interesting point. Everybody told me, um, throughout my campaign, and it wasn't just with the book, but with everything, um, Bill, just keep your head down. you know, just, you know, this terrible thing happened. You know, it's terrible. You
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know, maybe you can set up a scholarship fund for the for Sergey Magnitzki's uh son and his widow or whatever, but just, you know, go to ground. And if I had done that, um if I had if I had um just
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disappeared, they would have killed me and nobody would have known why they killed me and nothing and they would have gotten away with it.
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And the Russians. The Russians. But by going public and by being everywhere um it's counterintuitive but it actually you know if anything ever happened to me and particularly because the book was well read everyone would know who did it why they did it what who
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you know exactly and so it became doesn't mean that they don't want to do anything to me but what it means is that the cost of assassination and the and the um um prospect of of assassinating me without any repercussions is cost is
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up and the prospect of no repercussions is pretty flow. As you think of the components of a good book, like there's layers to the cake or different instruments that create a symphony. What are those different instruments that you need the ensemble
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of those to write a great book? Well, you you need um uh you need characters that um everybody can relate with. People first. You need pick characters. But what's what's also interesting is is I I I I have this
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thing where um sometimes places are characters. Huh. Um where you um where the the place takes on its own sort of um uh feeling and and the other thing you want to do and and so um is is you want to make
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sure that everybody wants to be familiar with stuff. And so you want to have you want to share with people places, people, situations that they're familiar with. Um and and so I had so many people write to me about my book. You say, you
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know, I grew up on in Chicago and you know, I was a investment banker. You know, we have so much in common.
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Everyone wants to like relate with with the character. And so um and and like in different people, different situations.
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And so the more touch points that you can have where people where there's something relatable and understandable and part of their part of their um now is that touch point like okay, we're in London. Oh, the London Eye, the
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Golden Gate Bridge. Is it like landmarks or Yeah, it's it was it's usually not the London Eye or the Golden Gate Bridge, but it would be like, you know, the Villaeste Hotel in in Lake Ko, something specific, you know, something more like,
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you know, that's exactly what happened to me. I was reading Grand Notice. I like I know that place, the big swimming pool.
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Yeah, of course. Crazy Gardens and and maybe maybe and like I can imagine you, you know, taking the phone call as the markets are taking like actually that's exactly what happened to me. Yeah, I was just thinking of just the justosition of
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your, you know, your your wife at the time being there, David being there, David your son, right? Both of them being there and then you're getting this call from Russia and yes, the place is indistinguishable from that story
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because that chapter is about relaxation and just chilling out for a bit. Yeah. And and the place becomes a character.
Speaker A
Yeah. and and and so um uh you know that that that that touched with you, but but there's probably like 150 or maybe even a thousand other things that that somebody might be able to relate with throughout the story and
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and different people relate with different things. But the moment you relate with something um it connects you with with um with me and and by connecting you with me, you you become part of this you you become part of the
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whole thing. And that that is a really important part of of um writing and it's an important part of for the reader's experience to to feel connected.
Speaker A
Yeah. So tell me more about bringing a place to life. What is it that you focus on? Sight, sound, smell, vibe, like what is it?
Speaker A
It's it's what whatever it is that that's that's sort of distinctive and unique about that place. So, you know, like for example, there there is a um in in the first chapter of Red Notice, we talk about um the um uh airport,
Speaker A
Shermeto airport in Moscow and and there is it has a certain smell. Yes. And and and there it has these weird things on the ceiling, these sort of like brass things on the ceiling look like coffee cans. Um and anybody who's
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ever been in Sher Metivo knows the smell at that time and knows these coffee can things. and and and and it immediately for anybody who's ever been in that airport, it immediately like grabs you because you've that that's really that
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that really gets you as you as you felt like with Villaeste um anybody who's ever been uh in in Moscow Sherivo airport will have that that same feeling and so and so yeah it it you have to be
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descriptive but not boringly descriptive. You don't have you you want to describe things that are poignant, not just desri, you don't want to just describe stuff for the sake of describing. You want to describe, you know, the two or three things that that
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any person who's ever had that same experience will will will be able to relate with. And it it also then because it's such a poignant experience, even if you haven't had it, you kind of get get it because it's poignant.
Speaker A
Yeah. You know, I really noticed that of you could basically as you're reading your books, you would describe somebody or something. It' be two to three descriptors, super vivid, get on with it. Two to three descriptors, super vivid, get on with it. Like with the
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Moscow airport, I think it was built in the 1980s, but it had really shown its age and like you can see that boom, get on with the story. Right.
Speaker A
And and then it also brings you a feeling of what it what what you know what Moscow is like because just just a couple things which you know and people don't have that much mental capacity to bring in all the details but just a
Speaker A
couple things so that you you know it's like yeah you know it's kind of this um out this dated um strange um unckempt place.
Speaker A
Tell me more about building how you build the relationships that the readers have with characters that are not you.
Speaker A
Um well I mean that's the most important part because um uh you know well there's two types of characters in my book in my books.
Speaker A
Friends and enemies. Yeah. Good guys and bad guys. Sure. Um, and and you want to see the um humanity and the charm and the and the um lovability of the good guys. Um, and and you want to see the um uh you know,
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just the rotten um shittiness of the bad guys and and and it's and it's not I'm not caricaturing them. I mean, you know, sometimes good guys become bad guys and sometime and and bad guys become good guys. I mean there there there's
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definitely those types of transitions but you want to you you want to basically you know with with not too much information um get a sense for those people so that you can and again it's it's just it's a few details because you
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don't have that much time and you don't have that much of people's attention because if you spend too much time describing the person you're going to get bored and so it's a real it's a real challenge to be able to like share
Speaker A
enough information so you understand that person you understand why they're likable what what's likable about them but you're not I'm not oversharing information. And so you're thinking, why am I spending all this time on this person? Who what's relevant about this
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person? Enough time so you can get through it, get the information because the information may not be relevant here and now. It may be relevant, you know, five chapters down the down the road.
Speaker A
You seem like you really developed a knack for finding the truth about things in your work before becoming a writer.
Speaker A
Like there was um a line in Red Notice where he talk about how you were amazed at how open people in Russia were about what was going on. And if you could just find the right person to interview, they
Speaker A
would just y share everything. Yeah. And I think that's true. It's not just true in Russia, but it's true everywhere. People are people want to talk about stuff. They want to talk about themselves. Um uh they want to
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brag. They want to they want to impress. they want. Everybody wants to and and um and so there's uh uh and and I'm I'm always interested in in you know getting getting to the bottom of things. Um when
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I was an investor I wanted to know you know what was really going on in that company. Is it you know is it going to do much better than everyone thinks and that's why and is the stock price really
Speaker A
low and and um then eventually that and then when we discovered all these crimes in the companies we then started researching who's doing all the stealing and how they're stealing and and pretty much everything is transparent in the
Speaker A
world. I mean, it's it's it's not nearly as opaque as as um as one thinks generally.
Speaker A
Wait, okay, explain that. Like, it seems like a lot of things are mediated in a way where there's always kind of a narrative here and a narrative there.
Speaker A
But I guess what you're saying is things are very transparent so long as you know who to talk to where as long as you're ready to like talk to people. I mean, if you're just like, you know, if you're an
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investor in the stock market and you just read your screen, you're not going to learn anything. you know, if you're a um uh uh person working in in a parliament or Congress um and you read the um you know, economist, you're not
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going to you know, you'll just you just learn the headlines. But if you go if you go and like visit a bunch of people and go and have coffee with them or or lunch or breakfast or or you know, you
Speaker A
know, all you have to do is dig below the surface and start talking to people and and you learn a lot of stuff in in every different context.
Speaker A
Interesting. So then what is like if you're trying to make sense of a situation uh you've found a oil company that you think is way undervalued, you're looking at the assets, you're like that doesn't match up with the valuation of the company.
Speaker A
Okay, so you're starting off where and you're ending up where. Like what do you do to kind of make sense of reality to find the truth?
Speaker A
You know, some some people are too smart for their own good. So they they there's too many different things they're looking at.
Speaker A
Yeah. Um, so like I mean there's a there's a chapter in in in um Red Notice where I'm talking about um discovering something called preferred shares of Russian companies and um I go to meet a um this the CFO of a um uh of an oil
Speaker A
company, oil refinery I think it was and um and I and I was just sort of going through and I saying well how many shares do you have outstanding of your company and and he said well are you
Speaker A
asking about ordinary shares or preferred shares? No one ever heard of preferred shares in in as an investor in Russia. I said, "What are preferred shares?" He said, "Oh, these are the shares um where where they have a guaranteed dividend, which
Speaker A
is 10% of the profits of the company." I said, "That's interesting." And do the ordinary shares have a guaranteed dividend? No, they don't have an ordinary dividend. I said, like, I'd never heard of these preferred shares before. And so, I I um um so after the
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end of the meeting, I call up my Russian stock broker. I says, "You know, I'm looking at this company, but I'm not interested in ordinary shares. I'm interested in the preferred shares." He said, "I've never heard no one's ever
Speaker A
asked me about preferred shares." And um uh and so he said, "Let me come back to you." He said, "Well, the ordinary shares are are are trading at $10 per share. Um uh but the preferred shares only trading at $1 per share." I said,
Speaker A
"Well, how can that be?" Right? But like, so these are better shares because they have this dividend and they're cheaper and then they're 90% cheaper. And I sort of I started poking around like maybe there's something wrong with them and I
Speaker A
and and and I and and there was nothing wrong with them. It's just nobody had ever asked the question and and I discovered this and I bought the preferred shares and of course they became I mean you know we made a huge
Speaker A
amount of money on these preferred shares because no one ever bothered it. But it was you know I wasn't spending my time like getting into like the you know the the quality of the oil or the this this or that. You know it it was like
Speaker A
something much much simpler than that. It was just like you know this this thing doesn't make any sense. And and if you had been like a a oil petroleum expert, you would have been spending all this time on all this nonsense about
Speaker A
like you know the quality of their equipment or this or that when there was just something so blatant staring staring in the face is much simpler.
Speaker A
Okay. So break a book down into chunks. We've talked about the planning phase about you know 50,000 words. Maybe there's an idea phase before that.
Speaker A
Actually there's just you got to live life man. You know what I mean? And then there's the writing. We talked about the editing. So just like walk me through the entire timeline. Well, so um uh you start out with um I want to write a
Speaker A
book. Okay. Um what are you going to write a book about? Uh why is that interesting to anybody other than yourself? Um you come up with the idea and then you say, well, how do I um make, you know, where's the where's the
Speaker A
drama? Where's the challenge? Where's the what what's uh you know, what's the overall arc of the book? So in Red Notice it was all it was like a rags to riches story and then you know flying too close to the sun and you know
Speaker A
everything screwing up and then a tragedy and then you know um trying to make some sense and some justice from the tragedy. That's a good you know overall narrative arc. Okay. Then then um then you you you take that and you
Speaker A
say okay um what are the really interesting things that happen and and then you say okay I mean I'll start with a with a chapter title without without actually writing the chapters am I am I like to have really short chapters you
Speaker A
know 10 pages max um and and so you know I have 45 chapters or you know something along those lines and and so I'll have 45 of these little things and then I start filling it in and and by the way
Speaker A
when I the minibook. That's when I go to the publisher. Oh, really? Yeah. I go to the publisher with the minibook.
Speaker A
And what do you send them? You send them the mini book. The minibook. That's it. And then they say you say, "Hey, look at this." And and my and I I I look at it just purely from a as a businessman, why
Speaker A
should they want to pay me a big advance or give me a good deal if they're going to pay if they're going to take a huge risk? You're taking much less of a risk if you can actually see what's what's
Speaker A
there, right? and um and and so it's obvious that there's a book there, a good book that they want to buy and so they're ready to give me a decent advance. Um all that kind of stuff.
Speaker A
Back to the timeline mini book and then so once the minibook um is in in shape then uh and I get the the and I know that there's going to be a publisher. I don't want to write I don't I don't know
Speaker A
how people write without a publisher. Um because I you know again you know you could spend three years of your life and then like not have anyone to distribute your your work. And so I want the publisher who's going to like get it all
Speaker A
out there who knows how to deal with bookstores and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker A
So, I get the book deal and then once I have the book deal, it's really helpful to have a book deal because then there's a deadline and there's a deadline and somebody who's paying you money um uh and you're
Speaker A
responsible to like deliver something on a certain date, then you then I then you have this mini chapter that you have to make into a real chapter and and that that's actually the satisfying part because then then you know pretty much
Speaker A
everything you're going to say is just like really getting in and that's when it becomes fun and interesting and and um gratifying when you get the chapter done. But I'll tell you an interesting story about my second book. So my second
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book, I had a I had my publisher was by same Simon and Schustster, same as my first publisher. And um I had a deadline and I wrote the minibook and then I wrote the book. Um, and um, I think it
Speaker A
was due in June 1st and I'd finished writing um, like the first week of May and I was going on vacation with my family um, to Portugal and we were and I and I decided to like then give the
Speaker A
manuscript to my wife to my son who at the time was um, I guess in his early 20s and um, uh, uh, and to my agent and I thought, okay, done. And you I'm sure they have a few things to say. And all
Speaker A
three of them came back and they said, "This sucks." Oh boy. What'd you do?
Speaker A
And I said, "Oh shit." Um and so I um uh I called up um my publisher and I said, "Listen, I need another three months." And uh and then I just um wrote or rewrote like a third of the book and then it didn't
Speaker A
suck anymore. I want to go to uh chapter endings. So, I want to read you this chapter on. I want to hear what really matters to you as you're thinking about ending one.
Speaker A
This from Red Notice. He didn't realize that Russia had no rule of law. It had a rule of men and those men were crooks.
Speaker A
Talk to me about what goes into those. Yeah, this was I think when uh Sergey Magnitzky was arrested or uh being imprisoned and and uh if I can remember uh correctly and it it was like a big revelation moment when when you know um
Speaker A
you know we thought that like somehow how could the government the people who did the crime arrest the person who was reporting the crime and um and and of course I mean uh you know I'm I'm a big
Speaker A
believer in show don't tell um but doesn't harm anybody at the end to summarize in in one sentence or two sentences what you've just um seen and what you've been shown and um and it really I mean it kind of like you know
Speaker A
nail it puts the nail in in properly and that that's kind of I guess where that sentence came from. So, as you're writing your books, what would any given Tuesday or Wednesday look like? And how do you fit the writing and the
Speaker A
researching of books in with the rest of your life, the rest of your commitments?
Speaker A
It's hard. I mean, I I I um uh you know, I've got a kid I've got young kids going to school. I've got to take them to school. You know, I'm try trying to stay in shape. I got to go to the gym. You
Speaker A
know, I'm uh got business a lot of business stuff going on. I've got all sorts of things happening in my life.
Speaker A
And so, um, and part of the reason why I think this third book is going to take longer than the first two is that I don't have that like, you know, uh, big, you know, I I've got to carve out, um,
Speaker A
at the moment I'm sort of doing two to three hours a week. I'm two to three hours a day, three days a week, and that's not enough to like get this thing done as quickly as I want to do it.
Speaker A
Oh, for the book. Yeah. So, what do you do? Do you just say, "Hey, you're not allowed to contact me.
Speaker A
I'm I'm focused." Yeah, that's what I try to do. And where do you write?
Speaker A
Um, I write wherever I wherever I can. I write I write on airplanes. I write on trains. I write in a study. I write on a beach. I write wherever I can. I can uh I just write wherever I have to write.
Speaker A
It's it's doesn't really matter. Um I'm not uh I'm not precious about uh my environment. I you know I just try to focus in on on what I'm doing.
Speaker A
Do you work with an editor or somebody like that? Yeah, absolutely. In what capacity?
Speaker A
Um so much read back and forth to Wordsmith any anything help I can get.
Speaker A
Um, I try I try to get as much much help. Um, and then the other thing I do, uh, we never finish the full writing process. Once I'm finished with the book, before I give it to the publisher,
Speaker A
I give it to 10 friends. Oh, wow. And and not just to like um and I'm not looking for people to like, you know, blow blow smoke up my backside. I want people to tell me like really, you know,
Speaker A
everything they've got to say. And um, and they re and 10 smart friends, 10 and different types of friends, not, you know, they don't have to be literary people. They can be any type of person, but you know, somebody who's going to
Speaker A
take the time and energy and like, you know, really read it carefully and and mark it up and tell me what's what and and um and they bring different things to the um to to the to the story. I
Speaker A
mean, um not the story, but that to the to the quality of the book. And by the time it gets to my editor at Simon and Schuster, um she's got nothing to say.
Speaker A
How do you write about those difficult things that have happened being detained? Like do you feel an aversion to writing about those things or is it easier to write about those things harder?
Speaker A
Well, because I'm trying to write for the reader and those are exciting. Yeah. And so that's the easiest stuff to write about. The hardest stuff to write about is something that's that's not exciting.
Speaker A
The deposition, you know, um there there's a chapter in in Red Notice um about when I was at Solomon Brothers long before I ever moved to Russia.
Speaker A
Yeah. and um and I was in the investment bank and I had been assigned to start buying Russian stocks by um a senior guy in the New York office. I was in London and I was in the working in the
Speaker A
investment bank and I was buying some shares and and one of my rivals inside the investment bank um turned me into the compliance officers because you're not supposed to be buying securities if you're an investment banker. You're supposed to do that on the trading floor
Speaker A
and there's a thing called the Chinese wall. And so I wrote this big story about the the Chinese wall. Um and um and again it was one of these things where I was able to make it interesting.
Speaker A
Um so everyone said like I I never knew Chinese walls in investment banks could be so exciting. And the reason why it was exciting was because there was this rival who wanted to turn me in and I was
Speaker A
doing something that was sort of wrong and I was frog marshed out by the sort of internal police and and it became an interesting chapter. Um uh but again that that that was a big struggle. How do you make the Chinese wall at an
Speaker A
investment bank interesting? because I needed to talk about that story to further the story.
Speaker A
Yeah. One of the things I've noticed so far in our conversation is like looking for the stakes, looking for the conflict, looking for the tension, looking for the rivals, and if there's the two sides, those things are clear.
Speaker A
Once you get clear on what those pieces are, my sense is that whatever those fault lines are, the story kind of unfolds from Yeah. And then then it moves and everyone wants to read to the next page.
Speaker A
Let's talk about endings. Let's close with a I'm going to read this. So, here's how you end red notice and then we can end with focus on endings. Early in this book, I said that the feeling I got from buying a Polish stock that went
Speaker A
up 10 times was the best thing to ever happen to me in my career. But the feeling I had on that balcony in Brussels with Sergey's widow and son as we watched the largest lawmaking body in Europe recognize and condemn the
Speaker A
injustices suffered by Sergey and his family. felt orders of magnitude better than any financial success I've ever had. If finding a tenbagger in the stock market was a highlight of my life before, there is no feeling as satisfying as getting some measure of
Speaker A
justice in a highly unjust world. Yeah. That that almost brings tears to my eyes listening to you read it, which um means that it was a good ending, right?
Speaker A
Yeah. Yeah. It was a and and and it's and it's the crux of my whole life, which is going from, you know, a pretty narrow finance guy to being a uh, you know, a fighter for justice. And, um, it sort of
Speaker A
sums up everything. Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you. Yeah.
Topics:Bill BrowderRed NoticeFreezing Orderwriting tipsstorytellingcharacter buildingbook writingnonfiction writingpacingengaging readers
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