‘Gone Girl’ author, Medill alum Gillian Flynn talks career in Q&A
Award-winning author Gillian Flynn (Medill MSJ ’97) believes writing requires stubbornness.
Flynn — the bestselling author of “Gone Girl,” “Sharp Objects” and “Dark Places” and a Golden Globe-nominated screenwriter — returned to Northwestern for a Q&A jointly hosted by the School of Communication and Radio, Television and Film program in Annie May Swift Hall on Friday.
Throughout the event, Flynn emphasized that a career as an author requires discipline and unpacked the craft behind her psychologically complex female characters.
She said it is essential to treat writing as a job.
“Writing is not something that you wait to happen,” Flynn said. “There’s no such thing as ‘the muse’ that’s going to come down and give you the gift of writing.”
Flynn credited her journalism background — including a decade working for Entertainment Weekly — for building her work ethic.
As a TV critic, Flynn said she learned to analyze not just why shows succeed or fail, but why exactly some may feel mediocre.
“It wasn’t just, ‘What makes this a great show? What makes this an A+ show?’ because you can normally figure that out,” Flynn said. “You can normally also tell why something’s really horrible. It was always trying to figure out, ‘Why is this a C- or a C+ show? Why doesn’t it quite work?’”
Often, Flynn said, the answer was simple: not revising strongly enough.
Flynn said effort is what separates mediocrity from greatness.
“It usually is always some version of, not just, ‘We didn’t nail it,’ but, you almost didn’t try hard enough to nail it,” Flynn said.
When she initially pivoted from journalism to creative writing, Flynn said she wrote in private to see if she could finish a novel she would want to read herself.
Once Flynn began seeking publication, she said she encountered repeated rejections from publishers on the basis that men would not read books by women and women only wanted to read about women they “aspire to be.”
Nevertheless, she rejected that premise and continued writing the kinds of characters she felt were missing from literature.
“What inspired me, certainly with ‘Sharp Objects,’ was looking around and wondering, ‘Where were the angry women?’” Flynn said. “‘Where were the angry and upset and aggressive and dark-hearted women?’”
Flynn said psychological thrillers gave her a structural “engine” to explore themes like female rage and generational trauma. Rather than focusing on whether characters are likeable, she said, she asks whether they are interesting.
Second-year MFA student Amy Tiong, who helped organize the event, said she admires Flynn’s work specifically due to her portrayal of darker female characters.
She said she worries there is less space for that kind of storytelling in a cultural moment that she said favors lighter, more uplifting narratives. However, she said hearing Flynn speak reassured her.
“Before this, I didn’t see women portrayed as villains or antiheroes,” Tiong said. “I love the characters. I know she says they aren’t likeable, but I still love them in a way.”
Communication first-year Maddy Peterson said Flynn’s advice about discipline resonated with her own studies.
“She said the only way to write well is to write even when you’re unmotivated,” Peterson said. “I think the biggest thing people face is not having the motivation to write, so hearing her say that was a wake up call.”
Above all, Flynn said she approaches writing with gratitude.
“There’s never a day I don’t wake up, even on the days that I’m really miserable about writing and I don’t want to write and I hate my writing, that I don’t go, ‘I’m really f–ing lucky to be a writer,’” Flynn said.
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