I always say to young writers, you need to put your heart on the page. Don't worry about being like anyone else. I would say that foremost, in any of the arts, it is self-expression at its core. I don't buy rules or a set criteria or a static criteria. I don't believe in any of that. I think the most exciting talents are kind of inexplicable. You can't really understand why that art works. It just does, and that feels like it comes from a very pure place.
I think that it all goes back to childhood. I’ve always really been writing about family. I suppose we always are. I do think that it is the original wound, and it's where we are kind of wired and built from those early years. So I think every other relationship just replicates that. It's very natural for me to go there, I suppose because the feelings are most intense there. We just keep recycling these relationships and dynamics over and over again—until maybe someday we can catch ourselves and try to break the bad patterns. It feels the most visceral and real to me, always. You're always looking for that in writing. You want everything to be at this peak intensity, or at least I do. That seems the most natural place to start.
Megan Abbott is the Edgar award-winning author of twelve crime novels, including Beware the Woman, You Will Know Me, Give Me Your Hand, and the New York Times bestseller The Turnout, the winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She received her Ph.D. in English and American literature from New York University, and her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Paris Review and the Wall Street Journal. Dare Me, the series she adapted from her own novel, now streaming on Netflix. Her latest novel, El Dorado Drive, is available June 24, 2025.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
I was going back now, in the first interview I did for The Creative Process. Joyce Carol Oates told me, “obviously it's the place of childhood that exerts a powerful spell over us throughout our lives.” And I always remember this line. The poet Philip Larkin put it perhaps more to the point. He said, "They fuck you up, your mom and dad…They fill you with the faults that they had." But I think you and your books have this even more expansive view. You draw the circle wider. It's those childhood friends, those sisters and mentors, and the wider family that really messes us up through our lives. I mean, if we don't navigate it correctly, it's the source of our original wounds, informing our relationships and our mistakes. So what draws you, do you think, to this emotional terrain?
MEGAN ABBOTT
Oh boy. Yeah, I think it all goes back to childhood. I’ve always really been writing about family. I suppose we always are. I do think that it is the original wound, and it's where we are kind of wired and built from those early years. So I think every other relationship just replicates that. It feels very natural for me to go there, I suppose because the feelings are most intense there. We just keep recycling these relationships and dynamics over and over again—until maybe someday we can catch ourselves and try to break the bad patterns. It feels the most visceral and real to me, always. You're always looking for that in writing. You want everything to be at this peak intensity, or at least I do. That seems to be the most natural place to start. Or even if I don't start there, I end up there.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Yeah, it’s wired into our subconscious or unconscious. And of course, in El Dorado Drive, it made me reflect a lot. At the heart of it, it embodies a kind of pyramid scheme. I thought a lot about it now because in some ways, we're kind of in a pyramid scheme presidency.
I mean, I kept on seeing this as a metaphor on an interpersonal level, kind of like what we've been dealing with. You have this unbelievable mountain of merchandise that Trump has, and he previously called crypto “a scam,” but now he and Melania both have their own separate Bitcoin schemes, the gold-painted sneakers, and now he’s getting a free luxury jet from Qatar. And then there's the whole tariff scandal where we're promised that everything will be “so winning down the line that we'll get sick of winning,” but for now, everything's going to cost more. What has your examination of influence and persuasion taught you when you train your eyes back on this moment we're living in?
ABBOTT
Yeah, I've thought about that a lot while writing the book. We really are in the age of the grifter, as they keep saying. In some ways, it's the most deeply American type, the hustler of American aspiration. And money, I think that was hovering in my head when I wrote the book. How women persuade and convince one another of things feels particularly complex to me. I think there are so many layers to female relationships.
That was really interesting to me to pursue because, in some ways, it's much more veiled and complex. So, I tend to write about groups of women a lot, regardless of the field, but particularly the way they communicate or don't communicate, or communicate without words to one another, is an ongoing fascination of mine.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
And it’s interesting, our storytelling impulse is strong. Even when we’ve acted badly, we often have this need to confess. Even bad actors in society, like serial killers, they leave these little hints, and they end up confessing because if they don’t, people won’t know who did it.
ABBOTT
Yes, it's very Freudian. I really do believe they need to leave some sign of it. Even, you know, I think you see that a lot. A serial killer's a good example because there's this fantasy of the cold serial killer, who is like a machine.
But they're just more damaged versions of ourselves, you know? There's a desire—they feel out of place. They don't belong, whether because they're a sociopath, or, you know, they can't feel the things they're supposed to be feeling. There's a desire to be recognized.
I think that's something we all have. We all reveal ourselves too. I really do believe in that sort of Freudian slip, you know, all these ways that we want to be caught. In some ways, you see this in interpersonal cheating, cheating spouse, et cetera. There's a desire in that case, not for recognition but maybe for feeling guilty.
The things we don't understand about ourselves, why we're doing what we're doing, are also areas I like to pursue most: why certain things stick with us and others don't, or why... I mean, my favorite filmmaker was David Lynch, who just passed away this year, and there's something about how he unconsciously understood our dark interiors. I think books, movies, and all arts are a way for us to safely explore these dark parts of ourselves and come out not having hurt anyone or ourselves. So I always think about that. That's the art I respond to the most.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
They're vulnerable at the same time as they're asserting their power and finding their place in the world. So what draws you to that? I didn't realize it was so cutthroat in some of these arenas.
ABBOTT
There’s very little exaggeration from the feedback I've heard from cheerleaders and ballet dancers. Even if they didn't always want to say it publicly, I always write about athletes of one kind or another a lot. That's in large part because I have no athletic ability or the ability to dance, even though I tried for a long time, and I've never felt sort of full ownership of my body in that way, and I'm so dazzled by it.
I'm fascinated by how the body is both the prison and the escape. It's the source of objectification, but it can also be the source of all your power as an athlete. All those seeming contradictions are really fascinating to me.
The competition, the conflict you see, especially in team sports like cheerleading, where there's both individual achievement and team achievement, and they’re constantly at loggerheads with one another. That all feels really ripe dramatic terrain. Of course, it is perfect for pushing. You said dark fairytale, and yes, that's how I think of it.
That’s also how I think of high school, where everything is pitched to how it feels, not necessarily to how it is in objective reality. Everything is super intensified, and that's a way to explore all the things that girls and women aren't supposed to say or feel. They're not supposed to have unbridled ambition. They're not supposed to express aggression. They're not supposed to really express desire as a teenage girl, and any kind of non-heteronormative desire at all. These areas give me the freedom to let them do all those things. Because they're in these closed circuits, the team, the squad, the dance school, you can see them all laid bare.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
It's interesting because you also wrote on The Deuce. On our show, we've had George Pelecanos, who was co-creator of that with David Simon. And like George, you also came up through writing novels before writing for television and showrunning.
So you wrote on The Deuce, and then you co-created your own adaptation for television of Dare Me. So tell us about that process. What's it like being in the room and then actually creating your own room based on your own novel?
ABBOTT
Yeah, it was sort of, you know, Dare Me was in development, which just means it takes forever to find out if you're going to be able to make it. First, it was going to be a movie, and I had written the screenplay. Then, television became the exciting new arena, and it moved to TV.
During that long process, I was offered to write on The Deuce, which was fortuitous because Dare Me wasn't green-lit yet for a TV series, and we didn’t know if it ever would be. But I had this opportunity to work with David Simon, George Pelecanos, and Richard Price on this prestigious HBO show, and it would be my first time in a writer's room.
It was really terrifying at first because they had all worked together for years on The Wire and Treme, and they had a real way of working together. I and Lisa Lutz, the other female writer, a female crime novelist they brought on, had very little experience but were amazing. They don’t run a traditional room in many ways; you meet sporadically over a two-week period, then don't meet for a few months.
They would be very intense, but what they taught me the most is really about being on set, especially for episodes we wrote. We could come anytime. The showrunner's real job is being on set all the time, so you can control the tone of your show. Only you know how the tone of the scene should be. Only you know these things that you don't think you know, but you have a vision in your head.
It was so great to get to sit with them, in the little chairs with the playback, and see how they make their magic, their kind of dark magic. They were really very mentor-like about that, and it was a great experience. They definitely took that into Dare Me. It was a very different kind of show, but if I hadn't, I wouldn't have known how important it was to be there.
I wouldn’t have known how many questions get answered by people that aren't you if you're not there. How thrilling it would be to collaborate with the department heads—costumes, art department, production designs, and cinematography. They bring you better ideas than you ever had, and the show gets richer because of their contribution. All that stuff was invaluable.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
I wonder sometimes; everyone needs money, but it seems in some ways valorized in America a little bit more than maybe in Europe. Like, we don't want to talk about money so much. It's embarrassing, even though it's so important. It’s almost like success at all costs, like it doesn’t matter how many bridges you burn.
ABBOTT
Yes, yes. Americans only want to talk about money and never talk about class, which is such a fascinating contradiction. In Europe, you can talk about class, and I think that really speaks to this poisonous American dream idea that anybody can pull up their bootstraps and become a great success. It’s such a fantasy, but I think most Americans still were raised in that. It's in all our movies, our music. It’s so embedded in the culture that there’s not only no shame in flaunting wealth or your hustle; there’s actually a great pride in it.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
I was thinking about the psychologically charged atmosphere and characters in your novels. Have you had psychoanalysis?
ABBOTT
I think I'm like 15 years in now.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Oh, you're deep in.
ABBOTT
I mean, just a psychotherapist, not a strict psychoanalyst, but yes, I definitely count on that. At first, I was hesitant because I thought it might disrupt my creative brain, but I've been able to manage. I don't talk through my writing. I keep that separate, but for my mental stability, I need her for the sessions.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Oh, that's great. I wondered, do you think she helps you excavate something, remember things that are buried that you didn't realize were there?
ABBOTT
That is good for writing. Not that it just has to be good for writing, but the more vivid memories you share, that stuff is gold. It’s working on us all the time. If we don’t excavate it, we have no control over it. It’s an act in itself.
I think having to talk every week for an hour about myself is really useful; it stirs things up. Of course, you start to see patterns in your life that you want to break. You inevitably end up talking about your childhood, and you think you don't remember everything, but then it turns out you remember everything.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Ballet has always held an allure for me. In your novel The Turnout, you describe the rivalry between twin sisters who run a ballet school. This captured my imagination because I went to a ballet school where two sisters taught, overseen by their mother, who gained a lot of weight and no longer danced. I always looked from mother to daughters, thinking that she had once been like them.
ABBOTT
Yeah, I think it does. There I was taught by two sisters, twins in my case. I do think often of sisters because there's a real physical body type that's preferred in ballet—at least it has been until recent years, where there’s been this great change in that area.
But it used to be a real, strict body type, and your height, frame—these things often result in sisters for genetic reasons. It’s interesting what you shared about the mother because she's not only sort of living out her lost ballet career through her daughters, but they’re seeing her and what their future could possibly be. It's so complex.
Those feelings—I mean, I would love to steal that for a future book if I hadn’t already written the novel.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Well, you don't have kids, but you have taught. I've been having these conversations with a lot of people at the university level, primarily. As you reflect back, even 10 years ago, before even Instagram, we had different stages of development of the internet, and now we have AI, so you don't know what to believe.
There's more anxiety because you can make perfect images. What are your reflections on that, looking back at the kind of analog childhoods we could have?
ABBOTT
Yes, it's deeply upsetting. I don't think there's anything more upsetting to me right now. All the things to be upset about in the world feel like an existential threat to me. It’s a threat to a lot of people's livelihoods; AI affects thousands of professions. But the existential threat is really about what's real and what's not. That uncanny feeling that you're seeing something not real and you can't distinguish it... it's that balance of authenticity—you know, most AI is just awful, it feels like slop. But eventually, we won't be able to tell the difference. I wish I could find a corner of hopefulness about it. I will say the corner of hopefulness I feel is that, number one, it’s wildly expensive.
It’s also environmentally hazardous. Number two, I do think people can tell right now, and maybe they're having fun with it on their own. But I think we really all crave the touch of the real, the smack of authenticity. I think we need it as humans, and I believe in us as a human race; we will ultimately reject it.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Having been a teacher and having had wonderful teachers and mentors, can you discuss some of those you've had along the way? How did they inspire you, and even those whom you didn’t get a chance to meet but learned from through reading their books?
ABBOTT
Yeah, I would say the common denominator for all of them, going back to my high school English teacher and certainly my parents, extending through the writers I admire, has really been embracing your weirdness, for lack of a better term. The thing that makes you special is often the thing we feel we need to hide. When you start in any field or any art, you're modeling those you like, but they’re inevitably not you. So you're already starting to stifle yourself. Every art that's worth something feels completely idiosyncratic.
The teachers I’ve loved have encouraged me to push into my own weirdness and challenge myself to go further with it. That feels like a great thing. The other thing I would say, which definitely started with my parents, is that they never saw any distinction between high culture, low culture, or pop culture. The only thing they didn’t like was middle-brow culture.
I loved gangster movies as a kid, and there was no judgment there. I loved comic books, but I was also reading Jane Eyre. There were no distinctions; there were no guilty pleasures. The teachers I respond to most are the same way.
Those pieces of advice felt like great permission to be weird and to own what you like. Those feel like gifts for any creative person.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
I love that advice. As you talk about pushing into the weirdness and reflect on the importance of the arts and literature, what would you like to say in closing? What would you like young people to know, preserve, and remember?
ABBOTT
I would say there are so many things about you that are special, unique, and beautiful, and probably the things you think are ugliest about yourself are the most beautiful. I always say to young writers, you need to put your heart on the page. Don't worry about being like anyone else. I would say that foremost in any of the arts, it is self-expression at its core.
I don't buy rules or a set criteria, nor a static criteria. I don’t believe in any of that. I think the most exciting talents are kind of inexplicable. You can’t really understand why that art works—it just does. That feels like it comes from a very pure place.
