Cindy L. Otis: On Writing a Technological Thriller for Young Adults
Author Cindy L. Otis explains the challenge in writing a thriller where most of the action happens online, the differences in publishing a nonfiction book vs. a novel, and much more.
Cindy L. Otis is a writer and author of the forthcoming novel At the Speed of Lies and the critically acclaimed nonfiction book, True or False. Her other written work has appeared in publications, such as USA Today, The New York Times, CNN, and Teen Vogue.
Cindy was born on the west coast and raised in the northeast. She spends more time than she would like maintaining the tenuous peace that exists between her pets. Follow her on Instagram and visit her website.
In this post, Cindy explains the challenge in writing a thriller where most of the action happens online, the differences in publishing a nonfiction book vs. a novel, and more.
Name: Cindy L. Otis
Literary agent: Caryn Wiseman, Andrea Brown Literary
Book title: At the Speed of Lies
Publisher: Scholastic
Release date: June 6, 2023
Genre/category: Young Adult thriller
Previous titles: True or False
Elevator pitch for the book: A teen Instagrammer is thrust into the center of conspiracy theories and rumors online after two local kids go missing, but finding the truth might be more deadly than anyone knows.
What prompted you to write this book?
Teens are more online now than any other generation has been, yet they are not necessarily any more prepared to handle or understand the rapid-fire daily deluge of content that they consume. It is fundamentally changing our society in ways I don’t think we fully understand yet. I wanted to explore that by focusing on just one girl, and how things happening online could create a spiderweb of effects for her family, her town, and beyond.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
Five years, in total. I began writing the first draft in 2018 while I was waiting on my edit letter for my first book. I picked the manuscript up and set it aside numerous times between revisions for my debut until I finally had a completed draft in 2021, which is when it sold.
The core idea behind the book, my main character Quinn and the arc of her journey, the sub-themes of friendship and ableism that I explore in it, and even the title stayed the same throughout the process. However, it took playing around with different methods of executing it before I finally found the right way to tell this story. For example, I had written about a third of the first draft in dual point of view before I realized it didn’t work.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
The publishing process was quite different for this book than my debut, a YA nonfiction book I sold on proposal and then wrote after contracts were signed. When this book sold, it sold as a full manuscript I then had to tear apart during the various rounds of revision. I learned a lot about revision in an environment of collaboration with my wonderful editor at Scholastic, who was as committed to the story as I was.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
I was surprised at how difficult it turned out to be to write a thriller where so much of the plot and action is driven by what happens online. It is easier, I find, to write those tense, suspenseful, and heart-pounding action scenes when you can have characters leaping from trains or blowing things up, and a little harder when the big revelations happen on a screen.
A contemporary thriller cannot ignore technology and its role in society, and in the end, it turned out to be an opportunity to create a really compelling and timely plot. Writing my novel made me realize that a good thriller is exciting, but a great thriller is more than the bangs and flash.
In that same vein, I think I was surprised by how much of my sub-themes I could draw out without slowing down the pace of the story or deviating from the thriller genre. For example, Quinn is a wheelchair user and I could not write an authentic story with a disabled main character without acknowledging ableism, but the book is not at all about her disability.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
I hope readers will be entertained by the story and find themselves holding their breaths as the mystery unravels on the page. But I also hope my book will encourage readers to think about how what they say, do, and share online can have an impact in the offline world.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
You can read all day long about the writing process of other authors—the keyboard they use, the schedule they maintain, their revision strategy. We can obsess about it so much, in fact, that it distracts us from the actual writing itself. The truth is there is no one way to write and there is certainly no right way.
Ultimately, it’s about finding a strategy that works best for you to get those words on the page, and that strategy might need to shift with each book. With each new manuscript and round of revision in front of me, I often need to find new ways of tricking my brain into writing.
Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.
