Fox News anchor Dana Perino sat down with prolific author James Patterson to talk about the secret to his bestselling books and why he believes it is incumbent on parents to make their children read.
"A lot of people that watch this want to know how can they get their youngsters to read?" said Perino on her Fox Nation show "Dana Perino's Book Club."
"You got to take responsibility for it. It's not the school's responsibility to get your kid's reading -- it's your job," insisted Patterson. "Probably among the most important things is getting your kids reading, because if they're not reading, they're going to go out into the world and they're going to be at a big disadvantage."
"But the key thing is give them books that they are going to like. Kids will like 'Ali Cross,'" he said in reference to his latest young adult book, which is about the son of Patterson's iconic character, former detective and FBI agent Alex Cross.
"Were there books that really stuck with you as a kid?" asked Perino.
"Not particularly," said Patterson. "I wasn't a huge reader. I got a job, worked my way through college at a mental hospital, worked a lot of night, and I started reading like a crazy person."
The books that Patterson said were the biggest influences to him were Frederick Forsyth's "The Day of the Jackal" and William Peter Blatty's "The Exorcist".
"In 'Criss Cross' I felt like I never had a moment to catch my breath," said Perino about another of Patterson's new offerings in his long-running series. "When you end a chapter, it's almost like you automatically want to go to the next page. Do you have a trick?"
"I try to pretend its one person I'm telling a story and I don't want them to get up until I'm finished," said Patterson. "Michael Connelly, who's a very good mystery writer, he says, 'What James does is every single chapter moves both the characterization and the plot forward, both at the same time and turns on the movie projector in our heads.' So I want to put you in the scene. I want you to feel it."
"And if I don't feel it when I'm writing it, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite," he continued. "Because there are intense things happening there and if it doesn't come off as intense and when you read it, it means I did something wrong."
"When you start a book... do you know how it's going to end when you start it?" said Perino.
"I outline like crazy. There was one year I wrote 2,600 pages of outlines. And if you think about that 2,600 pages, three or four drafts, that's insane," he replied.
"I know a lot of what's going to happen. I'm not a slave to the outline," he concluded. "The thing that changes the most is the ending because things happen. You get more attached to a character or a couple of twists and turns happen and suddenly you go, 'Oh, wait a minute'... it's having fun with the reader and the reader having fun with the book I think is the key."
To hear more about Patterson's influences, writing style, and upcoming projects watch "Dana Perino's Book Club" on Fox Nation.
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