Adam Silvera: From Harry Potter Fan Fiction to Death-Cast

An eighth Harry Potter book, finished before the series ended

The career began as fan fiction. At around age 11, Silvera started writing in the Harry Potter world, and he finished a whole sequel, 'Harry Potter and the Demise of Hogwarts', before the real series had ended. His summary of it needs no embellishment: "I wrote an eighth Harry Potter book before all the books were out."^[1]

In a 2017 interview with the Orange County Library System, he sketched the timeline plainly: fan fiction first, then his own stories about a decade later.^[4]

More Happy Than Not: a first book that was "100 percent me"

More Happy Than Not is where he learned it. In that 2016 interview, he recalled that the first book was "100 percent me," and that he knew he had to take a step back.^[5]

Our review

More Happy Than Not

Adam Silvera's debut follows Aaron Soto, a Bronx teen weighing a memory-erasing procedure after his father's suicide and his feelings for Thomas.

The memory-erasing clinic at the book's center was deliberately unglamorous. He wanted the procedure to be "just as simple as like going to the dentist, you know?"^[1]

Research was part of his work too. For one of his books, he looked into memory erasing procedures from Sweden.^[4]

Readers of the debut, he said in 2016, were relieved by the humor in the narrator's voice.^[5]

History Is All You Left Me: finding truth through structure

He told The Writer in 2016 that he always wanted some sort of hook. His third book was actually the second he wrote, and it was speculative, so he thought History Is All You Left Me had to be as well. He tried, but "nothing felt true."^[5]

The fix was to let Griffin speak to Theo throughout the novel. A second structural choice did the rest: an alternating timeline. Grief leaves little room for jokes, he said in that interview, so the timeline supplied "a balance between the heavy stuff and some relief for readers."^[5]

The detaching wasn't always easy. While writing History, he found it "hard to detach from antagonizing feelings toward Jackson, because he's a good person." Writing about OCD and sexuality, two things he has struggled with, could be rough, he said then, but he found it therapeutic, and it helped him find answers to questions he hadn't known to ask himself.^[5]

They Both Die at the End and The First to Die at the End

They Both Die at the End starts from a premise Silvera pitched in 2016 in a single breath: it is "set in a world where Death-Cast calls you on the day you're gonna die."^[1]

Our review

They Both Die at the End

Adam Silvera's They Both Die at the End (HarperTeen, 2017) follows Mateo and Rufus through the day Death-Cast tells them they will die.

The 2023 prequel, The First to Die at the End, began as something he had not initially intended to write. What intrigued him was depicting the chaos, doubts, and enthusiasm of Death-Cast's very first day. Orion and Valentino meet in Times Square on Death-Cast Eve before one receives the company's inaugural death alert, turning their day into an unexpected love story. He also wanted to explore Dalma Young's teenage years as Orion's tech-savvy best friend, who conceives the idea for the Last Friend app.^[2]

Our review

The First to Die at the End

Adam Silvera's The First to Die at the End is a Death-Cast prequel following Orion and Valentino on the day the first calls go out.

Setting the prequel in 2010 sent him digging for small facts, including whether FaceTime existed yet and what a New York City MetroCard cost.^[2]

The Survivor Wants to Die at the End: a week, not a day

The Survivor Wants to Die at the End changes the clock. Where earlier books in the series cover 24 hours, it stretches across a week, following a boy hoping for a call from Death-Cast and the empire's heir who tries to save him. Alano, he has said, faces heavy parental pressure and wants to choose his own path. The novel took a year and a half to write, and readers have been finishing its 700 pages in hours, which he counts as a huge compliment.^[3]

Our review

The Survivor Wants to Die at the End

Adam Silvera's The Survivor Wants to Die at the End is the third They Both Die at the End novel: Paz waits for a Death-Cast call that never comes until Alano saves him.

The series continues with No One Knows Who Dies at the End.

Writing process: notebooks, messy drafts, and revision

He writes erratically on the road, he told The Writer in 2016, and he always carries a pocket notebook because it "feels different from a laptop," and stepping away from how you normally work is good for you. In 2017 he told the Orange County Library System that he keeps one notebook per novel, his one must-have.^[4][5]

He spoke about criticism in practical terms as well. The majority of readers wrote thoughtful reviews, he said, and he liked seeing what they identified as weaknesses. He agreed with them, used the criticism to improve his craft, and said he was grateful for the feedback.^[5]

His advice to new writers is blunt: "Writing is trial and error. You're never going to hit it out of the park at the first go. Expect it to be messy and trust yourself to fix it later."^[4]