Adam Silvera on Stepping Back From the Personal First Draft

Writing Harry Potter fan fiction at 11 and learning to fix a messy draft

Silvera has been writing since age 11, beginning with Harry Potter fan fiction and moving to original stories about a decade later. On video, Silvera adds a joke about those early days: "I wrote an eighth Harry Potter book before all the books were out."^[1][6]

Silvera's advice to aspiring writers is plain. Writing is trial and error, nobody hits it out of the park first time, so expect a mess and trust yourself to fix it later. Silvera also says a break is fine when you need one, but a long one makes returning to the page feel impossible.^[5][6]

More Happy Than Not: a debut written for himself, with a monster behind the pen

Silvera says More Happy Than Not was inspired by a question: would they have changed their sexual orientation as a teenager, from homosexual to heterosexual, to lead a simpler life, with no coming out and no fear of being beaten up? To explore that nurture-versus-nature angle, Silvera brought in the Leteo memory alteration procedure. The takeaway Silvera hopes for is that sexuality is very complicated and choices aren't always its foundation.^[5]

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More Happy Than Not

Silvera describes the clinic in the video as "just as simple as like going to the dentist, you know?" Asked to sum the novel up in ten words, Silvera managed: "Boy undergoes memory procedure to forget he is gay. Hi." The research behind it included memory-erasing procedures from Sweden.^[1][6]

The hardest scene to write is off limits because it would spoil the book, but Silvera says there were "TONS of scenes" that made them feel like a monster for being the pen behind them, while staying true to Aaron's story. The easy ones were the fun scenes between Aaron and Genevieve, and Aaron and Thomas, and many were trimmed because Silvera stayed in them too long. Readers, Silvera notes, were relieved by the humor from the narrator.^[4][5]

Small choices carried weight too. Aaron was always Puerto Rican, even when the surname was Peters, a name Silvera picked while crushing on Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker. That name wasn't true to his heritage, and Silvera says Aaron being Puerto Rican is more important than the crush. Aaron's "you-know-what" came from his discomfort discussing suicide head-on, not from Harry Potter, though Scorpius Hawthorne is, Silvera says, "100% a nod" to the series.^[5]

A hook for every book: Griffin speaking to Theo in History Is All You Left Me

Silvera describes the second book as carrying pressure the first did not. Silvera wrote More Happy Than Not for themself and wrote History under contract, which meant expectations. Silvera called that scary, admitted to not handling the pressure very well, and said to ask again after the manuscript was turned in.^[5]

Honest places, flawed characters and a pocket notebook

Silvera says everything they have written comes from an honest place tied to some real event, and the characters are often based on interesting real people. Writing about OCD and sexuality, which Silvera has struggled with, can be rough but has been therapeutic, turning up answers to questions Silvera didn't know to ask. No character is 100 percent good or evil.^[4]

Silvera does not work entirely alone. A team is there to call out anything that goes too far, and they discuss it, balancing authenticity to the characters against not driving too many younger readers away. Silvera also takes reviewer criticism as material for improving the craft. Every novel gets its own notebook, the one must-have, and on the road Silvera writes erratically with a pocket notebook, since it feels different from a laptop and stepping away from the usual method is good for you.^[4][6]

Death-Cast: a prequel's first day and a week-long Survivor

They Both Die at the End, in Silvera's words, is "set in a world where Death-Cast calls you on the day you're gonna die." The prequel, The First to Die at the End, was not something Silvera first planned. On video Silvera has said the draw was picturing the chaos, doubts and enthusiasm of the service's very first day, with Orion and Valentino meeting in Times Square on Death-Cast Eve.^[1][2]

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The First to Die at the End

A #1 New York Times bestselling prequel to They Both Die at the End.

In the video, Silvera explains wanting to explore Dalma Young's teenage years as Orion's tech-savvy best friend, who conceives the idea for the Last Friend app. Setting the prequel in 2010 required historical research on details like whether FaceTime existed yet and the price of New York City MetroCards. Reviewer His and Hers Book Club calls the story tender, tense and quietly devastating, and says the 24-hour structure gives the plot a steady pulse.^[2][7]

The later book changes the clock. Silvera has said that unlike earlier installments spanning 24 hours, The Survivor Wants to Die at the End unfolds over a week, following a boy hoping for a Death-Cast call and the empire's heir who tries to save him. Alano, Silvera notes, faces heavy parental pressure and wants to choose his own path rather than live a predetermined one. Kirkus Reviews calls the book as suspenseful and emotionally wrenching as the previous titles, with heavy themes including abuse, mental health, self-harm and suicide.^[3][8]

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The Survivor Wants to Die at the End

The Survivor Wants to Die at the End runs about 700 pages and took a year and a half to write, Silvera has said, yet readers have been finishing it in hours, which Silvera counts as a huge compliment.^[3]