Cwiegard asked Lawrence Wright:

I enjoyed "Going Clear" as an excellent exploration of the dark side of human nature through the prism of a cult religion. I understand that a fiction pandemic thriller is a very different writing effort, but did your nonfiction career inform your new writing effort, either regarding human nature, the role of research in establishing realism, or some other way?

Lawrence Wright I've responded to this question before, but the point about establishing realism is a little different. I need to understand events, characters, history, and process well enough to explain them to a reader. If I don't understand something, it just comes out as b.s. I respect writers who live almost entirely in their imagination, but that's not me.

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