MURDER EP 5 Scott Frost is a crime novelist who has also written for “Twin Peaks”, “The X-Files” and “Babylon 5”

Scott Frost is an American screenwriter and novelist who work on the Twin Peaks TV series. He was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel for The Autobiography of FBI Agent Dale Cooper and has since written five novels, his most recent being Wait for Dark.

Scott Frost talks about the process of developing a good story and his focus on the imaginative element. “I like to think that a story told well is better than truth so I don’t do much research in that sense. If I feels true to me as a writer then I think that I have done my job for the reader. In terms of specific facts, I have friends who have been in law enforcement and I if need to check some things and make sure that it rings true with them then I will do that. The rest is just pure imagination.”

He talks about the challenge of writing the story itself. “You work at it. You sit and you just push the imagination every day. I guess these things come out of somewhere but it is probably best not to delve too deeply into it because you might not like what you’ll find.”

Creating an intense reading experience
Scott talks about his aims for writing a novel and what he wants the reader to experience. “Hopefully what they are going to find is a book that they want to keep turning the pages of and can’t stop. I think if I’ve kept you up most of the night and ruined your next day it makes me very happy and I hear that time and time again from people. I want people to have a very intense reading experience and hopefully I think that this book accomplishes that.”

Scott's tip: Trust the journey
“Trust the journey because that is ultimately the reason that you are doing it. It’s not the end result. It’s what happens along the way that’s most rewarding.”

Listen to the Australian Writers’ Centre’s spine-tingling Murder and Mayhem podcast here.