Interview with John Grisham: Confessions of a story pusher

On stolen moments, sleepless nights, and the craft of irresistible fiction.

Through a special partnership with Netflix, I had the rare chance to sit down with John Grisham, one of the most celebrated authors alive. It’s not every day you get to ask “America’s Favorite Storyteller” how he hooks readers so deeply, what real-life moments spark his thrillers, and which Hollywood adaptation still makes him smile.

His answers pull back the curtain on the craft of storytelling, the dance between books and film, and why, even after more than thirty novels, he still wrestles with what’s next.

Here’s the conversation, shared in full.

BK: You've been called "America's Favorite Storyteller". What is your approach to storytelling, and why do you think it has such huge appeal?

JG: My goal is to entertain by hooking the reader early and often and making the pages turn. I want my readers to skip lunch, read all night, call in sick at work, whatever it takes to forget everything for a few hours and get lost in the story.

BK: Your first novel, "A Time to Kill," was based on a conversation you overheard in the courtroom. What real life situations, conversations or people are in your other books?

JG: Virtually every story idea has been grounded in reality, either from my days as a lawyer or stories I’ve heard since then. Writers are thieves. We pick up stories, make some changes, and publish them as our own original brilliance. (wink)

BK: Since you're not in the courtroom regularly, where do you find inspiration for your stories?

JG: I try my best to avoid courtrooms at all costs. But, from a safe distance, I watch lawyers, trials, firms, cases, courts, appeals, trends in litigation. It’s a never ending process that comes naturally.

BK: Which one of your books made into a movie is your favorite and why?

JG: I’ve been very lucky with Hollywood and all nine adaptations have been enjoyable. But, The Rainmaker is still my favorite because Francis Ford Coppola was determined to stick to my story. Plus the cast was incredible: a young Matt Damon, Danny DeVito, Jon Voight, Clare Danes, Danny Glover, Mickey Rourke. I love that movie.

BK: You've written an impressive 30 novels over the years, so it's safe to say a reader could "binge read" your body of work. Since Netflix invented the concept of "binge watching", what are your favorite shows to binge on?

JG: I’m not sure all of these were with your company – kinda hard to keep it all straight these days – but we binged on Downton Abbey, House of Cards, Breaking Bad, Rectify, Broadchurch, In Treatment, Z (Zelda), The Crown, and a few others I can’t recall right now.

BK: Have you ever considered adapting your work to a longer-form series that we could binge on? And if so, what makes a written novel more appropriate for long-form series vs a traditional movie?

JG: Yes!! We talk about it every day and are trying to do several longer-form series, so tell your top-level executives to get with the program and make us a deal.

Television is better because of time and space. A feature film is limited to 120 minutes. With television, there are no limits and all aspects of the storytelling – characters, big plots, little plots, setting, dialogues – have virtually no boundaries.

BK: What's on your summer reading and watching list?

JG: I’m trying to finish the legal thriller for the fall so I’m not reading or watching much. I have stacks of books all over the house but so little time to read them. I want to watch The Night Manager, Narcos, and the Making of a Murderer.

BK: Your newest novel, Camino Island, includes writing and books and bookselling as key plot elements. Can we expect more of that?

JG: Who knows? I never dreamed I would one-day attempt to make bookselling fun and sexy and suspenseful. I’ve learned over the years that it’s impossible to predict where the next stories will materialize.

BK: When you were young, you wanted to play professional baseball. If you had never become a lawyer and a novelist and pursued your dream of becoming a ball player, how do you think that would have played out?

JG: At best, I would have bummed around Class D minor leagues for 10 years in a different dead end town each summer, making $600 a month for 5 months a year, and sold used cars back home to pay child support for seven kids from three wives, and gone through rehab each winter while still dreaming of playing for the Cardinals.

Thank goodness I wasn’t very good. It was a bad dream.

What lingers isn’t just Grisham’s dry humor or the empire of bestsellers, but how he treats storytelling like air, non-negotiable. Hook them fast. Don’t let them go. Swipe shamelessly from real life and make it sting like truth.

Isn’t that life, too? Not the pretty arc of a five-year plan, but the mess of keeping people interested enough to stay, to invest, to miss their metaphorical lunch because they’re caught up in what you’re building.

Grisham proves that inspiration is everywhere if you’re paying attention, that grit beats genius, and that the dream you didn’t get—his was baseball—might be the one that saves you.

Stay human,
Bryan

P.S. Who’s an author or leader you’d love to see interviewed like this next?

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This interview was previously published on Netflix’s media site and was in partnership with Netflix.

You are reading BEing Human, a weekly newsletter about an honest exploration of trust, leadership, and mindfulness from the bestselling author of “There is No B2B or B2C: It’s Human to Human #H2H” and Shareology (USA Today Top 150), 3x CEO, and TEDTalk speaker. Written by Bryan Kramer, an executive coach and advisor to Fortune executives, we dive into what it means to lead ourselves in life, business, and the moments that matter most.

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