John Green On ‘Paper Towns’, Writing Teen Characters, And The Importance Of Talking With Your Audience

“I’m not under any illusion that I’m a particularly good writer,” says best-selling author John Green. The statement would be jarring even without arriving in the context of an interview where one of the key aims is for the talent to sell themselves. “My books don’t really have particularly strong plots I think, so they need to be character-driven.”

Green is talking to me from London, where he’s currently promoting the latest movie adaptation of one of his novels, Paper Towns. The teen-comedy-road-trip-mystery stars model Cara Delevingne in her first leading role, and is generating the kind of buzz that hasn’t circled a teen flick since 2012’s The Perks Of Being A Wallflower. And rightly so. The film follows teenage everyman Quentin (Nat Wolff), who is reunited with his childhood friend and highschool crush Margo (Delevingne). She enlists him to help her seek revenge on everyone who has ever wronged her, from cheating boyfriends to lying frenemies. The following day, when Margo inexplicably disappears, Quentin embarks on a road trip with his buddies to find her, by following the clues he believes she has left him.

It was this time last year that another of John Green’s book-to-movie adaptations was bucking expectations: The Fault In Our Stars went on to make over US$300 million worldwide, on a miniscule $12 million budget. He’s been lucky, Green admits, to have fallen deeply in love with both cinematic adaptations of his work. “I’m so happy. I think Jake Schreier directed an amazing movie in Paper Towns. He had a great vision for what the movie should look like and how it should feel. It was such a great opportunity for me to work with the same people who made The Fault In Our Stars — the same producers, the same screenwriters, the same studio. Both movies have been very faithful to the themes and characters in the book, and that’s all I could ever ask for.”

At 37, Green has four books under his belt – all critically acclaimed best-sellers – as well as a swag of short stories and collaborations. He almost exclusively writes from a teenaged point of view, seamlessly switching narration between young heroes and heroines, and never shying from the more contentious aspects that define coming-of-age: sex, drugs and self-doubt. His literary following has mutated from cult to mainstream fast, too: he admits it’s a “very strange and unexpected place” to find himself in. Despite his tendencies towards self-depreciation, all signs point towards the fact that yes, John Green is a particularly good writer.

That doesn’t mean he had it planned. In fact, after graduating from college, Green toyed with the idea of becoming a priest. He worked as a chaplain at a palliative care facility for young people, which sparked the seed for The Fault In Our Stars, and the idea that he could – and should – be a writer. A few years later, in 2005, his debut novel — Looking For Alaska — was published, with his second, An Abundance Of Katherines, released in 2006. “I think what I like most about writing is escaping into characters, and that maybe I can get out of this prison of my own consciousness for a little while, pretending to be someone else or pretending to live inside of a different story than the one I’m actually living in,” Green says. “I mean, obviously I don’t know what it’s like to be a girl – I know what it’s like to be a teenager, but I don’t know what it’s like to be any of the characters in my books. I just try very hard, through language, to make them complex and give them interesting choices to make over the course of the book.”

Green wasn’t too far off the mark when he implied most read (and become obsessed with) his books because of the people – not the plots. “I want my characters to be people,” he says. “I want them to feel like people — not to feel like objects that move the story forward.”

Outside of his writing career, Green was one of the first bonafide YouTube stars; he started the VlogBrothers series with his brother Hank in 2007, and it went on to gain over 2.5 million subscribers. Add to that his active Tumblr and social media life, and he becomes something of a rarity: an incredibly accessible celebrity writer. His fans can engage with him directly across half a dozen different mediums — but then of course, so can his critics. “I’ve always been a big believer that books belong to their readers, and that when I finish a book it’s not mine anymore,” he says. “As for the critics… Sometimes I think they’re right. I like engaging with the readers, even the critical ones. You know, I never imagined my books … would be so widely read around the world and so widely discussed. My writing is improved by being able to hear from readers. It feels like more of a conversation, rather than an author dropping a manuscript from the top of an ivory tower.”

As a white American man, Green is hyper-aware of the other type of ivory tower he comes from; he’s been called-out publicly in the past for problematic comments, videos and lines from his book, and has turned to his Tumblr to address those complaints. He identifies as a feminist, and brings the topic up often in public, too.

@always0romione Thinking about my own failure to imagine women complexly as a teen, to see them as complete humans not objects to be won. 41

— John Green (@johngreen) March 24, 2015

Green also uses Twitter to discuss America’s systematic racism. His staunch online activism has led him to a lot of interesting places: he’s interviewed President Obama (so has his brother Hank) and, more recently he used the platform to draw attention to the aftermath of the Charleston massacre.

“I grew up partly in Birmingham, Alabama which was and still is haunted by the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in the 1960s, and it’s devastating — it’s devastating to see. I feel like it’s my responsibility to amplify voices more affected by the tragedy, and the systematic problems across the US – it’s weird to be here in London and see that news, it’s gut wrenching.”

Woke up here in London to the horrific news from Charleston. Sickening. Over 50 years since the Birmingham church bombing, and here we are.

— John Green (@johngreen) June 18, 2015

“When I was younger I felt that books were written by people who were fundamentally different than me and that’s just not true – books are written by all kinds of people,” Green says. “Good stories can be written by all kinds of people — that’s one of the reasons I think it’s important to connect with people online.”

–

Paper Towns is released in Australia on Thursday July 16.

–

Maria Lewis is a journalist and author from Sydney. She’s the co-host of the Eff Yeah Film & Feminism podcast, and her debut novel Who’s Afraid? is set for release in early 2016 from Little Brown Books & Hachette.