When I sit down to write a book, I think in terms of what I call the three Cs that I think could be very, very helpful to anyone who's sitting down and trying to outline and write a thriller. I call them the contract, the clock, and the crucible. The contract is that promise that you're making the reader, this idea that if you read this book, you will find out the following piece of information.

Will the young attorney escape the corrupt law firm that hired him? Will Ahab catch the whale? These sorts of things. Will the jackal kill his target? You make a contract with the reader. And you don't break it. And no promise is small enough that you don't have to keep it. Every single promise you make to the reader, you need to keep.

And I remember at the end of "Da Vinci Code," I think I had three or four days to finish the end of this book before it had to go to press. And we had a list of 17 unanswered promises, an actual list saying this is small, but you've made a promise to your reader. You have to answer it. And we went through and we found ways to give answers to every single question. And the reason people are gonna love your book is that when you make a promise, you're going to keep it. And people will begin to trust you as a writer.

The crucible is just this idea of saying, don't let your characters run away. A crucible is something that holds things together and doesn't let them escape.