Author Lily Samson on the writing of The Switch: a gripping and unputdownable psychological thriller with a shocking twist . . .
The process of writing The Switch was one of stops and starts. The pauses contributed just as much to the book as periods of frenzied flow.
I came up with the idea on a Saturday morning in July 2021. I had recently began devouring domestic thrillers, enjoying this new evolution in the genre; I never been one for police procedurals or car chases, but I savoured novels such as Behind Closed Doors by B.A.Paris and Blood Orange by Harriet Tyce. Now I wanted to write my own. I sat in a café with my notebook and brainstormed ideas for hours. I came up with ideas for murders and mysteries and missing children and locked rooms, but nothing felt fresh enough.
Then I started mulling on how much I’d adored Roald Dahl as a child, how I’d evolved from his delightful children’s books to his deliciously nasty Tales Of the Unexpected. I thought about how clever his twists were, how much I’d loved The Great Switcheroo, where two men who live opposite each other play an outrageous, controversial game of swapping wives at night, in the dark, without them knowing; they receive their comeuppance in the sting at the end. The thought came to me: imagine if two women attempted to pull this off with their male partners? What if I wrote the feminist equivalent? What if this was the start of a twisted game of lies and deceit and murder?
That day I sketched out the plot across three pages, one page for each ‘act’. I also cognised what my big twist would be: I knew it was shocking and juicy.
Over the next month, I set about writing the opening 20,000 words. I decided I’d set it in Wimbledon. I didn’t live in the village (you pretty much need to be a millionaire to reside there), but I did enjoy wandering around its charming suburbs, eyeing up the grand houses overlooking the Common and Rushmere pond. I created a couple, Elena and Adam, who move there for a housesit and are befriended by the glamorous residents, Sophia and Finn.
I had an agent and I emailed her my idea. She was excited by it. Then I sent over my chapters, feeling a little uneasy, for I knew they weren’t quite right. As the months passed and I didn’t hear back from her, I lost confidence in the book. I re-read my opening, niggled by its weakness: the premise was so outrageous that it needed a lot of set up. This meant that my opening was very slowburn, if not plodding, and failed to do that fundamental thing a thriller should do: thrill!
The book was a failure, I decided. It was best to forget about it. And so I let it go and moved on to other projects. Six months later, I had a day off and I spent much of the afternoon browsing in Waterstones Piccadilly. I sat in a café, relaxed and happy, watching Londoners walking past. And suddenly the fix – which must have been simmering away in my subconscious all this time – came to me. I realised that I could begin the book in media res. Start with the night of the first switch. Start with my two female protagonists in their houses, nervous, prepping to slip out in the dark, wondering if they could get away with it. I could intercut these tense present-tense scenes with flashbacks to the past, explaining how this outrageous plan came to be.
I realise now, looking back, that sometimes an idea comes to you and it’s still green and shouldn’t be plucked – it just needs time to ripen.
Now my idea was ripe and ready. I wrote a new opening section that was much stronger. I changed agent and was very lucky to partner with Cathryn Summerhayes at Curtis Brown. She was enthusiastic about the idea, which helped me to recover my lost confidence. I dived in and wrote like mad, at a rate of 7000 words a week, scribbling into my notebook and then typing up. I kept mulling on some good advice I’d heard about writing thrillers: they explore extraordinary things happening to ordinary people. Another theme that developed was one of class. I’m from a working class background but was lucky enough to have a good education; class anxieties still haunt me, which I drew on for the story.
The narrative was initially written purely from Elena’s point of view. But on another day off, when I was wandering around London, I realised that I need to bring in my antagonist Sophia’s voice too, and play off the two viewpoints. This improved the book greatly, and by summer it was done and dusted.
In the autumn, much to happiness and surprise, it sold in the UK and the US. A few weeks on something fantastic happened: I had an email from my film agent saying that Blossom Films (Nicole Kidman’s production company) liked the book and set up a call with them. Film / TV rights eventually went to Sony Pictures / Matt Tolmach productions, whom I zoomed with and who were passionate and intelligent and had a vision for how to adapt it.
I have just finished my second thriller, Watch Me Watch You, and by contrast, I suffered all of the cliches of second novel syndrome: a draft of a noir set in Paris that got binned, followed by a fresh idea that took ages to take shape and many agonising drafts to get right. I think I became too self-conscious, whereas The Switch was written in a state of innocence. Eventually, however, the second book came through, and I finally had a book that I was proud of.
(c) Lily Samson
About The Switch by Lily Samson:
Whose life do you want?
Elena and her partner Adam are house-sitting in Wimbledon and find themselves instantly seduced by their upscale surroundings and their enigmatic new neighbours Sophia and Finn.
When Sophia proposes a wicked game to Elena whereby they will swap partners in secret, it’s not long before Elena starts to experience a sexual awakening that blossoms into an illicit love affair.
But Sophia’s plans are far more complex and dangerous than Elena could ever have imagined…
How far will she go to fulfil her desires?
‘Darkly disturbing, dangerously seductive, The Switch pulls you in and hangs onto you with white knuckles so you race to the end. What a ride!’ Tami Hoag
‘Shocking, seductive, sexy and scandalous’ Chris Whitaker
Order your copy of The Switch by Lily Samson online here.
