Johann Hari's Advice on Writing: The Obsessive Research Method

Johann Hari wrote Chasing the Scream, Lost Connections, Stolen Focus, and Magic Pill. For each book, he conducts 200 to 300 interviews - in tunnels underneath Las Vegas, prisons in the Arizona desert, fishing villages in Jamaica, conflict zones across multiple continents. He publishes the audio on each book's website so readers can hear the voices for themselves.

His writing advice comes from David Perell's "How I Write" podcast, a Porchlight Books Q&A, and various interviews.

Every Book Starts with a Personal Problem

Hari does not start with a thesis. He starts with something broken in his own life.

Chasing the Scream began because "one of my earliest memories is of trying to wake up one of my relatives and not be able to." Lost Connections began because he had been depressed for years. Stolen Focus because he could not read anymore. Magic Pill because weight loss drugs actually worked and he wanted to know what that would mean.

Personal pain generates a question. The question generates years of research. The research generates systemic insights. But the origin is always intimate.

"I think you've taken the thing that I get to at the end and assumed it was there at the start," he told Perell. The systemic conclusions come last. The personal confusion comes first.

The Bee and the Hive

His research method comes from Annie Dillard, drawn from Thoreau. If you want to find a beehive, catch a bee in a jar. Let it go. It flies toward the hive. Chase it. Then catch the next bee. Do this fifty times and you find the hive.

For Chasing the Scream, he broke questions into people: "I want the story of a drug dealer. I want the story of a cop who supports the drug war. I want the story of a cop who no longer supports the drug war. I want to meet a Mexican cartel member."

He found Chino Hardin through Vocal NYC. Chino is a trans former crack dealer. "The very first thing he ever said to me was, 'I was conceived when my mother, who was a crack addict, was raped by my dad, who was an NYPD officer.'" Hari spent years interviewing Chino.

Read enormously. Build a "talk to" list. Go sit with people in person - "you get 90% more when you sit with people in person." At the end of every interview: who else should I talk to?

About 80% of interviews do not make the final book. "Sometimes people look at the list and go, oh, so you wasted 80% of your time. But I always think it's like a police investigation. If the police investigate 12 people and the 12th guy did it, you could say you wasted time on the first 11. But they didn't know in advance."

Interview with Love and Curiosity

Look for a reason to love the person you are talking to. "Whether they're a homeless person living in a tunnel underneath Vegas or a professor at Yale. They've had a life I haven't had."

People can tell if you genuinely like them. Preparation demonstrates importance. "You go in knowing as much as you can know, but you have to go in in a spirit of radical openness."

Different people need different things. Chino starts talking and never stops. A woman named Nuria Changis, who led a protest movement in Berlin, said: "Oh, you're just going to present me as some stupid Turkish immigrant, right?" She needed many meetings. She needed Hari to talk more, not less.

He starts interviews by explaining why he cares. For Chasing the Scream: "I'm here because I had a relative who was very severely addicted and my first memories are of trying to wake one of them up." The emotional investment becomes mutual.

He interviewed Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who ran horrific prisons in Arizona. He knew that going in with what Philip Roth called "the ecstasy of sanctimony" would produce nothing.

So he listened. Arpaio was the youngest of nine children. His mother was told she had to have an abortion or she would die in childbirth. She refused. She died. Arpaio spent his entire childhood being told by his siblings, "You killed our mother."

"When you know that, it doesn't excuse for a second anything Joe did. But the minute Joe told me that, I was like, okay. Your founding story is you're a murderer." If Hari had gone in with moral certainty, he never would have learned the origin of the cruelty.

The Time to Make Your Mind Up About Someone Is Never

From The Philadelphia Story: "The time to make your mind up about someone is never."

"There's a temptation when you're telling a story about someone to act like you've captured their essence. But you want to give people the space to be complex, contradictory, ambiguous."

Returning to the same person eight, ten, fifteen times builds this complexity. "Often it's the eighth time you interview someone that they'll reveal something really important."

Every Insight Must Be Earned by a Story

Never state an abstract insight without first earning it through a story.

"If I just tell you the war on drugs was created for racist reasons, okay, you might intellectually be persuaded. But if I tell you the story of Billie Holiday and how she was stalked and killed by Harry Anslinger, the man who launched the war on drugs, that story will land with you in a much more powerful way."

The danger is formula: character introduction, character story, scientific study, neat wrap-up, next chapter. Hari's solution: "Tell a truthfully complicated and ambiguous story." If Billie Holiday is presented as a saint, the story is flat. Tell the truth about her complexity and the insight earns its weight.

He draws from a deep canvassing technique developed by the LA LGBT Center. If you want to change someone's mind, you do not start by arguing. "Has there ever been a time in your life when you felt judged?" Everyone has a story. After the emotional connection, people will go on a long journey with you.

Each of Hari's books begins with vulnerability. Lost Connections opens with a near-death experience. The vulnerability bonds author and reader. Only then can evidence be weighed fairly.

Clarity Above All

Georges Simenon's editing process: "I go through and I strike out everything that sounds like writing."

Hari's editing: write beginning to end. Set aside for a month. Print physically. Cut ruthlessly. "The writer Will Self once said to me, the biggest challenge of writing is managing your nausea at what you've produced." Print again. Edit again. Read on his phone - the different format reveals different problems. Send to three close friends. Then editors. Then read aloud to the people he wrote about. Rewrite again.

The heuristic at every stage: "Is this clear? Have I emotionally connected? Have I answered the questions I set up at the start?"

"The worst thing you could ever say to me about anything I write is, 'I don't understand you.'" Clarity is not dumbing down. It is the result of having understood something well enough to say it simply.

Key Takeaways

• Start with a personal problem. The systemic insight comes at the end, not the beginning.
• Chase the bee. Build a talk-to list, interview in person, ask who else you should speak to.
• Interview with love and radical openness. Preparation shows respect. Curiosity produces truth.
• Return to the same people again and again. Depth requires the eighth conversation, not the first.
• Give people space to be complex. The time to make your mind up about someone is never.
• Earn every insight with a story. Abstract claims without narrative do not land.
• Begin with vulnerability. Emotional connection precedes persuasion.
• Prioritize clarity above all. Strike out everything that sounds like writing.

Hari spends years on each book. Hundreds of interviews. Obsessive editing. The years of listening cannot be automated.

Sources: Hari's How I Write episode and Porchlight Books. Athens is an AI writing editor.