But I will say the central dilemma for Mark is obviously that he is in love with his best friend and he is very confused about the ambiguities about where friendship ends and where an actual romantic relationship begins, and his definitions are very different from what Ryan's definitions are. Obviously, David is kind of inhabiting this character, Mark, and you, Nina, are inhabiting Kate, but are you two drawing from anything in particular? What was the inspiration?ĭL: Mark's character is not particularly like me in that he is a baseball player and that he's attractive to many men in the club, and I kind of like that, that he's not a bookish, articulate guy-as many of my previous main characters have been. The moment Violet showed up, I was like, 'Oh, I really can't plan at all!' This is kind of a spoiler, but David had Violet show up way earlier than I was expecting, which was really funny. And then I would just wait to see what he was going to throw at me next or where he was going to take our characters. In this way, I would get the other chapter, read it, be excited, write mine, send it back. One thing that I was really aware of since this is my first collaboration is I usually have all of this time to plan what's going to happen in my book and think about all the time, think about the arcs and the character development and the pacing.

Nina LaCour: We definitely kept each other on our toes. The next time we met, we decided it would be two teens in San Francisco and that the whole thing would take place over Pride Week, and that was all we really knew when we started writing.ĭid that create a playing field where you could throw a narrative curveball and see how the other reacts? Was it kind of a choose-your-own-adventure along the way? The third time we ever met, I popped the question. So I had met Nina over the years at a couple book things. It was much more about friendship and identity than it was about romance.

And I thought to add to its authenticity, it would be great to find another female queer writer to write back and forth with and just do a he-said-she-said novel where you knew they weren't going to end up together in the end. Out: How did the idea for You Know Me Well come about? It was a few years ago at this point.ĭavid Levithan: I obviously enjoy collaborating with other writers, but the one dynamic that I hadn't really explored was sort of a back-and-forth novel with a gay boy and a lesbian girl, and I thought that would be really, really interesting. We spoke with the two authors about You Know Me Well, the meaning of Pride, and what they hope to see more of in young adult queer narratives.

You know me well by nina lacour