In the May/June 2014 Horn Book Magazine, our editors asked author E. Lockhart about writing the shocking ending of We Were Liars. Read the starred review here.

Horn Book editors: Did you write the end of the book first or last?

E. Lockhart: I knew the ending when I wrote the beginning, and I wrote the book out of order. I used the Scrivener software, which allowed me to very easily rearrange chunks of manuscript. Liars has a five-act structure, but the pieces of the story that went into each act moved around. There are a lot of flashbacks, and the placement of those changed. There are also interstitials, for lack of a better word — segments in which I tell the story of my protagonist and her old-money family through famous fairy tales. Author John Green read the book in manuscript and wrote me a fascinating e-mail that caused me to slice up the ending seconds before the ARC went to print. Thanks, John.

From the May/June 2014 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.