In a Salon interview, authors Teddy Wayne and Alexandra Kleeman talk to each other about their recent books, character- and world-building, and alienation and anxiety in their novels. “Every story I write begins with a different distribution of knowns and unknowns, which I try to assess before I begin writing,” Kleeman says. “I’ve never gone through the paces that writing textbooks sometimes recommend, such as writing out a character’s biography, or determining what his favorite food is, or most traumatic memory, etc.—that’s always seemed like a fraudulent way of assembling a fictional person. It’s through the voice that I tend to figure out the character,” Wayne adds.