When he was thinking about the idea for his book he never thought it would be as big as it was in his words he said "I thought there could be a small but hardcore group of people who really loved it." So this is one of the main things that set the theme for this book because he did not think it would be big so he touch on the heavy stuff and he also thought to respect the people who do experience stuff like that. To make one of the leading charters in the book Hannah was not based on anyone person but the one day he found out one of his close relative tried to kill herself in junior year of high school, and after he found that out it was obvious why he made it about a female in high school. Asher also never thought about where the setting was just to show that this could happen any where in the country but he did loosely based the setting off of where he grew up as a teenager. When Asher was trying to do the back to back narration that the book has. He found it very difficult to do the back to back narration so he started over and wrote Hannah side of the story beginning to end then wrote Clay side of the story. Well Asher might think he is Clay in the story because he wrote Hannah side of the story but then left it there for a few months and came back to the book. This is why Clay story seems so real because Asher forgot about Hannah story and is listing to it right now so what Asher is feeling about Hannah words are put down and so then his reactions and feelings that Asher is feeling is what he put down for when Clay hear Hannah words.