Writing Fiction For All You're Worth PDF
Preview Writing Fiction For All You're Worth
Writing Fiction for All You’re Worth James Scott Bell Copyright © 2011 James Scott Bell All Rights Reserved No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author. Table of Contents INTRODUCTION In Defense of How-to-Write Books A NEVER ENDING WRITING IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM The Six Critical Success Factors of Writers The Six Critical Success Factors of Fiction THE WRITING WORLD The Digital Revolution Just Because You Wrote It Doesn’t Mean You Should Publish It Act Like a Professional THE WRITING LIFE Some of My Favorite Writing Quotes My Personal Writing Routine Is the Outlook for Fiction Bleak? Stay Thirsty Driving Dangerously Hanging Upside Down and Other Creative Moves Will Arrogance Get You Published? Envy A Sense of Where You Are Courage to Write About Platforms 10 Things You Need to Know About Agents Energy to Write Do Not Go Gentle Onto That Good Page Blown Calls Writing on the Move The Home Stretch Who is a Real Writer? Growing as a Writer When Should You Quit Writing? THE WRITING CRAFT A Glimpse At My Writing Notebook Character Arc? Ten Ideas From One Article Serendipity What’s in a Name? Shake, Rattle and Write Action Scenes A Solid Bridge Need a Check Up? Style Envy Cool Papa Writing First Person Boring Hitting the Wall Sex, Smells and Thrills Ya Gotta Have Heart Synopsis Writing Made Easy The Stress Free Query Garlic Breath, or What Not to Do on Your Opening Page How to Grab Them on Page One Death to Prologues? What About the Semi-Colon? How to Write Your Last Page The Great Italics Controversy One Plus One Equals Three How Many Subplots is Too Many? The First Line Game Before You Submit Just Go Backstory Pro and Con How to Benefit from NaNoWriMo INTERVIEWS Jeffery Deaver Tess Gerritsen David Morrell Alex Kava Brad Thor Michael Palmer David Baldacci Carla Neggers Eric Van Lustbader Steve Martini Sarah Pekkanen Boyd Morrison INTRODUCTION In Defense of How-to-Write Books Every now and again I hear some author putting down how-tos. “You can only learn to write by writing,” they’ll say. “Don’t waste your time studying writing books. Just put a page in front of you and write!” Which strikes me as making as much sense as saying, “You can only learn to do brain surgery by doing brain surgery. Don’t waste your time studying brain surgery. Just cut open heads and go!” Excuse me if I show a preference for a sawbones who has studied under the tutelage of experienced surgeons. Another trope is, “No one ever learned to write by reading about writing.” Really? Isn’t that a bit cheeky, unless you’ve interviewed every published writer out there? The writer I know best – me – absolutely learned to write by reading how-tos. I had been fed the bunk that “writers are born, not made” while in college, and I bought it, in part because I took a course from Raymond Carver and couldn’t do what he did. (I didn’t know at the time that there was more than one way to “do” fiction. I thought everybody had to pass through the same tunnel.) When I finally decided I had to try to learn to write, even if I never got published, I went after it with a club. I started gathering books on writing, read Writer’s Digest religiously (especially Lawrence Block’s fiction column), took some classes, and wrote every day. Living in L.A. it was required that I try screenwriting first, so I wrote four complete screenplays in one year, giving them to a film school friend, who patiently read them and told me they weren’t working. But he didn’t know why. Then one day I read a chapter in a book by the great writing teacher Jack Bickham. And I had an epiphany. Literally. Light bulbs and fireworks went off inside my head, and I finally got it. Or at least a big part of it. So I wrote another screenplay, and that was the one that my friend liked. The next one I wrote got optioned, and the one after that got me into one of the top
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