They say that all you need to write a book is a good idea. And I didn’t have one. It was June 2012 on a cold, crisp afternoon in the shaky isles of Middle Earth, or as I affectionately call it, New Zealand. I was huddled under a blanket on the couch staring blankly […]
Category Archives: Writing Tips
Murder in the Fjords…
Murder in the Fjords… I have enjoyed telling creepy stories since I was a child. I’ve always had this voice in my head that asks, “What if …” When you write a crime novel series with a recurring protagonist, one of the most frequently asked questions you get from readers, journalists, and panel participants—and it’s […]
Keep on Writing!
(Keep on Writing! An order that needs to be heeded by aspiring writers) How do you go about writing a story that’s several hundred pages long? “Seriously, how do you do it? “some people ask me in astonishment, as if writing were some kind of magic and all those pages of text just erupted from […]
Writing Tips from J.A. Jance
If you want to be a writer, read! Why people who don’t read books still want to write them is more than I can understand. If you want to be a writer, write what you love and respect your readers. If you look down your nose at genre fiction and are only writing a mystery […]
Researching Gangsters to Gadgets
Researching Gangsters to Gadgets To paraphrase the memorable line from the movie Goodfellas: As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to write about gangsters. The idea started when I was five years old. My grandmother, Mary, had been born in the early 1900s and told me how she grew up in […]
Nelson DeMille on Writing, John Corey, and Digital Publishing
Nelson DeMille on Writing… TSM: Your books often have a great feel for the ongoing political climate—where do you get your news and sources of info on current events? ND: My novels have been described as geo-political thrillers, which sounds impressive. I’m a news junkie and my major in college was Political Science and History, so […]
Tess Gerritsen’s writing tips for completing a novel…
by Tess Gerritsen It invariably happens to me about halfway through a manuscript. Inspired by an intriguing premise, I launch straight into the story, set my characters into action, throw in a few initial twists…and then I smack into a wall. Because I have no idea what happens next in my story. Or I don’t […]
A Writer’s Inspiration: How to come up with new ideas…
A Writer’s Inspiration: How to come up with new ideas… I’m often asked whether my writing is inspired by real life. And by real life, people usually mean my life. Occasionally, I do lift small details from my own life and use them directly in my writing—the way my sister’s hair falls, the taste of […]
Character Motivation and Beyond
Character Motivation and Beyond Motivation drives the decisions both of the characters and the writer throughout a plot. Books on literary analysis, such as the Norton Anthologies, often lump motivation with character and identity, whereas mystery readers have long regarded motive as a full and separate category in its own right. Carolyn Wells devoted a […]
See What I Say? The Power of Descriptive Writing
See What I Say? The Power of Descriptive Writing Once, describing the silly little Argentinian films starring Eva Duarte years before she became Evita Perón, Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes wrote that those movies were so bad; they seemed to have been filmed before the invention of cinema. Oddly enough, though, at some point, the film […]
Story Trumps Structure
Story Trumps Structure Twelve years ago, I had an idea for a series of mysteries featuring a one-armed detective. At that time, I attended a seminar by a well-known novelist who taught us to outline our fiction carefully and meticulously and then stick to the outline as we crafted our stories. In some cases, he […]
This path isn’t for you: How to Persevere as an Author
This path isn’t for you: How to Persevere as an Author I was twenty years old when I presented my senior thesis to a room full of English majors and professors. Said thesis was a culmination of three years of creative writing efforts, fully informed by an obsession with the Romantics and Virginia Woolf, a […]