The Successful Novelist: A Lifetime of Lessons about Writing and Publishing

The Successful Novelist: A Lifetime of Lessons about Writing and Publishing

David Morrell

Language: English

Pages: 240

ISBN: 1402210558

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


"Like listening to a beloved brother. I found the acute observations and his narrative philosophy more valuable for the new writer than the contents of any 100 other texts."-Dean Koontz

"The Successful Novelist is the vehicle you want if you plan to drive your way to successful fiction."-Joe R. Lansdale

David Morrell, bestselling author of First Blood, The Brotherhood of the Rose and The Fifth Profession, distills more than fifty years of writing and publishing experience into this single masterwork of advice and instruction.

Morrell covers:

-Plot
-Character
-Research
-Structure
-Viewpoint
-Description
-Dialogue
-Succeeding in publishing
-And much more

The Successful Novelist reveals the truth about writing, providing the perspective authors need to write successful fiction that sells.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

learn, using the opportunity for research to make my life fuller. I developed a pattern--do the reading, conduct interviews, then get hands-on experience. James Thurber once wrote a story about a character named Walter Mitty, an ordinary man with adventure-filled fantasies. Every writer can be like Mitty, with the advantage that in dramatizing the products of our imaginations we're able, via our research, to live our fantasies. For my novels, I've gone to the Bill Scott Raceway in West

something that had never been done before. Instead of being an imitator, Jon's now part of the history of the genre. The next up-and-coming detective writer needs to take Jon's work into account. That should be your objective as well. No matter the type of fiction you write, you should want to be an innovator, and research is crucial to achieving that goal. LESSON SIX The Tactics of Structure Beginning writers sometimes tell me, "Working on short stories is so hard I can't imagine

Philip Marlowe has personality to burn while Macdonald's Lew Archer by and large only gives us information. What is arguably the greatest American detective novel, Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, is a third-person narrative. With that in mind, I recommend that anyone planning to write a detective story recognize the overdone first-person viewpoint and avoid it. Innovate instead of imitate. At the least, make sure that your first-person detective has a reason, other than convention, to

certain you have the great American novel inside you, you don't grab a beer and sit in front of the TV. You write. If you're a mother of three toddlers and at the end of the day you feel like you've been spinning in a hamster cage and yet you're convinced you have a story to tell, you find a way late at night or early in the morning to sit down and write. That's a version of how Mary Higgins Clark succeeded, by the way. Because she had to. Because something inside her absolutely insisted. A half

lives next door to our hero, but our hero thinks he's a friend. Our hero's son gets wounded because of hit men trying to keep the enforcer from testifying. The boy's in the hospital. Mom's scared to death. And what does my hero do? He goes after his former friend. Nonsense. What any believable person (at least any person I care to read about) would do is stay with his family and make sure they're safe. With the best intentions, I'd created an idiot plot. The reason the plot wouldn't move forward

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